Section VII.—SYMBOLISM.
A metaphor or figurative speech is the utterance to the understanding through the ear of words which have other and further meanings in them than their first one. Symbolism is the bringing to our thoughts, through the eye, some natural object, some human personage, some art-wrought figure, which is meant to set forth a some one, or a something else besides itself.
The use of both arose among men when they first began to dwell on earth and live together. Through symbolism, and the phonetic system, Egypt struck out for herself her three alphabets—the hieroglyphic or picture writing; the hieratic or priestly characters, or shortened form of the hieroglyphics; and the enchorial or people’s alphabet, a further abridgment still. The Hebrew letters are the conventional symbols of things in nature or art; and even yet, each keeps the name of the object which at first it represented; as “aleph” or “ox,” “beth” or “house,” “gimel” or “camel,” &c.
Holy Writ is full of symbolism; and from the moment that we begin to read those words—“I will set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be the sign of a covenant,”[409] till we reach the last chapter in the New Testament, we shall, all throughout, come upon many most beautiful and appropriate examples. The blood sprinkled upon the door-posts of the Israelites; the brazen serpent in the wilderness; that sign—that mystic and saving sign (Tau) of Ezekiel, were, each and every one of them symbols.
[409] Gen. ix. 13.
Being given to understand that things which happened to the Jews were so many symbols for us, the early Christian Church figured on the walls of the catacombs many passages from ancient Jewish history as applicable to itself, while its writers bestowed much attention on the study of symbolism. S. Melito, bishop of Sardes, A.D. 170, drew out of scripture a great many texts which would bear a symbolical meaning, and gave to his work the name of “The Key.” Almost quite forgotten, and well nigh lost, this valuable book, after long and unwearied labour, was at last found and printed by Dom (now Cardinal) Pitra in his Spicilegium Solesmense, t. ii. Among other works from the pen of St. Epiphanius, born A.D. 310, we have his annotations on a book, then old, and called “The Physiologist,” and a work of his own—a treatise on the twelve stones worn by Aaron,[410] in both of which, the Saint speaks much about symbolism. But the fourth century witnessed the production of the two great works on Scriptural Symbolism; that of St. Basil in his homilies on the six days’ creation;[411] which sermons in Greek were styled by their writer “Hexæmeron;” and the other by St. Ambrose, in Latin, longer and more elaborated, on the same subject and bearing the same title. A love for such a study grew up with the church’s growth everywhere, from the far east to the utmost west, amid Greeks as well as Latins, all of whom beheld, in their several liturgies, many illustrations of the system. It was not confined to clerics, but laymen warmly followed it. The artist, whether he had to set forth his work in painting or mosaic; the architects, whether they were entrusted with the raising of a church, or building a royal palace, nay a dwelling-house, were, each of them, but too glad to avail themselves, under clerical guidance, of such a powerful help for beautiful variety and happy illustration as was afforded them by Christian Symbolism. So systematized at last became this subject that by the eleventh century we find it separated into three branches—beasts, birds, and stones—and works were written upon each. Those upon beasts were, as they still are, known by the title of “Bestiaria,” or books on beasts; “Volucraria,” on birds, and “Lapideria,” on stones. About the same period, as an offset from symbolism, heraldry sprang up; whether the crusaders were the first to bethink themselves of such a method for personal recognition and distinction; or whether they borrowed the idea from the peoples in the east, and while adopting, much improved upon it, matters not; heraldry grew out of symbolism. Very soon it was made to tell about secular as well as sacred things; and poets, nay political partizans were quick in their learning of its language. The weaver too of silken webs was often bade, while gearing his loom, to be directed by its teaching, as several specimens in this collection will testify. That some of the patterns, made up of beasts and birds, upon silken stuffs from Sicilian, or Italian looms and here before us, were sketched by a partizan pencil and advisedly meant to carry about them an historic, if not political signification, we do not for a moment doubt. Several instances of sacred symbolism here, have been specified, and some explanation of it given.
[410] Exod. xxviii.
[411] Gen. i.
The “gammadion,” or the cross made thus 卐 a figure which, as we said before, is to be seen traced upon the earliest heathenish art-works, as well as the latest mediæval ones for Christian use, may be often found wrought on textiles here.
Knowing, as we do, that the first time this symbol shows itself to our eyes, is in the pattern figured on a web of the Pharaonic period, it is to the early history of Egypt we ought to go, if we wish to learn its origin and meaning.
The most astounding event of the world’s annals was the going out of Israel from Egypt. The blood of the lamb slain and sacrificed the evening before, and put upon both the door-posts, as well as sprinkled at the threshold of the house wherein any Hebrew dwelt—a sign of safety from all harm and death to man and beast, within its walls, on that awful night when throughout all Egypt the first-born of everything else was killed—must have caught the sight of every wonder-stricken Egyptian father and mother who, while weeping over their loss, heard that death had not gone in to do the work of slaughter where the blood had signed the gates of every Israelite.
