Silks had various names
given them, meaning either their kind of texture and dressing, their colour and its several tints, the sort of design or pattern woven on them, the country from which they were brought, or the use for which, on particular occasions, they happened to be especially set apart.
All of these designations are of foreign growth; some sprang up in the seventh and following centuries at Byzantium, and, not to be found in classic writers, remain unknown to modern Greek scholars; some are half Greek, half Latin, jumbled together; other some, borrowed from the east, are so shortened, so badly and variously spelt, that their Arabic or Persian derivation can be hardly recognized at present. Yet, without some slight knowledge of them, we may not understand a great deal belonging to trade, and the manners of the times glanced at by our old writers; much less see the true meaning of many passages in our mediæval English poetry.
Among the terms significative of the kind of web, or mode of getting up some sorts of silk, we have
Holosericum, the whole texture of which, as its Greek-Latin compound means to say, is warp and woof wholly pure silk: in a passage from Lampridius, quoted before, [p. xix.], we learn that so early as the reign of Alexander Severus, the difference between “vestes holosericæ,” and “subsericæ,” was strongly marked, and from which we learn that
Subsericum implied that such a texture was not entirely, but in part—likely its woof—of silk.
Although the warp only happened to be of silk, while the woof was of gold, still the tissue was often called “holosericum;” of the vestments which Beda says[101] S. Gregory sent over here to S. Austin, one is mentioned by a mediæval writer as “una casula oloserica purpurei coloris aurea textura”—a chasuble all silk, of a purple colour, woven with gold.[102] Examples of “holosericum” and “subsericum” abound in this collection.
[101] Hist. Ecc. lib. i. c. 29.
[102] Bedæ Hist., ed. Smith, p. 691.
Examitum, xamitum, or, as it is called in our old English documents so often, samit, is a word made up of two Greek ones, εξ, “six,” and μίτοι, “threads,” the number of the strings in the warp of the texture. That stuffs woven so thick must have been of the best, is evident. Hence, to say of any silken tissue that it was “examitum,” or “samit,” meant that it was six-threaded, in consequence costly and splendid. At the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries, “examitum,” as the writer still names the silk, was much used for vestments in Evesham abbey, as we gather from the “Chronicon” of that house, published lately for the Master of the Rolls.[103] About the same period, among the best copes, chasubles, and vestments in St. Paul’s, London, many were made of “sametum;” so Master Radulph de Baldock chose to call it in his visitation of that church as its dean, A.D. 1295.[104] As we observed just now, these rich silks, which were in all colours, with a warp so stiff, became richer still from having a woof of golden thread, or, as we should now say, being shot with gold. But years before, “examitum” was shortened into “samet;” for among the nine gorgeous chasubles bequeathed to Durham cathedral by its bishop, Hugh Pudsey, A.D. 1195, there was the “prima de rubea samete nobiliter braudata cum laminis aureis et bizanciis et multis magnis perlis et lapidibus pretiosis.”[105] About a hundred years afterwards the employment of it, after its richest form, in our royal wardrobes, has been pointed out just now, [p. xxviii.], &c.
In that valuable inventory, lately published, of the rich vestments belonging to Exeter cathedral, A.D. 1277, of its numerous chasubles, dalmatics, tunicles, besides its seventy and more copes, the better part were made of this costly tissue here called “samitta;” for example: “casula, tunica, dalmatica de samitta—par (vestimentorum) de rubea samitta cum avibus duo capita habentibus;” “una capa samitta cum leonibus deauratis.”[106] In a later document, A.D. 1327, this precious silk is termed “samicta.”[107]
Our minstrels did not forget to array their knights and ladies in this gay attire. When Sir Lancelot of the Lake brought back Gawain to King Arthur:—
Launcelot and the queen were cledde
In robes of a rich wede,
Of samyte white, with silver shredde:
The other knights everichone,
In samyte green of heathen land,
And their kirtles, ride alone.[108]
[103] Pp. 282-88.
[104] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, new ed. pp. 316, &c.
[105] Wills and Inventories, part i. p. 3, published by the Surtees Society.
[106] Lives of the Bishops of Exeter, and a History of the Cathedral, by Oliver, pp. 297, 298.
[107] Ibid. 313.
[108] Ellis’s Metrical Romances, i. 360.
In his “Romaunt of the Rose,” Chaucer describes the dress of Mirthe thus:—
Full yong he was, and merry of thought
And in samette, with birdes wrought,
And with gold beaten full fetously,
His bodie was clad full richely.[109]
Many of the beautifully figured damasks in this collection are what anciently were known as “samits;” and if they really be not “six-thread,” according to the Greek etymology of their name, it is because, that at a very early period the stuffs so called ceased to be woven of such a thickness.
Those strong silks of the present day with the thick thread called “organzine” for the woof, and a slightly thinner thread known by the technical name of “tram” for the warp, may be taken to represent the ancient “examits.”
Just as remarkable for the lightness of its texture, as happened to be “samit” on account of the thick substance of its web, yet quite as much sought after, was another kind of thin glossy silken stuff “wrought in the orient” by Paynim hands, and here called first by its Persian name which came with it, ciclatoun, that is, bright and shining; but afterwards sicklatoun, siglaton, cyclas. Often a woof of golden thread lent it more glitter still; and it was used equally for ecclesiastical vestments as for secular articles of stately dress. In the “Inventory of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London,” A.D. 1295, there was a cope made of cloth of gold, called “ciclatoun:”—“capa de panno aureo qui vocatur ciclatoun.”[110]
Among the booty carried off by the English when they sacked the camp of Saladin, in the Holy Land,
King Richard took the pavillouns
Of sendal, and of cyclatoun.
They were shape of castels;
Of gold and silver the pencels.[111]
In his “Rime of Sire Thopas,” Chaucer says of the doughty swain,
Of Brugges were his hosen broun
His robe was of ciclatoun.[112]
Though so light and thin, this cloak of “ciclatoun” was often embroidered in silk, and had sewn on it golden ornaments; for we read of a young maid who sat,
In a robe ryght ryall bowne
Of a red syclatowne
Be hur fader syde;
A coronell on hur hedd set,
Hur clothys with bestes and byrdes wer bete
All abowte for pryde.[113]
[109] Poems, ed. Nicolas, t. iv. p. 26.
[110] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, new ed. p. 318.
[111] Ellis’s Metrical Romances, t. ii. p. 253.
[112] Poems, ed. Nicolas, t. iii. p. 83.
[113] Ancient English Met. Rom., ed. Ritson, t. iii. pp. 8, 9.
When in the field, over their armour, whether of mail or plate, knights wore a long sleeveless gown slit up almost to the waist on both sides: sometimes of “samit,” often of “cendal,” oftener still of “ciclatourn,” because of its flowing showy texture was this garment made, and from a new and contracted way of calling it, the name of the gown, like the shortened one for its stuff, became known as “cyclas,” nothing akin to the κυκλας—the full round article of dress worn by the women of Greece and Rome. When, A.D. 1306, before setting out to Scotland, Edward I. girded his son, the prince of Wales, with so much pomp, a knight, in Westminster Abbey; to the three hundred sons of the nobility whom the heir to the throne was afterward to dub knights in the same church, the king made a most splendid gift of attire fitting for the ceremony, and among other textiles sent them were these “clycases” wove of gold:—“Purpura, bissus, syndones, cyclades auro textæ,” &c. as we learn from Matthew Westminster, “Flores Historiarum,” p. 454. How very light and thin must have been all such garments, we gather from the quiet wit of John of Salisbury while jeering the man who affected to perspire in the depth of winter, though clad in nothing but his fine “cyclas:”—“dum omnia gelu constricta rigent, tenui sudat in cylade.”[114]
Not so costly, and even somewhat thinner in texture, was a silken stuff known as cendal, cendallus, sandal, sandalin, cendatus, syndon, syndonus, as the way of writing the word altered as time went on. When Sir Guy of Warwick was knighted,
And with him twenty good gomes
Knightes’ and barons’ sons,
Of cloth of Tars and rich cendale
Was the dobbing in each deal.[115]
[114] Polycraticus, lib. VIII. c. xii.
