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:—