Among the Hebrew traditions, handed down to us by the Rabbins, one is that the mark made by the Israelites upon their door-posts with the blood of the sacrificed lamb, the night before starting out of Egypt, was fashioned like the letter Tau made after its olden form, that is, in the shape of a cross, thus +.
What is still more curious, we are told that the lamb itself was spitted as if it had been meant to bear about its body, an unmistakable likeness to a kind of crucifixion. Treating of the passover, the Talmud says:—The ram or kid was roasted in an oven whole, with two spits made of pomegranate wood thrust through it, the one lengthwise, the other transversely (crossing the longitudinal one near the fore-legs) thus forming a cross.[412] Precisely the same thing is said by St. Justin, martyr, born A.D. 103, in his Dialogue with Tryphon the Jew. This very mode of roasting is expressed in Arabic by the verb “to crucify;” according to Jahn, in his “Biblical Antiquities,” § 142, as quoted by Kitto, under the word Passover.[413]
[412] Pesachim, c. 3.
[413] T. ii. p. 477 of the “Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature.”
From the words of St. Jerome, it would seem that that learned hebraist, well knowing, as he did, the traditions of the rabbins of his day, had understood from them that the mark of the lamb’s blood sprinkled on the doors of the Israelites going out of Egypt, had been so made as to take the shape of a cross.
Deeply smitten as the whole of Egypt must have been at the woe that befel them and theirs, the night before the great exode of the Israelites from among them, those Egyptians could not help seeing how all the Hebrews, their children, and their flocks had gone forth scatheless out of that death-stricken land. At peep of dawn, the blood upon the door-posts of every house where an Israelite had lately dwelt, told the secret; for the destroyer had not been there. From that hour, a Tau was thought by them to be the symbol of health and safety, of happiness, and future life. St. Epiphanius, born A.D. 310, in Palestine, for many years Archbishop of Salamis in Cyprus, and a great traveller in Egypt, tells us, that being mindful of that day on which the Israelites who had besmeared the door-posts of their houses with the blood of the lamb, had been spared the angel’s death-stroke, the Egyptian people were accustomed, at every vernal equinox—their new year—to daub, with red paint, their doors, their trees, and animals, the while they cried out that, “once at this time fire blighted every thing;” against such a plague, they think that the remedy is a spell in the colour of blood: “Egyptios memores illius diei quo a cæde angeli liberati sunt Israelitæ qui agni sanguine postes domorum illinierant, solitos esse, intrante æquinoctio vernanti, accipere rubricam et illinere omnes arbores domosque clamantes ‘quia in tempore hoc ignis vastavit omnia’ contra quam luem remedium putant ignis colorem sanguineum rubricæ.”[414]
[414] Hæreses, xviii.
While they found blood upon the departed and unharmed Israelites’ door-posts, the sorrowing Egyptians must have seen that it had been sprinkled there, not at hazard, but with the studied purpose of making therewith the Egyptian letter Tau, as it used to be fashioned at the time. But what was then its common shape? That the old Tau was a cross, we are told by written authority, and learn from monumental evidence. Learned as he was in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, Moses, no doubt, wrote with the letters of their alphabet. Now, the oldest shape of the Tau in the Hebrew alphabet, and still kept up among the Samaritans in St. Jerome’s days, was in the form of a cross: “Antiquis Hebræorum literis, quibus usque hodie Samaritæ utuntur, extrema Tau crucis habet similitudinem, quæ in Christianorum frontibus pingitur et frequentius manus inscriptione signatur.”[415] For monumental testimony we refer the reader to the proofs we have given, at large, in “Hierurgia,” pp. 352-355, second edition. Strengthening our idea that the lamb’s blood had been put on the door-post in the shape of a cross, and that hence the old Egyptians had borrowed it as a spell against evil hap, and a symbol of a life hereafter, is a passage set forth, first by Rufinus, A.D. 397, and then by Socrates, A.D. 440:—“On demolishing at Alexandria a temple dedicated to Serapis, were observed several stones sculptured with letters called hieroglyphics, which showed the figure of a cross. Certain Gentile inhabitants of the city who had lately been converted to the Christian faith, initiated in the method of interpreting these enigmatic characters, declared that the figure of the cross was considered as the symbol of future life.”[416] We know that, while the old Tau kept the shape of a cross, it took at least three modifications of that form on those monuments which, up to this time, have been brought to light: others may turn up with that letter traced exactly like the so-called “gammadion” found upon an Egyptian stuff of such an early date. Most probably this was the very shape, but with shorter arms, of the letter found traced upon the door-posts.
[415] Hier. in cap. ix. Ezech.