[115] Ellis’s Met. Rom. i. 15.
The Roll of Caerlaverock tells us that among the grand array which met and joined Edward I. at Carlisle, A.D. 1300, on his road to invade Scotland, there was to be seen many a rich caparison embroidered upon cendal and samit:—
La ot meint riche guarnement
Brodé sur sendaus e samis.[116]
And Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, leading the first squadron, hoisted his banner made of yellow cendal blazoned with a lion rampant purpre.[117]
Baner out de un cendal safrin,
O un lioun rampant purprin.
Most, if not all the other flags were made of the same cendal silk.
[116] Roll of Caerlaverock, ed. Wright, p. 1.
[117] Ibid. p. 2.
When the stalworth knight of Southampton wished to keep himself unknown at a tournament, we thus read of him—
Sir Bevis disguised all his weed
Of black cendal and of rede,
Flourished with roses of silver bright, &c.[118]
Of the ten beautiful silken albs which Hugh Pudsey left to Durham, two were made of samit, other two of cendal, or as the bishop calls it, sandal: “Quæ dicuntur sandales.”[119] Exeter cathedral had a red cope with a green lining of sandal: “Capa rubea cum linura viridi sandalis;”[120] and a cape of sandaline: “Una capa de sandalin.”[121] Chasubles, too, were, it is likely, for poorer churches, made of cendal or sandel; Piers Ploughman speaks thus to the high dames of his day—
And ye lovely ladies
With youre long fyngres,
That ye have silk and sandal
To sowe, whan tyme is.
Chesibles for chapeleyns,
Chirches to honoure, &c.[122]
A stronger kind of cendal was wrought and called, in the Latin inventories of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, cendatus afforciatus, and of such there was a cope at St. Paul’s;[123] while another cope of cloth of gold was lined with it,[124] as also a chasuble of red samit given by Bishop Henry of Sandwich.
[118] Ellis’s Met. Rom. ii. 156.
[119] Wills and Inventories, p. 3.
[120] Oliver, p. 299.
[121] Ib. p. 315.
[122] The Vision, Passus Sextus, t. i. p. 117, ed. Wright.
[123] P. 317.
[124] P. 318.
Syndonus or Sindonis, as it would seem, was a bettermost sort of cendal. St. Paul’s had a chasuble as well as a cope of this fabric: “Casula de sindone purpurea, linita cendata viridi;[125] “capa de syndono Hispanico.” [126]
[125] P. 323.
[126] Transcriber’s note: Footnote, originally number 9 on page xli, not in original text.
Taffeta, it is likely, if not a thinner, was a less costly silken stuff than cendal; which word, to this day, is used in the Spanish language, and is defined to be a thin transparent textile of silk or linen: “Tela de seda ó lino muy delgada y trasparente.”
As the Knights’ flags:
Ther gonfanens and ther penselles
Wer well wrought off grene sendels;
as their long cyclases which they wore over their armour were of cendal, so too were of cendal, all blazoned with their armorial bearings, the housing of the steeds they strode. Of cendal, also, was the lining of the church’s vestments, and the peaceful citizen’s daily garments. Of his “Doctour of Phisike,” Chaucer tells us:—
In sanguin and in perse he clad was alle
Lined with taffata, and with sendalle.[127]
For the weaving of cendal, among the Europeans, Sicily was once celebrated, and a good example from others in this collection, is [No. 8255], p. 163.
[127] Prologue, Poems, ed. Nicolas, ii. 14.
Sarcenet, during the fifteenth century took by degrees the place of cendal, at least here in England.
By some improvement in their weaving of cendal, the Saracens, it is likely in the south of Spain, earned for this light web as they made it, or sold it, a good name in our markets, and it became much sought for here. Among other places, York Cathedral had several sets of curtains for its high altar, “de sarcynet.”[128] At first we distinguished this stuff by calling it, from its makers, “saracenicum.” But while Anglicising, we shortened that appellation into the diminutive “sarcenet;” and this word we keep to the present day, for the thin silk which of old was known among us as “cendal.”
[128] Fabric Rolls, &c. p. 227.
Satin, though far from being so common as other silken textures, was not unknown to England, in the middle ages; and of it thus speaks Chaucer, in his “Man of Lawes Tale:”
In Surrie whilom dwelt a compagnie
Of chapmen rich, and therto sad and trewe,
That wide were senten hir spicerie,
Clothes of gold, and satins riche of hewe.[129]
[129] Poems, ii. 137.
But as Syria herself never grew the more precious kinds of spices, so we do not believe that she was the first to hit upon the happy mechanical expedient of getting up a silken texture so as to take, by the united action at the same moment of strong heat and heavy pressure upon its face, that lustrous metallic shine which we have in satin. [No. 702], p. 8, is a good example of late Chinese manufacture, a process which this country is only now beginning to understand and successfully employ.
When satin first appeared in trade, it was all about the shores of the Mediterranean called “aceytuni.” This term slipped through early Italian lips into “zetani;” coming westward this, in its turn, dropped its “i,” and smoothed itself into “satin,” a word for this silk among us English as well as our neighbours in France, while in Italy it now goes by the name of “raso,” and the Spaniards keep up its first designation in their dictionary.
In the earlier inventories of church vestments, no mention can be found of satin; and it is only among the various rich bequests (ed. Oliver) made to his cathedral at Exeter by Bishop Grandison, between A.D. 1327-69 that this fine silk is spoken of; though later, and especially in the royal wardrobe accompts (ed. Nicolas), it is perpetually specified. Hence we may fairly assume that till the beginning of the fourteenth century satin was unknown in England; afterwards it met much favour. Flags were made of it. On board the stately ship in which Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, in the reign of Henry VI., sailed from England to France, there were flying “three penons of satten,” besides “sixteen standards of worsted entailed with a bear and a chain,” and a great streamer of forty yards in length and eight yards in breadth, with a great bear and griffin holding a ragged staff poudred full of ragged staffs.[130] Like other silken textiles, satin seems to have been, in some few instances, interwoven with flat gold thread, so as to make it a tissue: for example, Lincoln had of the gift of one of its bishops, eighteen copes of red tinsel sattin with orphreys of gold.[131]
Though not often, yet sometimes do we read of a silken stuff called, cadas, carda, carduus, and used for inferior purposes. The outside silk on the cocoon is of a poor quality compared with the inner filaments, from which it is kept quite apart in reeling, and set aside for other uses; this is cadas which the Promptorium Parvulorum defines, however, as “Bombicinium,” or silk. St. Paul’s, A.D. 1295, had “pannus rubeus diasperatus de Laret lineatus de carda Inda;”[132] and Exeter possessed another cloth for the purpose: “Cum carduis viridibus.”[133] More frequently, instead of being spun it served as wadding in dress; on the barons at the siege of Caerlaverock, might be seen many a rich gambeson garnished with silk, cadas, and cotton:—
Meint riche gamboison guarni
De soi, de cadas e coton.[134]
One of the Lenten veils at St. Paul’s, in the chapel of St. Faith, was of blue and yellow carde: “velum quadragesimale de carde croceo et indico.”[135] The quantity of card purchased for the royal wardrobe, in the twenty-eighth year of Edward I.’s reign, A.D. 1299, is set forth in the Liber Quotidianus, &c.[136]
Chasubles made in the thirteenth century, and belonging to Hereford Cathedral, were lined with carda: “Unam casulam de rubeo sindone linita de carda crocea—tertiam casulam de serico de India linita de carda viridi,” &c.[137]
[130] Baronage of England, Dugdale, i. 246.
