Silks were distinguished through their colours and shades of colour.
To the inventories of vestments and church-stuffs of all sorts must we go to gather the information which we want about the textiles in use in this country at any particular period during by-gone days. The men who had, in the thirteenth century, the drawing up of such lists, seem to have been gifted with a keen eye for the varieties of shade and tints in the colour of silks then before them. For instance, a chasuble at St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1295, is set down thus:—“De sameto purpureo aliquantulum sanguineo”—that is, made of samit (a thick silk) dyed in a purple somewhat bordering on a blood-red tone. Such language is unmistakable; not so, however, many other terms at the time in common use, and though well understood then, are now not so intelligible. We are told in the same inventory[283] several times of a “pannus Tarsicus,” a Tarsus cloth, and of a “pannus Tarsici coloris,” a Tarsus coloured cloth. What may have been the distinctive qualities of the stuffs woven at Tarsus, what the peculiar beauty in that tint to which that once so celebrated city had given its own name, we cannot say. We think, however, those Tarsus textiles were partly of silk, partly of fine goats’ hair, and for this reason Varro tells[284]—“Tondentur (capræ) quod magnis villis sunt, in magna parte Phrygiæ; unde Cilicia, et cætera ejus generis ferri solent. Sed, quod primum ea tonsura in Cilicia sit instituta, nomen id Cilicas adjecisse dicunt.” Goats are shorn in a great part of Phrygia, because there they have long shaggy hair. Cilicia (the Latin for hair cloths) and other things of the same sort, are usually brought from that country. For the reason that in Cilicia such a shearing of goats arose, they say that the name of Cilician was given to such stuffs woven of goats’ hair. As Tarsus is, so always was it, the head city in all that part of Asia Minor known of old as Phrygia. Hence then we think that—
[283] Pp. 322, 323.
[284] De Re Rustica, lii. cap. xi.
Cloth of Tarsus, of Tars, &c., was woven of fine goats’ hair and silk. But this web was in several colours, and always looked upon as very costly.
The Tarsus colour itself was, as we take it, some shade of purple differing from, and perhaps to some eyes more beautiful than, the Tyrian dye. The people of Tarsus no doubt got from their murex, a shell-fish of the class mollusca and purpurifera family to be found on their coast, their dyeing matter; and when it is borne in mind what changes are wrought in the animal itself by the food it eats, and what strong effects are made by slight variations in climate, even atmosphere, upon materials for colouring in the moments of application, we may easily understand how the difference arose between the two tints of purple.
We are strengthened in our conjecture that not only was the cloth of Tarsus of a rare and costly kind, but its tint some shade of royal purple, from the fact that while noticing the robes worn on a grand public occasion by a king, Chaucer thus sketches the prince:—
The gret Emetrius, the king of Inde,
Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele,
Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele,
Came riding like the god of armes Mars.
His cote armure was of a cloth of Tars,
Couched with perles, &c.[285]
[285] Knightes Tale, Poems, ed. Nicolas, ii. 64-5.
Sky-blue was a liturgical colour everywhere in use for certain festivals throughout England, as we have shown in another place.[286] In the early inventories the name for that tint is “Indicus,” “Indus,” reminding us of our present indigo. In later lists it is called “Blodius,” not sanguinary, but blue.
[286] Church of our Fathers, t. ii. p. 259.
Murrey, or a reddish brown, is often specified; and a good specimen of the tint is given us, No. [709], p. 9. Old St. Paul’s, London, had several pieces of baudekin of this colour: “baudekynus murretus cum griffonibus datus pro anima. Alphonsi filii regis E.”[287]
Going far down, and much below the middle ages, Purple, in all its tones, and tints, and shades, was spoken of and looked upon as allowable to be worn in garments only to worshipful, ennobled, or royal personages. Whether it glowed with the brightness it seemed to have stolen from the rose, or wore its darkest tone it could borrow from the violet, whether it put on any one of those hundred shades to be found between those two extremes, it mattered not; it was gazed at with an admiring, a respectful eye. Eagerly sought out, and bought at high price, were those textiles that showed this colour, and had been dyed at Tyre, Antioch, Tarsus, Alexandria, Byzantium, or Naples. All these places were at one time or another, in days of old, famous for their looms, no less than their ability in the dyeing, especially of purple, among the nations living on the shores of the Mediterranean; and each of them had in its own tone a shade which distinguished it from that of all the others. What the tint of purple was which established this difference we cannot at this distance of time, and with our means of knowing, justly say. Of this, however, we are perfectly aware, that silks of purple usually bore their specific name from those above-named cities, as we perceive while reading the old inventories of our churches and cathedrals. Moreover, our native writers let us know that, if not always from Greece, it was through that country that purple textiles were brought to England. Besides speaking of a conversation held about, beside other things, the produce of Greece in purple silks—“Græcorum purpuris, et pannis holosericis”—Gerald Barry gives us to understand that in his days not only were our churches sumptuously hung with costly palls and purple silks, but that these textiles were the work of Grecian looms—“rex (Willielmus Rufus) ecclesiam quandam (in nova foresta) intraret quam adeo pulchram et decentius ornatam auletis historicis, et pretiosis Græcorum palliis, pannis holosericis et purpureis undique vestitam,” &c.[288]
Silks woven of two colours, so that one of them showed itself unmixed and quite distinct on one side, and the second appeared equally clean on the other—a thing sometimes now looked upon as a wonder in modern weaving—might occasionally be met with here at the mediæval period: Exeter Cathedral had, A.D. 1327:—“Unus pannus sericus curtus rubei coloris interius et crocei coloris exterius.”[289]
[287] St. Paul’s, ed. Dugdale, p. 328, &c.
[288] Giraldus Cambrensis, De Instructione Principum, pp. 168-173.
[289] Oliver, p. 316.
Shot, or, as they were then called, changeable silks, were fashionable in England during the sixteenth century, for when the King’s (Edward VI.) Lord of Misrule rode forth with great pageantry, among other personages there came “afor xx. of ys consell on horsbake in gownes of chanabulle lynyd with blue taffata and capes of the sam, like sage (men); then cam my lord with a gowne of gold furyd,” &c.[290] At York Cathedral, A.D. 1543, there was “a vestment of changeable silke,”[291] “besides one of changeable taffety for Good Friday.” [292]
[290] Diary of Henry Machyn, ed. Nichols for the Camden Society, p. 13.
[291] Fabric Rolls, p. 301.
[292] Ibid. p. 311.
Marble silk had a weft of several colours so put together and woven as to make the whole web look like marble, stained with a variety of tints; hence it got its name. In the year 1295 St. Paul’s had “paruram de serico marmoreo”[293]—an apparel of marble silk; “tunica de quodam panno marmoreo spisso”[7]—a tunicle of a certain thick marble cloth; “tunica de diaspro marmoreo spisso”[294]—a tunicle of thick diaper marble; “casula marmorei coloris”[295]—a chasuble of marble colour. During full three centuries this marble silk found great favour among us since H. Machyn, in his very valuable and curious Diary tells his readers how “the old Qwyne of Schottes rod thrught London,” and how “then cam the Lord Tresorer with a C. gret horsse and ther cotes of marbull,”[9] &c., to meet her the 6th of November, A.D. 1551.[296]
[293] Ibid. p. 320.
[294] Ibid. p. 322.
[295] Ibid. p. 323.
[296] Pp. 11, 12.