[416] Hist. Eccles. lib. v. c. 17.
The recurrence of the gammadion upon Christian monuments is curious. We find it shown upon the tunic of a gravedigger in the catacombs; it comes in among the ornamentation wrought upon the gold and parcel-gilt altar-frontal dome by our Anglo-Saxon countryman Walwin for the Ambrosian basilican church at Milan; it is seen upon the narrow border round some embroidery of the twelfth century, lately found within a shrine in Belgium, and figured by that untiring archæologist the Canon Voisin of Tournay; and upon a piece of English needlework of the latter half of the same twelfth century—the mitre of our St. Thomas, figured by Shaw, and still kept at Sens cathedral. As a favourite element in the pattern worked upon our ecclesiastical embroideries, this “gammadion” is as conspicuously shown upon the apparel round the shoulders, and on the one in front of his alb, in the effigy of Bishop Edington, at Winchester cathedral, as upon the vestments of a priest in a grave-brass at Shottesbrook church, Berks, given by Waller in his fine work.
Always keeping up its heathenish signification of a “future life,” Christianity widened the meaning of this symbol, and made it teach the doctrine of the Atonement through the death of our Lord upon a cross. Furthermore, it set forth that He is our corner-stone. About the thirteenth century, it was taken to be an apt memorial of His five wounds; and remembering the stigmata or five impressions in the hands, feet, and side of St. Francis of Assisi, this gammadion became the favourite device of such as bore that famous saint’s name, and was called in England, after its partial likeness to the ensigne of the Isle of Man—three feet—a fylfot.[417]
[417] M. S. Harley, 874, p. 190.
To the symbolic meaning affixed unto some animals, we have pointed in the catalogue, wherein, at p. [156], the reader will find that Christ, as God, is typified under the figure of a lion, under that again of the unicorn, as God-man. Man’s soul, at pp. [237], [311], is figured as the hare; mischief and lubricity are, at p. [311], shadowed forth in the likeness of the monkey.
Birds often come in here as symbols; and of course we behold the lordly eagle very frequently. Bearing in mind how struggled the two great factions of the Guelphs whose armorial arms were “un’ Aquila con un Drago sotto i piedi”—an eagle with a dragon under its feet—and the Ghibellini, we do not wonder at finding the noble bird, sometimes single, sometimes double-headed, so frequently figured on silks woven in Sicily, or on the Italian peninsula, triumphing over his enemy, the dragon or Ghibelline stretched down before him. About the emblematic eagle of classic times we have already spoken.
If the Roman Quintus Curtius, like the Greeks before him, was in amazement at certain birds in India, so quick in mimicking the human voice: “aves ad imitandum humanæ vocis sonum dociles,”[418] we naturally expect to find the parrot figured, as we do here, upon stuffs from Asia, or imitations of such webs.
Famous, in eastern story, are those knowing birds—and they were parrots—that, on coming home at evening, used to whisper unto Æthiopia’s queen (whom Englishmen not till the sixteenth century began to call Sheba, but all the world besides called and yet calls Saba) each word and doing, that day, of the far-off Solomon, or brought round their necks letters from him. Out of this Talmudic fable grew the method with artists during the fifteenth century of figuring one of the wise men as very swarthy—an Æthiopian—under the name of Balthasar, taking as their warrant, a work called “Collectaneæ,” erroneously assigned to our own Beda; and because our Salisbury books for the liturgy, sang, as all the old liturgies yet sing, on the feast of the Epiphany:—“All shall come from Saba”—the name of the country as well as of that queen who once governed it—“bringing gold and frankincense,” &c. those mediæval artists deemed it proper to show somewhere about the wise men, parrots, as sure to have been brought among the other gifts, especially from the land of Saba. Upon a cope, belonging now to Mount St. Mary’s, Chesterfield, made of very rich crimson velvet, there is beautifully embroidered by English hands, the arrival at Bethlehem of the three wise men. In the orphrey, on that part just above the hood, are figured in their proper colours two parrots, as those may remember who saw it in the Exhibition here of 1862; on textiles before us this bird is often shown. The appearance of the parrot on the vestments at old St. Paul’s is very frequent.[419]
[418] Lib. viii. cap. 9.
[419] Dugdale, p. 317.