[131] Mon. Anglic. viii. 1282.
[132] P. 335.
[133] Ed. Oliver, p. 317.
[134] Roll. p. 30.
[135] St. Paul’s ed. Dugdale, p. 336.
[136] P. 354.
[137] Roll of the Household Expenses of Swinford, Bishop of Hereford, t. ii. p. xxxvi. ed. Web. for the Camden Society.
Camoca, camoka, camak, camora (a misspelling), as the name is differently written, was a textile of which in England we hear nothing before the latter end of the fourteenth century. No sooner did it make its appearance than this camoca rose into great repute; the Church used it for her liturgical vestments, and royalty employed it for dress on grand occasions as well as in adorning palaces, especially in draping beds of state. In the year 1385, besides some smaller articles, the royal chapel in Windsor Castle had a whole set of vestments and other ornaments for the altar, of white camoca: “Unum vestimentum album de camoca,” &c.... “Album de camoca, cum casula.”[138]... “Duo quissini rubei de camoca.”[139] To his cathedral of Durham, the learned Richard Bury left a beautifully embroidered whole set of vestments, A.D. 1345: “Unum vestimentum de alma camica (sic) subtiliter brudata,” &c.[140]
Our princes must have arrayed themselves, on grand occasions, in camoca; for thus Herod, in one of the Coventry Misteries—the Adoration of the Magi—is made to boast of himself: “In kyrtyl of cammaka kynge am I cladde.”[141] But it was in draping its state-beds that our ancient royalty showed its affection for camoca. To his confessor, Edward the Black Prince bequeaths “a large bed of red camora (sic) with our arms embroidered at each corner,”[142] and the prince’s mother leaves to another son of hers, John Holland, “a bed of red camak.”[143] Our nobles, too, had the same likings, for Edward Lord Despencer, A.D. 1375, wills to his wife, “my great bed of blue camaka, with griffins, also another bed of camaka, striped with white and black.”[144] What may have been the real texture of this stuff, thought so magnificent, we do not positively know, but hazarding a guess, we think it to have been woven of fine camel’s hair and silk, and of Asiatic workmanship.
From this mixed web pass we now to another, one even more precious, that is the Cloth of Tars, which we presume to have, in a manner, been the forerunner of the now so celebrated cashmere, and along with silk made of the downy wool of a family of goats reared in several parts of Asia, but especially in Tibet, as we shall try to show a little further on.
[138] Mon. Anglic. ed. Dugdale, new edition, p. viii. 1363, a.
[139] Ib. p. 1366, a.
[140] Wills and Inventories, t. i. p. 25, published by the Surtees Society.
[141] Ed. Halliwell, p. 163.
[142] Nicolas’s Testamenta Vetusta, t. i. p. 12.
[143] Ib. p. 14.
[144] Ib. p. 99.
Velvet is a silken textile, the history of which has still to be written. Of the country whence it first came, or the people who were the earliest to hit upon the happy way of weaving it, we know nothing. The oldest piece we remember to have ever seen was in the beautiful crimson cope embroidered by English hands in the fourteenth century, now kept at the college of Mount St. Mary, Chesterfield, and exhibited here in the ever memorable year ’62.
Our belief is, that to central Asia—perhaps China,—we are indebted for velvet as well as satin, and we think the earliest places in Europe to weave it was, first the south of Spain, and then Lucca.
In the earlier of those oldest inventories we have of church vestments, that of Exeter Cathedral, A.D. 1277, velvet is not spoken of; but in St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1295, there is some notice of velvet,[145] along with its kindred web, “fustian,” for chasubles.[146] At Exeter, in the year 1327, velvet—and it was crimson—is for the first time there mentioned, but as in two pieces not made up, of which some yards had been then sold for vestment-making.[147] From the middle of the fourteenth century, velvet—mostly crimson—is of common occurrence.
The name itself of velvet, “velluto,” seems to point out Italy as the market through which we got it from the East, for the word in Italian indicates something which is hairy or shaggy, like an animal’s skin.
Fustian was known at the end of the thirteenth century. St. Paul’s Cathedral had: “Una casula alba de fustian.”[148] But in an English sermon preached at the beginning of this thirteenth century, great blame is found with the priest who had his chasuble made of middling fustian: “þe meshakele of medeme fustian.”[149] As then wove, fustian, about which we have to say more, had a short nap on it, and one of the domestic uses to which, during the middle ages, it had been put, was for bed clothes, as thick undersheets. Lady Bergavenny bequeaths A.D. 1434, “A bed of gold of swans, two pair sheets of Raynes (fine linen, made at Rheims), a pair of fustians, six pair of other sheets, &c.”[150] That this stuff may have hinted to the Italians the way of weaving silk in the same manner, and so of producing velvet, is not unlikely. Had the Egyptian Arabs been the first to push forward their own discovery of working cotton into fustian, and changing cotton for silk, and so brought forth velvet, it is probable some one would have told us; as it is, we yield the merit to Asia—may be China. Other nations took up this manufacture, and the weaving of velvet was wonderfully improved. It became diapered, and upon a ground of silk or of gold, the pattern came out in a bold manner, with a raised pile; and, at last, that difficult and most beautiful of all manners of diapering, or making the pattern to show itself in a double pile, one pile higher than the other and of the same tint, now, as formerly, known as velvet upon velvet, was brought to its highest perfection: and velvets in this fine style were wrought in greatest excellence all over Italy and in Spain and Flanders. Our old inventories often specify these differences in the making of the web. York cathedral had “four copes of crimson velvet plaine, with orphreys of clothe of goulde, for standers;”[151] and besides, “a greene cushion of raised velvet,”[152] possessed “a cope of purshed velvet (redd)”[153] “purshed” meaning the velvet raised in a net-work pattern.
[145] P. 318.
[146] P. 323.
[147] Ed. Oliver, p. 317.
[148] Ed. Dugdale, p. 323.
[149] Reliquiæ Antiquæ, i. 129.
[150] Test. Vet. i. 227.
[151] Fabric Rolls, p. 309.
[152] Ib. p. 311.
[153] Ib. p. 310.
Diaper was a silken fabric, held everywhere in high estimation during many hundred years, both abroad and here in England. This we know from documents beginning with the eleventh century. What was its distinctive characteristic, and whence it drew its name, we have not been hitherto told, with anything like certainty. Several eminent men have discussed these points, but while hazarding his own conjecture, each of these writers has differed from the others. Till a better may be found, we submit our own solution.
The silk weavers of Asia had, of old, found out the way so to gear their looms, and dress their silk, or their threads of gold, that with a warp and woof, both precisely of the same tone of colour they could give to the web an elegant design, each part of which being managed in the weaving, as either to hide or to catch the light and shine, looked to be separated from or stand well up above the seeming dusky ground below it: at times the design was dulled, and the ground made glossy. To indicate such a one-coloured, yet patterned silk, the Byzantine Greeks of the early middle ages bethought themselves of the term διασπρον, diaspron, a word of their own coinage, and drawn from the old Greek verb, διασπαω, I separate, but meant by them to signify “what distinguishes or separates itself from things about it,” as every pattern must do on a one-coloured silk. Along with this textile, the Latins took the name for it from the Greeks, and called it “diasper,” which we English have moulded into “diaper.” In the year 1066, the Empress Agnes gave to Monte Cassino a diaper-chasuble of cloth of gold, “optulit planetam diasperam totam undique auro contextam.”[154]
How a golden web may be so wrought is exemplified, amid several other specimens in this collection, by the one under [No. 1270], p. 38, done most likely by an English hand. At York Minster, in the year 1862, was opened a tomb, very likely that of some archbishop; and there was found, along with other textiles in silk, a few shreds of what had been a chasuble made of cloth of gold diapered all over with little crosses, as we ourselves beheld. It would seem, indeed, that cloth of gold was at most times diapered with a pattern, at least in Chaucer’s days, since he thus points to it on the housing of his king’s horse:—
— — trapped in stele,
Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele.[155]
[154] Chron. S. Monast. Cassin. Lib. iii. cap. 73, p. 450, ed. Muratori.
