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—