But of the feathered tribe which we meet with figured on these textiles, there are three that merit an especial mention through the important part they were made to take, whilom in England at many a high festival and regal celebration—we mean the so-called “Vow of the Swan, the Peacock and the Pheasant.” From the graceful ease—the almost royal dignity with which it walks the waters, the swan with its plumage spotless and white as driven snow, has everywhere been looked upon with admiring eyes; and its flesh while yet a cygnet used to be esteemed a dainty for a royal board, on some extraordinary occasions. To make it the symbol of majestic beauty in a woman, it had sometimes given it a female’s head. Among the gifts bestowed on his son, Richard II. by the Black Prince, in his will were bed-hangings embroidered with white swans having women’s heads. To raise this bird still higher, in ecclesiastical symbolism, it is put forth to indicate a stainless, more than royal purity; and as such, is often linked with and figured under the Blessed Virgin Mary, as is shown upon an enamelled morse given in the “Church of our Fathers.”[420]
Besides all this, the swan owns a curious legend of its own, set forth by some raving troubadour in the wildest dream that minstrel ever dreamed. “The life and myraculous hystory of the most noble and illustryous Helyas, knight of the swanne, and the birth of ye excellent knight Godfrey of Boulyon,” &c., was once a book in great favour throughout Europe; and was “newly translated and printed by Robert Copland, out of Frensshe in to Englisshe at thinstigacion of ye Puyssaunt and Illustryous Prynce Lorde Edwarde Duke of Buckyngham—of whom lynyally is dyscended my sayde lorde.”[421]
[420] T. ii. p. 41.
[421] Typographical Antiquities of Great Britain, ed. Dibdin, t. iii. pp. 152-3.
While our noble countryman boasted of an offspring from this fabled swan, so did the greatest houses abroad. In private hands in England is a precious ivory casket wrought on its five panels, before us in photography, with this history of the swan. Helyas’s shield and flag are ensigned with St. George’s cross; the armour tells of England and its military appliances, about the end of the fourteenth century; and the whole seems the work of English hands. At the great exhibition of loans in this museum, A.D. 1862, one of the many fine textiles then shown was a fine but cut-down chasuble of blue Sicilian silk, upon which was, curiously enough for what we have said about the birds before which the “Vow” was made, figured, amid other fowls the pheasant. The handsome orphreys upon this vestment were wrought in this country, and good specimens they are of English needlework during the fourteenth century. These orphreys, before and behind, are embroidered on a bright red silk ground, with golden flower and leaf-bearing branches, so trailed as, in their twinings, to form Stafford knots in places, and to embower shields of arms each supported by gold swans all once ducally gorged. From these and other bearings on it, this chasuble would seem to have been worked for the Staffords, Dukes of Buckingham. At Corby Castle there is an altar frontal of crimson velvet made for and figured with the great Buckingham and his Duchess both on their knees at the foot of a crucifix. Amid a sprinkling of the Stafford knot, for the Duke (Henry VIII. beheaded him) was Earl of Stafford, the swan is shown, and the Lord Stafford of Cossey, in whose veins the blood of the old Buckingham still runs, gives a silver swan as one of his armorial supporters. At Lincoln cathedral there were:—A cope of red cloth of gold with swans of gold;[422] and a cope of purple velvet having a good orphrey set with swans.[423]
In mediæval symbolism, as read by Englishmen, the swan was deemed not only a royal bird, but, more than that, one of the tokens of royal prowess. Hence we may easily understand why our great warrior king, Edward I., as he sat feasting in Westminster Hall, amid all the chivalry, old and young of the kingdom, on such a memorable day, should have had brought before him the two swans in their golden cages:—“tunc allati sunt in pompatica gloria duo cygni vel olores, ante regem, phalerati retibus aureis, vel fistulis deauratis, desiderabile spectaculum, intuentibus. Quibus visis, rex votum vovit Deo cœli et cygnis, se proficisci in Scotiam,” &c.[424] And then solemnly made the “Vow of the Swan,” as we described, p. [287] of the Catalogue.
[422] Mon. Anglic. t. viii. p. 1282.
[423] Ibid.
[424] Flores Historiarum, per Matt. Westmonast. Collectæ, p. 454.
In the pride of place, on such occasions, abreast with the swan stood the peacock, “with his angel fethers bright;” and was at all times and everywhere looked upon as the emblem of beauty. Not a formal banquet was ever given, at one period, without this bird being among the dishes; in fact, the principal one. To prepare it for the table, it had been killed and skinned with studious care. When roasted, it was sewed up in its skin after such an artistic way that its crested head and azure neck were kept, as in nature, quite upright; and its fan-like tail outspread; and then, put in a sitting position on a large broad silver dish parcel gilt, used to be brought into the hall with much solemnity.
On the last day of a tournament, its gay festivities ended in a more than usual sumptuous banqueting. The large baronial hall was hung all over with hangings, sometimes figured with a romance, sometimes with scenes such as we read of in “The Flower and the Leaf;” and because trees abounded on them, were known as tapestry of “verd.” At top of and all along the travers ran the minstrel-gallery, and thither—
Come first all in their clokes white,
A company, that ware for their delite,
Chapelets fresh of okes seriall,
Newly sprong, and trumpets they were all.