[155] Knight’s Tale, l. 2159-60.
Our oldest Church inventories make frequent mention of such diapered silks for vestments. In 1277, Exeter Cathedral had: “una (capa) de alba diapra cum noviluniis,”[156]—a cope of white diaper with half moons. It was the gift of Bishop Bartholomew, A.D. 1161. Bishop Brewer, A.D. 1224, bestowed upon the Church a small pall of red diaper: “parva palla de rubea diapra;” along with a chasuble, dalmatic and tunicle of white diaper: “casula, &c. de alba diapra.”[157] Among its vast collection of liturgical garments, A.D. 1295, old St. Paul’s had a large number made of diaper, which was almost always white. Sometimes the pattern of the diapering is noticed; for instance, a chasuble of white diaper, with coupled parrots in places, among branches: “casula de albo diaspro cum citaciis combinatis per loca in ramusculis.”[158] Again: “tunica et dalmatica de albo diaspro cum citacis viridibus in ramunculis,”[159] where we see the white diaper having the parrots done in green. Probably the most remarkable and elaborate specimen of diaper-weaving on record, is the one that Edmund, Earl of Cornwall gave, made up in “a cope of a certain diaper of Antioch colour, covered with trees and diapered birds, of which the heads, breasts, and feet, as well as the flowers on the trees, are woven in gold thread: “Capa Domini Edmundi Comitis Cornubiæ de quodam diaspero Antioch coloris, tegulata cum arboribus et avibus diasperatis quarum capita, pectora et pedes, et flores in medio arborum sunt de aurifilo contextæ.[160]
[156] P. 297.
[157] P. 298.
[158] St. Paul’s, ed. Dugdale, p. 323.
[159] Ib. p. 322.
[160] Ib. p. 318.
By degrees the word “diaper” became widened in its meaning. Not only all sorts of textile, whether of silk, of linen, or of worsted, but the walls of a room were said to be diapered when the self-same ornament was repeated and sprinkled well over it. Thus, to soothe his daughter’s sorrows, the King of Hungary promises her a chair or carriage, that—
Shal be coverd wyth velvette reede
And clothes of fyne golde al about your heede,
With damaske whyte and azure blewe
Well dyaperd with lylles newe.[161]
Nay, the bow for arrows held by Sweet Looking is, in Chaucer’s “Romaunt of the Rose,” described as—
painted well, and thwitten
And over all diapred and written, &c.[162]
Even now, our fine table linen we call “diaper,” because it is figured with flowers and fruits. Sometimes, with us, silks diapered were called “sygury:” una capa de sateyn sygury, cum ymagine B. M. V. in capucio.[163]
[161] Squire of Low Degree, ed. Ritson.
[162] “Romaunt of the Rose,” l. 900.
[163] Fabric Rolls of York Cathedral, p. 230.
In their etymology of diaper, modern writers try to draw the word from Yprès, or d’Ypriès, because that town in Belgium was once celebrated, not for silken stuffs, but for linen. Between the city and the name of “diaper” a kinship even of the very furthest sort cannot be fairly set up. From the citations out of the Chronicle of Monte Cassino we learn, that at the beginning of the eleventh century, the term in use there for a certain silken textile, brought thither from the east, was “diasperon.” We find, too, how that great monastery was in continual communication with Constantinople, whither she was in the habit of sending her monks to buy art-works of price, and bring back with them workmen, for the purpose of embellishing her Church and its altars. Getting from South Italy to England, and our own records, we discover this same Greece-born phrase, diaspron, diasper, given to precious silks used as vestments during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in London and Exeter. By the latter end of the fourteenth century—Chaucer’s time—the terms “diasper,” and “diasperatus,” among us, had slidden into “diaper,” “diaperatus,” Englished, “diapered.” Now, in this same fourteenth century, do we, for the first time, meet a mention of Yprès; and not alone, but along with Ghent, as famous for linen, if by that word we understand cloth; and even then our own Bath seems to have stood above those Belgian cities in their textiles. Among Chaucer’s pilgrims—
A good wif was ther of beside Bathe
Of cloth making she hadde swiche an haunt
She passed hem of Ipres and of Gaunt.[164]
[164] The Prologue, 447.
Neither in this, nor any other subsequent notice of Yprès weaving, is there anything which can be twisted into a warrant for thinking the distinctive mark to have been the first employment of pattern on its webs, or even its peculiar superiority in such a style of work. The important fact which we have just now verified that several ages had gone by between the period when, in Greece, in South Italy, and England, the common name for a certain kind of precious silk was “diaspron,” “diasper,” “diaper,” and the day when, for the first time, Yprès, not alone, but in company with other neighbouring cities, started up into notice for its linens, quite overthrows the etymology thought of now-a-days for the word “diaper,” and hastens us to the conclusion that this almost ante-mediæval term came to us from Greece, and not from Flanders.
Of the several oldest pieces in this collection, there are not a few which those good men who wrote out the valuable inventories of Exeter and St. Paul’s, London, would have jotted down as “diasper,” or “diaper.” The shreds of creamy, white silk, number [1239], p. 26, fully illustrate the meaning of this term, and will repay minute inspection.
More ancient still are other terms which we are about to notice, such as “chrysoclavus,” “stauracin,” “polystaurium,” “gammadion,” or “gammadiæ,” “de quadruplo,” “de octoplo,” and “de fundato.” First, textiles of silk and gold are, over and over again, enumerated as then commonly known under such names, in the so-called Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Liber Pontificalis seu de Gestis Romanorum Pontificum, the good edition of which, in three volumes, edited by Vignolius, ought to be in the hands of every student of early Christian art-work, and in particular of textiles and embroidery.
The Chrysoclavus or golden nail-head, was a remnant, which lingered a long time among the ornaments embroidered on ecclesiastical vestments, and robes for royal wear, of that once so coveted “latus clavus,” or broad nail-head-like purple round patch worn upon the outward garment of the old Roman dignitaries, as we learn from Horace, while laughing at the silly official whom he saw at Fondi—
Insani ridentes præmia scribæ,
Prætextam et latum clavum.[165]
[165] Serm. lib. i. satir. v.
In the Court of Byzantium this device of dignity was elevated, from being purple on white, into gold upon purple. Hence came it that all rich purple silks, woven or embroidered, with the “clavus” done in gold, became known from their pattern as gold nail-headed, or chrysoclavus, a half Greek half Latin word, employed as often as an adjective as a substantive; and silken textiles of Tyrian dye, sprinkled all over with large round spots, were once in great demand. Shortly after, A.D. 795, Pope Leo, among his several other gifts to the churches at Rome, bestowed a great number of altar frontals made of this purple and gold fabric, as we are told by Anastasius. To the altar of St. Paul’s the pontiff sent “vestem super altare albam chrysoclavam;”[166] but to another “vestem chrysoclavam ex blattin Byzanteo.”[167] Sometimes these “clavi” were made so large that upon their golden ground an event in the life of a saint, or the saint’s head, was embroidered, and then the whole piece was called “sigillata,” or sealed.
