[87] For the relation of Theophilus to his predecessor, Bishop Meinhart of Paderborn, and to the Greek influence still prevailing in Germany, see the Introduction by Albert Ilg to his edition of this treatise in the Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte, vol. vii.; Vienna, 1874.
[88] Much of this latter sort, however, was to be greedily absorbed in Germany at a later date.
[89] Are we to take this acquaintance with the Agia Sophia in a material as well as a symbolical sense? Does Theophilus in this passage claim to have visited Constantinople?
[90] Not long after this a German poet writes to this effect— ‘Gott hat erschaffen manchen Mann Der Glas aus Asche machen kann Und dass kan schöpfen wie er will.’
[91] This is, of course, the ‘marver,’ not yet of iron as in the thirteenth-century writer (cf. p. [76]).
[92] From the expression used, ‘quam fistulam,’ etc., it would seem that the identical hollow tube was used again and not replaced by a simple rod—the pontil; but perhaps this is merely a slip on the part of Theophilus.
[93] The literal statement is that ‘the painted gold figures are covered with the clear fusible glass of which we have already spoken’; over this again the coloured designs are painted—a curious and elaborate process. We must, however, remember that although Theophilus may have seen specimens of Byzantine enamelled glass, he can have had little opportunity of learning how they were made.
[94] There annuli probably included also bracelets or bangles of glass. We may perhaps compare them to those still worn by Arab women. Margaret, Countess of Flanders, had in 1252 a casket full of glass rings.
[95] Yet in France much of the old glass was sacrificed at the Revolution in order to extract the gold. See Appert, Les Vitraux Anciens, for the composition and colour of mediæval window-glass.
[96] Early in the eleventh century, a saintly German bishop, Bernard of Hildesheim, is said to have made for himself a chalice of glass, and a few years later a bishop of Auxerre founded three prebendal seats, one for a painter, one for a goldsmith, and a third for a glass-worker (vitrier—probably a maker of glass windows). We must not, then, be surprised at the acquaintance with the practical arts shown by the monk Rugerus (Theophilus).