On every trumpe hanging a broad banere
Of fine tartarium were full richely bete,
Every trumpet his lordes arms bare,
About their neckes with great pearles sete
Collers brode, for cost they would not lete, &c.[425]
From among those high-born damosels who had crowded thither, one was chosen as the queen of beauty. When all the guests had gathered in that dining-hall, and been marshalled in their places by the herald, and the almoner had said grace, and set the “grete almes disshe of silver and overgilt, made in manner of a shippe full of men of armes feyghtyng upon the shippe syde weyng in all lxvii lb ix un[=c] of troye,”[426] at the high board under the dais, a bold fanfar was flourished upon silver trumpets, from which drooped silken flags embroidered with the blazon of that castle’s lord, or—
Of gold ful riche, in which ther was ybete
some quaint device. Then a burst of music from the minstrel-gallery arose as came in the queen of beauty. Her kirtle was of ciclatoun, cloth of pall, or sparkling tissue:—
To don honour (to that day)
Yclothed was she fresshe for to devise.
Hire yelwe here was broided in a tresse,
Behind hire back a yerde long I gesse;
And in the gardin at the sonne uprist,
She walketh up and doun wher as her list.
She gathereth floures, partie white and red,
To make a sotel gerlond for hire hed.[427]
One at each side of her, walked two of the youngest bachelors in chivalry. These youths did not wear their harness, but came arrayed in gay attire, having on white hoods, perhaps embroidered with dancing men in blue habits, like the one given by Edward III. to the Lord Grey of Rotherfield, to be worn at a tournament; or looking,[428] each of them, like the “yonge Squier,” of whom Chaucer said:—
Embrouded was he, as it were a mede,
Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and red.[429]
[425] Chaucer, The Flower and the Leaf, v. 207, &c.
[426] Antient Kalendars of the Exchequers, ed. Palgrave, ii. p. 184.
[427] Chaucer, The Knightes Tale, v. 1050.
[428] Dugdale’s Baronage, i. 723.
[429] The Prologue, v. 79.
Treading out sweetness from the bay leaves strewed among the rushes on the floor, and with step as stately as the peacock’s own, the queen of beauty for the nonce, bearing in both her hands the splendid charger with the bird—the symbol of herself—slowly paced the hall. Halting on a sudden, she set it down before the knight who, by general accord, had borne him best throughout that tournament; such was the ladies’ token of their praises. To carve well at table was one of the accomplishments of ancient chivalry; and our own King Arthur was so able in that gentle craft, that on one occasion he is said to have cut up a peacock so cleverly that every one among the one hundred and fifty guests had a morsel of the fowl. To show himself as good a knight at a feast as at a passage of arms, the lady bade him carve the bird. What the lances of his antagonists could not do, this meed of praise from the ladies did—it overcame him. With deference, he humbly pleaded that many a doughty knight there present was more worthy of the honour: all his words were wasted. The queen of beauty would brook no gainsaying to her behest. He therefore bowed obedience, and she went away. Ere applying himself to his devoir, outstretching his right hand on high above the dish before him, amid the deepest silence, and in a ringing voice, so as to be well heard by all that noble presence, the knight vowed his vow of the peacock. Almost always this vow was half religious, half military; and he who took it bound himself to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and, on his road thither or homeward, to join, as he might, any crusade against the Paynim.
Hardly had the words of such a plight been uttered, when other knights started up at every table, and bound themselves by his or some like vow.
The dinner done, the feast was not quite over. Plucking from its tail the best and brightest of the peacock’s feathers, the beauty-queen wove them into a diadem; the minstrel who had long distinguished himself, was summoned by a pursuivant and brought before her; and she crowned him as he knelt lowly down. Ever afterwards, at festival or tournament, this music king wore this crown about his hat as blithely as did the knight his lady’s glove or favour on his helmet, at a joust. Such was—
Vowis of Pecok, with all ther proude chere.
Sometimes a pheasant, on account of its next beautiful plumage, used to be employed, instead of the larger, grander peacock.
With these facts set before him, any visitor to this collection will take a much more lively interest in so precious a piece of English embroidery as is the Syon cope, for while looking at it in admiration of the art-work shown in such a splendid church vestment, he finds, where he never thought of coming on, a curious record of our ancient national manners.
Besides all that has been said in reference to this cope, at pp. [289-90] of the Catalogue, we would remind our reader that at easy distances from Coventry might be found such lordly castles as those of Warwick, Kenilworth, Chartley, Minster Lovel, Tamworth. The holding of a tournament within their spacious walls, or in the fields beside them, was, we may be certain, of frequent occurrence at some one or other of them. The tilting was followed by the banquet and the “vow;” and the vow by its fulfilment from those barons bold, who bore in their own day the stirring names of Beauchamp, Warwick, Ferrers, Geneville, or Mortimer. Of one or other of them might be said:—
At Alisandre he was whan it was wonne.