Stauracin, or “stauracinus,” taking its name from σταυρος, the Greek for “cross,” was a silken stuff figured with small plain crosses, and therefore from their number sometimes further distinguished by the word signifying that meaning in Greek,
Polystauron. Of such a textile St. Leo gave presents to churches, as we learn from Anastasius, lib. Pont. ii. 265.
How much silken textiles figured with the cross were in request for church adornment we learn from Fortunatus, who, about the year 565, thus describes the hangings of an oratory in a church at Tours—
Pallia nam meruit, sunt quæ cruce textile pulchra,
Serica qua niveis sunt agnava blattea telis,
Et textis crucibus magnificatur opus.[168]
Very often the crosses woven on these fabrics were of the simplest shape; oftener were they designed after an elaborate type with a symbolic meaning about it that afforded an especial name to the stuffs upon which they were figured, the first of which that claims our notice is denominated
[166] Lib. Pon. ii. 257.
[167] Ibid. 258.
[168] Poematum, Liber II. iv.
Gammadion, or Gammadiæ, a word applied as often to the pattern upon silks as the figures wrought upon gold and silver for use in churches, we so repeatedly come upon in the “Liber Pontificalis.”
In the Greek alphabet the capital letter of gamma takes the shape of an exact right angle thus, Γ. Being so, many writers have beheld in it an emblem of our Lord as our corner-stone. Following this idea artists at a very early period struck out a way of forming the cross after several shapes by various combinations with it of this letter Γ. Four of these gammas put so
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fall into the shape of the so-called Greek cross; and in this form it was woven upon the textiles denominated “stauracinæ;” or patterned with a cross. Being one of the four same-shaped elements of the cross’s figure, the part was significant of the whole. Being, too, the emblem of our corner-stone—our Lord, the gamma, or Γ, was shown at one edge of the tunic on most of the apostles in ancient mosaics; wherein sometimes we find, in place of the gamma, our present capital Η for the aspirate, with which for their symbolic purpose the early Christians chose to utter, if not, write the sacred name. This Η is, however, only another combination of the four gammas in the cross. Whatsoever, therefore, whether of silver or of silk, was found to be marked in these or other ways of putting the gammas together, or with only a single one, such articles were called “gammadion,” or “gammadiæ;” but as often the so-formed cross was designated as “gammaed,” or “gammadia.” St. Leo gave to the Church of S. Susanna, at Rome, an altar-frontal, upon which there were four of such crosses made of purple silk speckled with gold spots; “vestem de blatthin habentem ... tabulas chrysoclavas iiii cum gemmis ornatas, atque gammadias in ipsa veste chrysoclavas iiii.”[169]
Ancient ingenuity for throwing its favourite gamma into other combinations, and thus bringing forth other pretty but graceful patterns to be wrought on all sorts of ecclesiastical appliances, did not stop here. In the “Liber Pontificalis” of Anastasius, we meet not unfrequently with such passages as these: “Cortinas miræ magnitudinis de palliis stauracin seu quadrapolis;”[170] “vela ... ex palliis quadrapolis seu stauracin;”[171] “vela de octapolo.”[172] The explanation of these two terms, “de quadrapolo,” “de octapolo,” has hitherto baffled all commentators of the text through their forgetfulness of comparing together the things themselves and the written description of them. In these texts there is evidently meant a strong contrast between a something amounting to four, and to eight, in or upon these textiles. It cannot be to say that one fabric was woven with four, the other with eight threads: had that been so meant, then the fact would have been announced by words constructed like “examitus,” p. xxxvii. As the contrast is not in the texture, it must then be searched for in the pattern of these two stuffs. Sure enough, there we find it, as “de quadrapolis” and “stauracin” were, as we see above, interchangeable terms; the first, like the second sort of textile, was figured with crosses.
Given at the end of Du Cange’s “Glossary” is an engraving of a work of Greek art, plate IX. Here St. John Chrysostom stands between St. Nicholas and St. Basil. All three are arrayed in their liturgical garments, which being figured with crosses, are of the textile called of old “stauracin;” but a marked difference in the way in which the crosses are put is discernible. As a metropolitan St. John wears the saccos upon which the crosses are arranged thus
St. Nicholas, and St. Basil have chasubles which, though worked all over with crosses, made, as on St. John’s saccos, with gammas, are surrounded with other gammas joined so as to edge in the crosses, thus
As four gammas only are necessary to form all the crosses upon St. John’s vestment, therein we behold the textile called by Anastasius, “Stauracin de quadruplo,” or the stuff figured with a cross of four (gammas); while as eight of these Greek letters are required for the pattern on the chasubles, we have in them an example of the other “stauracin de octaplo,” or “octapulo,” a fabric with a pattern composed of eight gammas. But of all the shapes fashioned out of the repetition of the one same element, the Greek letter Γ, by far the most ancient, universal, and mystic, is that curious one particularized by many as the
[169] Lib. Pontif. ii. 243.
[170] Ib. ii. 196.
[171] Ib. ii. 198.
[172] Ib. ii. 209.
Gammadion, or Filfot, a name by which, at one time in England, it was generally known. Several pieces in this collection exhibit on them some modification of it, as Nos. [1261], p. 34; [1325], p. 60; [7052], p. 127; [8279A], p. 174; [8305], p. 185; [8635], p. 242; [8652], p. 249. Its figure is made out of the usual four gammas, so that they should fall together thus 卍: of its high antiquity and symbolism, we speak further on, section VII.
Silks figured with a cross, some made with four, some with eight Greek gammas, remained in Eastern Church use all through the middle ages, as we may gather from several monuments of that period. Besides a good many other books, Gori’s fine one, “Thesaurus Veterum Diptychorum” affords us several instances.[173] The name also remained to such textiles as we know from the Greek canonist Balsamon, who, writing about the end of the twelfth century on episcopal garments, calls the tunic, στιχάριον διὰ γαμμάτων or (with a pattern) of gammas—gammadion. How to this day the cross made by four gammas is woven on Greek vestments, may be observed in the plates we have given in “Hierurgia.”[174] Two late specimens of “stauracin” are in this collection under Nos. [7039], p. 123; [7048], p. 126; and [8250A], p. 161.
[173] T. iii. p. 84.
[174] Pp. 445, 448, second edition.
Of silks patterned with the Greek cross or “stauracin,” there are several examples in this collection; and though not of the remotest period, are interesting; the one [No. 8234], p. 154, wrought in Sicily as it is probable by the Greeks brought as prisoners from the Morea, in the twelfth century, is not without some value. In the Chapter Library at Durham may be seen a valuable sample of Byzantine stauracin “colours purple and crimson; the only prominent ornament a cross—often repeated, even upon the small portion which remains.”[175] Those who have seen in St. Peter’s sacristy at Rome, that beautiful light-blue dalmatic said to have been worn by Charlemagne when he sang the Gospel at high mass, at the altar, vested as a deacon, the day he was crowned emperor in that church by Pope Leo III. will remember how plentifully it is sprinkled with crosses between its exquisite embroideries, so as to make the vestment a real “stauracin.” It has been well given by Sulpiz Boisserée in his “Kaiser Dalmatika in der St. Peterskirche;” but far better by Dr. Bock in his splendid work on the Coronation Robes of the German emperors.
