The great work, no doubt, of the Byzantines in the domain of glass is to be found in the manufacture of the mosaics with which they lined the walls of their churches, and when we hear that glass was made at Thessalonica, and again that one of the gates of the capital was named after the adjacent glass-works, it is of this branch of the art that we must first think.[[66]] Byzantine artists travelled to Cordova on the one hand, and to Damascus on the other, to work in mosaic for Mohammedan masters; we find them, too, at Rome, at Ravenna, and at Aachen. No doubt these musivi took with them, at first at least, the materials with which they built up their pictures.
For the use of coloured glass in the windows of churches, we may probably find a similar origin. In Justinian’s great church glass was not used for mosaics only; there were windows filled with stained glass, some of which may even now be in place. In the seventh century we hear of Greek workmen summoned to France for such work, just as from Merovingian France, as Bede tells us, Benedict Biscop obtained, a little later, skilled craftsmen to make the glass for his new church at Monk Wearmouth.
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HANGING LAMPS OF SCULPTURED GLASS
BYZANTINE. FROM TREASURY OF ST. MARK’S