Ful often time he hadde the bord begonne
No cristen man so ofte of his degre.
In Gernade at the siege eke hadde he be
Of Algesir, and ridden in Belmarie.
At mortal batailles hadde he ben fiftene,
And foughten for our faith at Tramissene
In listes thries, and ay slain his fo.[430]
[430] Chaucer, The Prologue, vv. 51, &c.
At Warwick itself, and again at Temple Balsall, not far off, the Knights Templars held a preceptory, and, as it is likely, aggregated to the Coventry gild, had their badge—the Holy Lamb—figured on its vestment. Proud of all its brotherhood, proud of those high lords who had gone on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, figured by the Star of Bethlehem, and had done battle with the Moslem, according to the vow signified by the swan and peacock, the Coventry gild caused to be embroidered on the orphrey of their fine old cope, the several armorial bearings of those among their brotherhood who had swelled the fame of England abroad; and by putting those symbols—the swan and the peacock, the star and crescent—close by their blazons, meant to remind the world of those festive doings which led each of them to work such deeds of hardihood.
In the fourteenth century a fashion grew up here in England of figuring symbolism—heraldic and religious—upon the articles of dress, as we gather from specimens here, as well as from other sources. The ostrich feather, first assumed by our Black Prince, was a favourite device with his son Richard II. for his flags and personal garments. This is well shown in the illumination given, p. 31, of the “Deposition of Richard II.,” published by the Antiquarian Society. That king’s mother had bequeathed to him a new bed of red velvet, embroidered with ostrich feathers of silver, and heads of leopards of gold, with boughs and leaves issuing out of their mouths.[431] Through family feeling, not merely the white swan, but this cognizance of the Yorkists—the ostrich feather—was sometimes figured on orphreys for church copes and chasubles, since in the Exeter, A.D. 1506, we find mentioned a cope, “le orfrey de rubeo damasco operato de opere acuali cum rosis aureis ac ostryge fethers insertis in rosis,” &c.;[432] and again, “le orfrey de blodio serico operata de opere acuali cum cignis albis et ostryge fethers—i casula de blodio serico operata opere acuali cum ostryge fethers sericis, le orfrey de rubeo serico operato cum ostryge fethers aureis.”[433] Lincoln Cathedral, too, had a cope of red damask, with ostriges feathers of silver.[434] This somewhat odd element of design for a textile is to be found on one here, [No. 7058], p. 129.
[431] Testamenta Vetusta, i. 14.
[432] Ed. Oliver, p. 347.
[433] Ibid. p. 365.
[434] Mon. Anglic. t. viii. p. 1282, ed. Caley.
To eyes like our own, accustomed to see nowhere but in English heraldry, and English devices, harts figured as lodged beneath green trees in a park as in [Nos. 1283-4], p. 43, or stags couchant, with a chain about the neck, as at pp. [53], [239], and in both samples gazing upward to the sun behind a cloud, it would appear that they were but varieties of the pattern sketched for the silken stuffs worn by Richard II., and admirably shown on that valuable, yet hitherto overlooked specimen of English mediæval workmanship in copper and engraving still to be found in Westminster Abbey, as we before observed,[435] and the symbolism of which we now explain. The pattern of the silken textile worn by the king consists of but three elements—the broom-pod, the sun’s rays darting upwards from behind a cloud, and a stag lying down on the grass, looking right forward, with about its neck a royal crown, down from which falls a long chain. The broom tells, of course, that Richard was a Plantagenet. His grandfather’s favourite cognizance was that of sunbeams issuing from clouds; his mother’s—Joan, the fair maid of Kent—the white hart. The latter two were evidently meant to bring to mind the words of the Psalmist, who says:—“The heavens show forth the glory of God. He hath set His tabernacle in the sun. The Lord is my light, and His throne as the sun.” The white hind brings to our thoughts how the hart panting for the water-fountains, is likened to the soul that pants after God. This symbolism is unfolded into a wider breadth upon the design for the stuffs here, [No. 1310], p. 53; No. [8624], p. 239. Here, instead of the sunbeams shooting upwards, as if to light the whole heavens, they dart downward, as if for the individual stag with upturned gaze, amid a gentle shower of rain; as if to say that if man look heavenward by prayer, light will be sent down to him, and helping grace, like rain, like the shower upon the grass to slake his ghostly thirst.
[435] P. cxx.