Silks, from the pattern woven on them called de fundato, are frequently spoken of by Anastasius. From the texts themselves of that writer, and passages in other authors of his time, it would seem that the silks themselves were dyed of the richest purple, and figured with gold in the pattern of netting. As one of the meanings for the substantive “funda” is a fisherman’s net, rich textiles so figured in gold, were denominated from such a pattern “de fundato” or netted. To St. Peter’s Church at Rome the pontiff, Leo III. gave “cortinam majorem Alexandrinam holosericam habentem in medio adjunctum fundatum, et in circuitu ornatum de fundato;”[176] and for the Church of St. Paul’s, Leo provided “vela holoserica majora sigillata habentia periclysin et crucem tam de blattin seu de fundato.”[177] From Fortunatus we gather that those costly purple-dyed silks called “blatta,” were always interwoven with gold:—
Serica purpureis sternuntur vellera velis,
Inlita blatta toris, aurumque intermicat ostro.[178]
This net-pattern lingered long, and, no doubt, we find it, under a new name, “laqueatus”—meshed—as identified upon a cope made of baudekin, at St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1295: “Capa de baudekino cum pineis (fir-apples) in campis laqueatis.”[179] Modifications of this very old pattern may be seen in this catalogue (pp. [35], [36], [154]).
[175] Raine’s St. Cuthbert, p. 196.
[176] Lib. Pontif. ii. 282.
[177] Ibid. 240.
[178] De Vita S. Martini lib. ii.
[179] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 318.
The Latin term “de fundato,” for this net-pattern, so unusual, has for many been quite a puzzle. Here, too, art-works are our best help to properly understand the meaning of the word. The person of Constantine the Great, given by Gori,[180] as well as that of a much later personage, shown us by Du Cange, at the end of his “Glossarium,”[181] shows the front of the imperial tunic, which was purple, to have been figured in gold with a netting-pattern, marked with pearls. Gori, moreover, presents us with a bishop whose chasuble is of the same design.[182] Further still, Paciaudi, in his “De Cultu S. Johannis Baptistæ,”[183] furnishes a better illustration, if possible, by an engraving of a diptych first published by him. Here St. Jacobus, or James, is arrayed in chasuble and pall of netting-patterned silk; and of the same-figured stuff is much of the trimming or ornamentation on the robes of the B. V. Mary, but on those more especially worn by the archangels, St. Michael and Gabriel. In the diapered pattern on some of the cloth of gold found lately in the grave of some archbishop of York, buried there about the end of the thirteenth century, is the same netting discernible.
[180] T. iii. p. xx.
[181] T. viii. plate 5.
[182] Ib. p. 84.
[183] P. 389.
Striped or barred silks—stragulatæ—got their especial name for such a simple pattern, and at one time were in much request. Frequent mention is made of them in the Exeter Inventories, of which the one taken, A.D. 1277, specifies, “Due palle de baudekyno—una stragulata;”[184] and A.D. 1327, the same cathedral had, “Unum filatorium de serico bonum stragulatum cum serico diversi coloris,”[185] a veil or scarf for the sub-deacon, made of silk striped in different colours. The illuminations on the MS. among the Harley collection at the British Museum, of the deposition of Richard II. published by the Society of Antiquaries, afford us instances of this textile. The young nobleman to the right sitting on the ground at the archbishop’s sermon, is entirely, hood and all, arrayed in this striped silk,[186] and at the altar, where Northumberland is swearing on the Eucharist, the priest who is saying mass, wears a chasuble of the same stuff.[187] Old St. Paul’s had copes like it: “Capæ factæ de uno panno serico veteri pro parte albi coloris, pro parte viridi;”[188] besides which, it had offertory-veils of the same pattern, one of them with its stripes paly red and green:—“Unum offertorium stragulatum, de rubeo et viridi;” and two others with their stripes bendy-wise: “Duo offertoria bendata de opere Saraceno.”[189] York Cathedral also had two red palls paled with green and light blue: “Duæ pallæ rubiæ palyd cum viridi et blodio,”[190] so admirably edited for the Surtees Society, by Rev. Jas. Raine, jun. Under this kind of patterned silks must be put one the name for which has hitherto not been explained by our English antiquaries.
At the end of the twelfth century there was brought to England, from Greece, a sort of precious silk named there Imperial.
Ralph, dean of St. Paul’s cathedral, London, tells us, that William de Magna Villa, on coming home from his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, made presents to several churches, A.D. 1178, of cloths which at Constantinople were called imperial: “Pannos quos Constantinopolis civitas vocat Imperiales, &c.”[191] Relating the story of John’s apparition, A.D. 1226, Roger Wendover, and after him Matt. Paris, tells us that the King stood forth dressed in royal robes made of the stuff they call Imperial: “Astitit rex in vestibus regalibus de panno scilicet quem imperialem appellant.”[192] In the Inventory of St. Paul’s, London, drawn up A.D. 1295, four tunicles, vestments for subdeacons and lower ministers about the altar, are mentioned as made of this imperial. No colour is specified, except in the one instance of the silk being marbled; and the patterns are noticed as of red and green, with lions wove in gold.[193] It seems not to have been thought good enough for the more important vestments, such as chasubles and copes. Were it not spoken of thus by Wendover and Paris, as well as by a dean of St. Paul’s, and mentioned once as used in a few liturgical garments for that cathedral, we had never heard a word about such a textile anywhere in England. Our belief is that it got its name neither from its colour—supposed royal purple—nor its costliness, but through quite another reason: woven at a workshop kept up by the Byzantine emperors, just like the Gobelins is to-day in Paris by the French, and bearing about it some small, though noticeable mark, it took the designation of “Imperial.” That it was partly wrought with gold, we know; but that its tint was always some shade of the imperial purple—hence its appellation—is a purely gratuitous assumption. Moreover, as Saracenic princes in general had wrought in their own palaces, at the tiraz there, those silks wanted by themselves, their friends, and officers, and caused them to be marked with some adopted word or sentence; so, too, the rulers of Byzantium followed, it is likely the same usage, and put some royal device or word, or name in Greek upon theirs, and hence such textiles took the name of Imperial. In France, this textile was in use as late as the second half of the fifteenth century, but looked upon as old. Here, at York, as late as the early part of the sixteenth, one of its deans bestowed on that cathedral “two (blue) copes of clothe imperialle.” [194]
[184] Ed. Oliver, p. 298.
[185] Ib. p. 312.
[186] Plate v. p. 53.
[187] Plate xii. p. 141.
[188] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 318.
[189] Ib.
[190] York Fabric Rolls, p. 230.
[191] Hist. Anglic. Script. X. t. i. p. 602, ed. Twysden.
[192] Rog. de Wendover, Chronica, t. iv. p. 127, ed. Coxe.
[193] P. 322.
[194] Fabric Rolls, p. 310.
Baudekin
Was a costly stuff much employed and often spoken of in our literature during many years of the mediæval period.
Ciclatoun, as we have elsewhere remarked, was the usual term during centuries throughout Western Europe, by which those showy golden textiles were called. When, however, Bagdad, or Baldak, standing where once stood the Babylon of old, took and held for no short length of time the lead all over Asia in weaving, every kind of fine silks and in especial golden stuffs shot, as now, in different colours, cloths of gold so tinted became every where known more particularly among us English as “baldakin,” “baudekin,” or “baudkyn,” or silks from Baldak. At last the earlier term “ciclatoun” dropped quite out of use. With this before him the reader will hereafter more readily understand several otherwise puzzling passages in many of our old writers in poetry and prose, as well as in the inventories of royal furniture and church vestments.
