Cloth of Areste is another term for woven stuffs, to be found in our old English deeds and inventories. The first time we meet it is in an order given, 1244, by Henry the third for finding two cloths of Areste with which two copes were to be made for royal chapels. Again it comes a few years later at St. Paul’s, which cathedral A. D. 1295 had, besides a dalmatic and tunicle of this silk “white silk of Areste diapered,” as many as thirty and more hangings of the same texture.
From the description of these pieces we gather that this so-called cloth of Areste must have been both beautiful and rich, being for the most part cloth of gold figured elaborately; some with lions and double-headed eagles, others, for example, with the death and burial of our Lord.
We are not disposed to agree with the suggestion that this cloth was a kind of arras. Arras had not won for itself a reputation for its tapestry before the fourteenth century. Tapestry itself is too thick and heavy for use in vestments; yet this cloth of Areste was light enough for tunicles, and when worn out was sometimes condemned at St. Paul’s to be put aside for lining other ritual garments. Among the three meanings for the mediæval “Aresta” one is any kind of covering. It seems, therefore, probable that these cloths of Areste took their name not from the place where they had been woven, but from the use to which they were generally put; namely, for hangings about churches. Moreover, tapestry or Arras work, being thick and heavy, could never have been employed for such light use as that of apparels nor would it have been diapered like silk, yet we find “Areste” to have been so fashioned and so used.
Silks also were distinguished through their colours and shades of colours: and the men who drew up the mediæval inventories seem to have been gifted with a keen eye for varieties of shades and tints. For instance, a chasuble at St. Paul’s is set down, late in the thirteenth century, as made of samit dyed in a purple somewhat bordering on a blood-red tone. Tarsus colour is often mentioned: and it was, probably, some shade of purple. 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 we remember 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 moment of application, we may easily understand how the difference arose between the two tints of purple.
“Cloth of Tarsus” itself was of a rare and costly kind, of fine goats’ hair and silk. The tint was some shade of royal purple. Chaucer tells us that
The great 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, etc.
Other cities besides Tarsus gave their names to various shades of purple; according as they were dyed at Antioch, Alexandria, or Naples. Each place had a particular shade which distinguished it from the others. It is not now possible to ascertain what were the exact distinctions of tint. Sky-blue was a colour everywhere in church use for certain festivals throughout England. 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. Murrey, or a reddish brown, is also often specified.
Silks woven of two colours, so that one of them showed itself unmixed and quite distinct on one side, and the second appeared equally clear 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, in 1327, a silk cloth “of red colour inside and yellow outside.” At York, in 1543, there was “a vestment of changeable silke,” “besides one of changeable taffety for Good Friday.”
Marble silk had a weft of several colours so woven as to make the whole web look like marble, stained with a variety of tints. There were many such vestments in old St. Paul’s. During full three centuries this marble silk found great favour among us; for Henry Machyn, in his curious diary, tells us 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,” etc., to meet her the 6th of November, 1551.