About the time of Richard II. the white hart seems to have been a favourite element in ornamental needlework here in England, for Lincoln cathedral had “a red velvet cope set with white harts lying, colours (with collars?) full of these letters S S ... the harts having crowns upon their necks with chains, silver and gilt,” &c.[436] So thoroughly national at the time was this emblem that we believe every piece of silken textile to be found here or elsewhere had its design sketched in this country and sent to Palermo to be woven there in stuffs for the use of the English court. When his order had been done, the weaver having his loom geared at our king’s expense, threw off a certain quantity of the same pattern for home use or his trade with Germany; and hence we see such a beautiful variation figured on the apparels upon the old alb, No. [8710], p. 268 of the catalogue. The eagle shown all in gold, with a crown not on but above its head, may refer to one of Richard’s ancestors, the King of the Romans, who never reigned as such. The hart, collared and lodged in its park, is Richard’s own emblem. That dog, collared and courant, has a story of its own in Richard’s eventful life. Dogs when petted and great favourites, were always arrayed in ornamented collars; hence we must not be surprised to find put down among the things of value kept in the Treasury of the Exchequer:—“ii grehondes colers of silk enbrouded with lettres of gold and garnyssed with silver and overgilt.”[437] Telling of Richard’s capture in Flint castle by the Earl of Derby, soon afterwards Henry IV., Froissart says:—“King Richard had a greyhound called Math, beautiful beyond measure who would not notice nor follow any one but the king. Whenever the king rode abroad the greyhound was loosed by the person who had him in charge, and ran instantly to caress him, by placing his two fore feet on his shoulders. It fell out that as the king and the Duke of Lancaster were conversing in the court of the castle, their horses being ready for them to mount, the greyhound was untied, but instead of running as usual to the king, he left him, and leaped to the Duke of Lancaster’s shoulders, paying him every court, and caressing him as he was formerly used to caress the king. The duke asked the king, ‘What does this mean?’ ‘Cousin,’ replied the king, ‘it means a great deal for you, and very little for me. This greyhound fondles and pays his court to you this day as King of England.’”[438] That such a pet as Math once so given to fawn upon his royal master should, with other emblematic animals, have been figured in the pattern on a textile meant for its master’s wear, or that of his court, seems very likely: and thus the piece before us possesses a more than ordinary interest.
[436] Mon. Anglic. t. viii. p. 1281, ed. Caley.
[437] Antient Kalendars and Inventories, ed. Palgrave, t. ii. p. 252.
[438] Froissart’s Chronicles, by Johnes, t. ii. chap. cxiii. p. 692.
Respecting ecclesiastical symbolism, we have to observe that with regard to the subjects figured upon these liturgical embroideries, we may see at a glance, that the one untiring wish, both of the designer and of those who had to wear those vestments, was to set before the people’s eyes and to bring as often as possible to their mind the divinity of Christ, strongly and unmistakably, along with the grand doctrine of the Atonement. Whether it be cope, or chasuble, or reredos, or altar-frontal such a teaching is put forth upon it. Beginning with the divinity of our Saviour’s manhood, sometimes we have shown us how, with such lowly reverence, Gabriel spoke his message to the Blessed Virgin Mary with the mystic three-flowered lily standing up between them; or the Nativity with the shepherds or the wise men kneeling in adoration to acknowledge the divinity of our Lord even as a child just born; then some event in His life, His passion, His scourging at the pillar, the bearing of His cross, His being crowned with thorns, always His crucifixion, often above that, His upraised person like a king enthroned and crowning her of whom He had taken flesh; while everywhere about the vestment are represented apostles, martyrs, and saints all nimbed with glory, and among them, winged seraphim standing upon wheels, signifying that heaven is now thrown open to fallen but redeemed man, who, by the atonement wrought for him by our Divine Redeemer, is made to become the fellow-companion of angels and cherubim. To this same end, the black vestments worn at the services for the dead were, according to the old English rite, marked; the chasubles on the back with a green cross upon a red ground, the copes with a red orphrey at their sides, to remind those present that while they mourned their departed friend, they must believe that his soul could never enter heaven unless made clean and regenerated by the atoning blood shed for it on the cross.
At his dubbing, “unto a knight is given a sword, which is made in the semblance of the cross, for to signify how our Lord God vanquished in the cross the death of human lineage, to the which he was judged for the sin of our first father Adam.” This we are told in the “Order of Chivalry,” translated by Caxton.[439] While stretched wounded and dying on the battle-field, some friendly hand would stick a sword into the ground before the expiring knight, that as in its handle he beheld this symbol of the cross, he might forgive him who had struck him down, as he hoped forgiveness for himself, through the atonement paid for him on the cross at Calvary.
[439] Typographical Antiquities, ed. Dibdin, t. i. p. 234.