Our kings and our nobility affected much this rich stuff for the garments worn by them on high occasions. When, A.D. 1247, girding in Westminster Abbey William de Valence his uterine brother, a knight, our Henry III. had on a robe of baudekin, or cloth-of-gold, likely shot with crimson silk: “Dominus Rex veste deaurata facta de preciosissimo Baldekino et coronula aurea, quæ vulgariter garlanda dicitur redimitus, sedens gloriose in solio regio, fratrem suum uterinum, baltheo militari gaudenter insignivit.”[195] In the year 1259 the master of Sherborn Hospital in the north, bequeathed to that house a cope made of cloth-of-gold, or “baudekin:”—“Capam de panno ad aurum scilicet Baudekin cum vestimento plenario de panno Yspaniæ ad aurum.”[196]
But these Bagdad or Baldak silks, with a weft of gold known among us as “baudekins” were often wove very large in size, and applied here in England to especial ritual purposes. As a thanks-offering after a safe return home from a journey, they were brought and given to the altar; at all the solemn burials of our kings and queens, and other great ones, each of the many mourners, when offertory time came, went to the illuminated hearse,—one is figured in the “Church of Our Fathers,”[197]—and strewed a baudekin of costly texture over the coffin. Artists or others who wish to know the ceremonial for that occasion, will find it set forth in the descriptions of many of our mediæval funerals. At the obsequies of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey:—“Twoe herauds came to the Duke of Buck. and to the Earles and conveyed them into the Revestrie where they did receive certen Palles which everie of them did bringe solemply betwene theire hands and comminge in order one before another as they were in degree unto the said herse, thay kissed theire said palles and delivered them unto the said heraudes which laide them uppon the kyngs corps, in this manner: the palle which was first offered by the Duke of Buck. was laid on length on the said corps, and the residewe were laid acrosse, as thick as they might lie.”[198] In the same church at the burial of Anne of Cleves, A.D. 1557, a like ceremonial of carrying cloth-of-gold palls to the hearse was followed.[199]
[195] Matt. Paris, p. 249.
[196] Wills, &c. of the Northern Counties of England, Surtees Society, p. 6.
[197] Tom. ii. p. 501.
[198] Lelandi Collectanea, t. iv. p. 308.
[199] Excerpta Historica, p. 312.
Among the many rich textiles belonging to St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1295, are mentioned: “Baudekynus purpureus cum columpnis et arcubus et hominibus equitantibus infra, de funere comitissæ Britanniæ. Item baudekynus purpureus cum columpnis et arcubus et Sampson fortis infra arcus, de dono Domini Henrici Regis. Duo baudekyni rubei cum sagittarijs infra rotas, de dono E. regis et reginæ venientium de Wallia, Unus Baudekynus rubei campi cum griffonibus, pro anima Alianoræ reginæ junioris,”[200] &c. At times these rich stuffs were cut up into chasubles: “Casula de baudekyno de opere Saracenico,”[201] as was the cloth-of-gold dress worn by one of our princesses at her betrothal: “Unam vestimentum rubeum de panno adaurato diversis avibus poudratum, in quo domina principessa fuit desponsata.”[202] The word “baudekin” itself became at last narrowed in its meaning. So warm, so mellow, so fast were all the tones of crimson which the dyers of Bagdad knew how to give their silks, that without a thread of gold in them, the mere glowing tints of those plain crimson silken webs from Bagdad won for themselves the name of baudekins. Furthermore, when they quite ceased to be partly woven in gold, and from their consequent lower price and cheapness got into use for cloths of estate over royal thrones, on common occasions, the shortened form of such a regal emblem, the canopy hung over the high altar of a church, acquired, and yet keeps its appellation, at least in Italy, of “baldachino.”
[200] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, pp. 328-9.
[201] Ibid. p. 331.
[202] Inventory of the Chapel, Windsor Castle, Mon. Ang. viii. 1363.
How very full in size, how costly in materials and embroidery, must have sometimes been the cloth of estate spread overhead and behind the throne of our kings, may be gathered from the “Privy Purse Expenses of Henry the Seventh,” wherein this item comes: “To Antony Corsse for a cloth of an estate conteyning 47½ yerds, £11 the yerd, £522 10s.”[203]
About the feudal right, still kept up in Rome, to a cloth of estate, among the continental nobility, we have spoken, [p. 107] of this catalogue, where a fragment of such a hanging is described.
The custom itself is thus noticed by Chaucer:—
Yet nere and nere forth in I gan me dress
Into an hall of noble apparaile,
With arras spred, and cloth of gold I gesse,
And other silke of easier availe:
Under the cloth of their estate sauns faile
The king and quene there sat as I beheld.[204]
[203] Excerpta Historica, p. 121.
[204] Poems, ed. Nicolas, t. vi. p. 134.
This same rich golden stuff asks for our notice under a third and even better known name, to be found all through our early literature as
Cloth of Pall.
The cloak (in Latin pallium, in Anglo-Saxon paell) of state for regal ceremonies and high occasions, worn alike by men as well as women, was always made of the most gorgeous stuff that could be found. From a very early period in the mediæval ages, golden webs shot in silk with one or other of the various colours—occasionally blue, oftener crimson—were sought out, as may be easily imagined, for the purpose, through so many years, and everywhere, that at last each sort of cloth of gold had given to it the name of “pall,” no matter the immediate purpose to which it might have to be applied, and after so many fashions. Vestments for church use and garments for knights and ladies were made of it. Old St. Paul’s had chasubles and copes of cloth of pall: “Casula de pal, capa chori de pal, &c.”[205]
In worldly use, if the king’s daughter was to have a
Mantell of ryche degre
Purple palle and armyne fre.[206]
So in the poem of Sir Isumbras—
The rich queen in hall was set;
Knights her served, at hand and feet
In rich robes of pall.[207]
[205] Hist. ed. Dugdale, p. 336.
[206] The Squire of Low Degree.
[207] Ellis’s Metrical Romances, t. iii. p. 167.
For state receptions, our kings used to send out an order that the houses should be “curtained” all along the streets which the procession would have to take through London, “incortinaretur.”[208] How this was done we learn from Chaucer in the “Knight’s Tale,”[209]
By ordinance, thurghout the cite large
Hanged with cloth of gold, and not with sarge;
as well as from the “Life of Alexander:”—
Al theo city was by-hong
Of riche baudekyns and pellis (palls) among.[210]
Hence, when Elizabeth, our Henry VII.’s queen, “proceeded from the Towre throwge the Citie of London (for her coronation) to Westminster, al the strets ther wich she shulde passe by, were clenly dressed and besene with clothes of Tappestreye and Arras. And some strets, as Cheepe, hangged with riche clothes of gold, velvetts, and silks, &c.[211] “As late as A.D. 1555, at Bow chyrche in London was hangyd with cloth of gold and with ryche hares (arras).”[212]
Those same feelings which quickened our doughty knights and high-born ladies to go and overspread the bier of each dead noble friend, with costly baudekins or cloths of gold, so the church whispered and she whispers us still to do, in due degree, the same to the coffin in which the poor man is being carried to the grave beneath a mantle of silk and velvet. The brother or the sister belonging to any of our old London gilds had over them, however lowly they might have been in life, one or other of those splendid hearse-cloths which we saw in this museum, among the loans, in the ever memorable year 1862.
This silken textile interwove with gold, first known as “ciclatoun,” on account of its glitter, then as “baudekin,” from the city where it was best made, came at last to be called by the name of “pall.” Whether employed on jubilant occasions, for a joyful betrothal, or a stately coronation, or for a sorrowing funeral, it mattered not, it got the common term of “cloth of pall,” which we yet keep up in that velvet covering for a coffin, a burial pall.
[208] Matt. Paris, p. 661.
[209] V. 2569-70.
[210] Warton’s Hist. of English Poetry, t. ii. p. 8.
[211] Leland’s Collectanea, t. iv. p. 220.
[212] Machyn’s Diary, p. 102.
Lettered Silks
are of no uncommon occurrence, and some examples may be seen in this collection.