The ages of chivalry were times of poetry, and we therefore feel no surprise on finding that each young knight was taught to learn that belonging to every article of his armour, to every colour of his silken array, there was a symbolism which he ought to know. All these emblematic significations are set forth in the “Order of Chivalry,” which we just now quoted. The work is very rare, but the chapter on this subject is given by Ames in his “Typographical Antiquities of Great Britain;”[440] as well as in “Lancelot du Lac” modernized and printed in the “Bibliothèque Bleu,” pp. 11, 12. In that black silk chasuble with a red orphrey upon which our Lord is figured hanging upon a green cross—“cum crucifixo pendente in viridi cruce,”[441] it was for a particular reason that the colour of this wood for the cross is specified: as green is the tint of dress put on by the new-born budding year, which thus foretells of flowers and fruits in after months, so was this same colour the symbol of regeneration for mankind, and the promise of paradise hereafter. For such a symbolic reason is it that, upon the wall painting lately brought again to light in West Somerton Church, Norfolk, our uprisen Lord is shown stepping out of the grave, mantled in green, with the banner of the resurrection in His left hand, and giving a blessing with His upraised right. At all times, and in every land, the “Language of Flowers” has been cultivated, and those who now make it their study will find much to their purpose in Chaucer, especially in his “Flower and the Leaf.” There speaking of “Diane, goddesse of chastite,” the poet says:—
And for because that she a maiden is,
In her hond the braunch she beareth this,
That agnus castus men call properly;
And tho that weare chapelets on their hede
Of fresh woodbind, be such as never were
Of love untrue in word, thought ne dede,
But aye stedfast, &c.[442]
[440] Ibid.
[441] Oliver, p. 134.
[442] Works, ed. Nicolas, t. vi. p. 259.
Were it not for this symbolism for the woodbine, we had been quite unable to understand why in our old testamentary bequests, the flower should have been so especially mentioned as we find in the will of Joan Lady Bergavenny who, A.D. 1434, leaves to one of her friends, a “bed of silk, black and red, embroidered with woodbined flowers of silver,” &c.[443] Besides its symbolism of those colours—black and red—for which we have but this moment given the reasons, p. cxlix., the funeral cope which we noticed before, p. [cxxvi]., showed a symbolism of flowers in the woodbine wrought upon it. Sure may we be that the donor’s wish—perhaps the fingers of a weeping widow had worked it for Lincoln Cathedral—was to tell for her in after days the unfaltering love she ever bore towards her husband, and to say so every time this vestment happened to be worn at the services sounded for him. May be that quaint old likeness of Anne Vavasour, exhibited here A.D. 1868 among the “National Portraits,” and numbered 680, p. 138 of the Catalogue, had its background trailed all over with branches of the woodbine in leaf, at the particular behest of a fond spouse Sir H. Lee, and so managed that the plant’s only cyme of flower should hang just below her bosom. By Shakespeare floral symbolism was well understood; and he often shows his knowledge of it in “A Winter’s Tale,” act iv. scene iii. He gives us several meanings of flower-speech, and when he makes (Henry VIII. act iv. scene ii.) Queen Katherine say to Griffith “Farewell—when I am dead—strew me over with maiden flowers, that all the world may know I was a chaste wife to my grave,” he tells of an olden custom still kept up among us, and more fully carried out in Wales and the Western parts of England, where the grave of a dear departed one is weekly dressed by loving hands with the prettiest flowers that may be had. The symbolism of colours is learnedly treated by Portal in his “Couleurs Symboliques.”
The readers of those valuable inventories of the chasubles, copes, and other liturgical silk garments which belonged to Exeter cathedral and that of London, about the middle of the thirteenth century, will not fail to observe that some of them bore, amongst other animals, the horse, and fish of different sorts, nay, porpoises figured on them: “una capa de palla cum porphesiis et leonibus deauratis,”[444] “due cape de palla cum equis et avibus,”[445] “unum pulvinar breudatum avibus, piscibus et bestiis,”[446] “capa de quodam panno Tarsico, viridis coloris cum pluribus piscibus et rosis aurifilo contextis.”[447] Even here, under [No. 8229], p. 151, we have from the East a small shred of crimson silk, which shows on it a flat-shaped fish. If to some minds it be a subject of wonderment that, amid flowers and fruits, not only birds and beasts—elephants included—but such odd things as fish, even the porpoise, are to be found represented upon textiles chosen for the service of the altar, they should learn that all such stuffs were gladly put to this very use for the symbolism they carried, by accident, about them. Then, as now, the clergy had to say, and the people to listen daily to that canticle: “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; O ye angels of the Lord, O ye whales, and all that move in the waters, O ye fowls of the air, O all ye beasts and cattle, bless ye the Lord and magnify Him for ever!” Not merely churchmen, but the lay folks, deemed it but fitting that while the prayer above was being offered up, an emphasis should be given to its words by the very garment worn by the celebrant as he uttered them.
[443] Test. Vet. i. 228.
[444] Oliver’s Exeter, p. 299.
[445] Ibid.
[446] St. Paul’s, p. 316.
[447] Ibid. p. 318.