A celebrated Mohammedan writer, Ebn-Khaldoun, who died about the middle of the fifteenth century, while speaking of that spot in an Arab palace, the “Tiraz,” so designated from the name itself of the rich silken stuffs therein woven, tells us that of the attributes of all Saracenic kings and sultans, and which became a particular usage for ruling dynasties, one was to have woven the name of the actual prince, or that special ensign chosen by his house, into the stuffs intended for their personal wear, whether wrought of silk, brocade, or even coarser kind of silk. While gearing his loom, the workman contrived that the letters of the title should come out either in threads of gold, or in silk of another colour from that of the ground. The royal apparel thus bore about it its own especial marks emblematic of the sultan’s wardrobe, and so became the distinguishing ensigne of the prince himself, as well as for those personages around him, who were allowed, by their official rank in his court, to wear them, and those again upon whom he had condescended to bestow such garments as especial tokens of the imperial favour, like the modern pelisse of honour. Before the period of their having embraced Islamism the Kings of Persia used to have woven upon the stuffs wrought for their personal use, or as gifts to others, their own especial effigies or likeness, or at times the peculiar ensign of their royalty. On becoming Mussulmans, the rulers of that kingdom changed the custom, and instead of portraiture substituted their names, to which they added words sounding to their ears as foreboding good, or certain formulas of praise and benediction.[213] Wherever the Moslem ruled, there did he set up the same practice; and thus, whether in Asia, in Egypt, or other parts of Africa, or in Moorish Spain, the silken garments for royalty and its favoured ones, showed woven in them the prince’s name, or at least his chosen badge. The silken garments wrought in Egypt for the far-famed Saladin, and worn by him as its Kalif, bore very conspicuously upon them the name of that conqueror.
In our old lists of church ornaments, frequent mention is found of vestments inscribed, like pieces here, with words in real or pretended Arabic; and when St. Paul’s inventory more than once speaks of silken stuffs, “de opere Saraceno,” we lean to the belief that, though not all, some at least of those textiles were so called from having Arabic characters woven on them. Such, too, were the letters on the red pall, figured with elephants and a bird, belonging to Exeter: “Palla rubea cum quibusdam literis et elephantis et quadam avi in superiori parte.” [214] Later, our trade with the South of Spain and the Moors there, led us to call such words on woven stuffs Moorish, as we find in old documents, thus Joane Lady Bergavenny bequeaths (A.D. 1434) a “hullyng (hangings for a hall) of black, red, and green, with morys letters, &c.”[215]
The weaving of letters in textiles is neither a Moorish, nor Saracenic invention; ages before, the ancient Parthians used to do so, as we learn from Pliny: “Parthi literas vestibus intexunt.” A curious illustration of silken stuffs so frequently bearing letters, borrowed in general from some real or supposed oriental alphabet, is the custom which many of the illuminators had of figuring very often on frontals and altar canopies, made of silk, meaningless words; and the artists of Italy up to the middle of the sixteenth century did the same on the hems of the garments worn by great personages, in their paintings. On the inscribed textiles here, the real or pretended Arabic sentence is written twice on the same line, once forwards, once backwards.
[213] Silvestre De Sacy, Chrestomathie Arabe, t. ii. p. 287.
[214] Oliver, p. 298.
[215] Test. Vet. i. p. 228.
The Eagle,
single and double-headed, may frequently be found in the patterns of old silks. In all ages certain birds of prey have been looked upon by heathens as ominous for good or evil. Of this our own country affords us a mournful example. Upon the standard which was carried at the head of the Danish masters of Northumbria was figured the raven, the bird of Odin. This banner had been woven and worked by the daughters of Regnar Lodbrok, in one noontide’s while; and those heathens believed that if victory was to follow, the raven would seem to stand erect, and as if about to soar before the warriors, but if a defeat was impending, the raven hung his head and drooped his wings; as we are told by Asser: “Pagani acceperunt illud vexillum quod Reafan nominant: dicunt enim quod tres sorores Hungari et Habbæ filiæ videlicet Lodebrochi illud vexillum texuerunt et totum paraverunt illud uno meridiano tempore: dicunt etiam quod, in omni bello ubi præcederet idem signum, si victoriam adepturi essent, appereret in medio signi quasi corvus vivens volitans: sin vero vincendi in futuro fuissent, penderet directe nihil movens.”[216] Another and a more important flag, that which Harold and his Anglo-Saxons fought under and lost at Hastings, is described by Malmesbury as having been embroidered in gold, with the figure of a man in the act of fighting, and studded with precious stones, all done in sumptuous art:
“Quod (vexillum) erat in hominis pugnantis figura auro et lapidibus arte sumptuosa intextum.”[217]
Still farther down in past ages, known for its daring and its lofty flight, the eagle was held in high repute; throughout all the East, where it became the emblem of lordly power and victory, often it is to be seen flying in triumph over the head of some Assyrian conqueror, as may be witnessed in Layard’s Work on Nineveh.[218] Homer calls it the bird of Jove. Upon the yoke in the war chariot of the Persian king Darius sat perched an eagle as if outstretching his wings wrought all in gold: “Auream aquilam pinnas extendenti similem.”[219] The sight of this bird in the air while a battle raged was, by the heathen looked upon as an omen boding victory to those on whose side it hovered. At the battle of Granicus those about Alexander saw or thought they saw fluttering just above his head, quite heedless of the din, an eagle, to which Aristander called the attention of the Macedonians as an unmistakable earnest of success: “Qui circa Alexandrum erant, vidisse se crediderunt, paululum super caput regis placide volantem aquilam non gemitu morientium territam Aristander ... militibus in pugnam intentis avem monstrabat, haud dubium victoriæ auspicium.”[220] The Romans bore it on their standards; the Byzantine emperors kept it as their own device, and following the ancient traditions of the east, and heedless of their law that forbids the making of images, the Saracens, especially when they ruled in Egypt, had the eagle figured on several things about them, sometimes single at others double-headed, which latter was the shape adopted by the emperors of Germany as their blazon; and in this form it is borne to this day by several reigning houses. No wonder then that eagles of both fashions are so often to be observed woven upon ancient and eastern textiles.
Very likely, as yet left to show itself upon the walls of the citadel at Cairo, and those curious old glass lamps hung up there and elsewhere in the mosques, the double-headed eagle with wings displayed, which we find on royal Saracenic silks, was borrowed by the Paynim from the Crusaders, as it would seem, and selected for its ensign by the government of Egypt in the thirteenth century, which will easily account for the presence of that heraldic bird upon so many specimens from Saracenic looms, to be found in this collection. The “tiraz,” in fact, was for silk like the royal manufactory of Dresden and Sèvres china, or Gobelin’s looms for tapestry, and as the courts of France for its mark or ensign fixed upon the two LLs interlaced, and the house of Saxony the two swords placed saltire wise, so at least for Saladin and Egypt, in the middle ages the double-headed eagle with its wings outstretched, was the especial badge or ensign. In the same manner the sacred “horm,” or tree of life, between the two rampant lions or cheetahs may be the mark of Persia.
As early as A.D. 1277 Exeter Cathedral reckoned among her vestments several such; for instance, a cope of baudekin figured with small two-headed eagles: “Capa baudekyn cum parvis aquilis, ij capita habentibus;”[221] and our Henry III.’s brother, Richard the king of Germany, gave to the same church a cope of black baudekin, with eagles in gold figured on it: “Una capa de baudek, nigra cum aquilis deauratis.”[222] Many other instances might be noticed all through England.
[216] Asserius, De Rebus Gestis Ælfredi, ed. Wise, p. 33.
[217] Will. Malmes. Gesta Regum Anglorum, t. ii. p. 415, ed. Duffus Hardy.
[218] Plates, 18, 20, 22.
[219] Quintus Curtius, Lib. III. cap. iii. p. 7.
[220] Ibid. Lib. IV. cap. xv. p. 72.
[221] Oliver, p. 299.
[222] Ibid.
As in architecture, sculpture, and painting, ancient and modern, so