It was in Germany, and especially in the intermediate tract that for a time existed as an independent kingdom—in Lotharingia, I mean—that the old traditions seem to have held their ground most firmly. To Germany from time to time during the Middle Ages came new waves of influence from the East, by various and sometimes very circuitous paths,—in Charlemagne’s time by way of Ravenna and Rome, more directly from Constantinople in the tenth century, when Otto the Great married his son to the grand-daughter of the Greek Emperor. About the same time we hear of Greek craftsmen at work in German monasteries, as at Reichenau on the lower Lake of Constance, where, by the way, a great slab of bluish-green glass, traditionally of Byzantine origin, is still preserved.[[78]]
GLASS CUP, CARVED IN HIGH RELIEF
GERMAN OR ORIENTAL. TWELFTH OR THIRTEENTH CENTURY
But it was probably by more remote paths, through Poland and other Slavonic lands to the east,[[79]] that the designs on the only specimens of mediæval glass still existing in Germany that show distinctly oriental motives[[80]]—if indeed the glasses are not themselves Oriental—found their way westward. I refer to the rare carved goblets, about which so much has been written in Germany. The glass of these little cylindrical cups—they vary in height from three to five inches—is of a yellowish-green or brownish tint, at times indeed nearly colourless; it contains many bubbles. These so-called Hedwig glasses are carved in high relief on the outside: as many as nine examples have been described by Von Czihak (Schlesische Gläser, p. 184 seq.), but of these only two can in any way be brought into connection with St. Hedwig.[[81]]
The carving upon these glasses is deeply cut, but excessively rude. They bear the mark of a large coarse wheel, applied for the most part in two directions more or less at right angles to one another, and little attempt has been made to round off the edges and angles. We see in the decoration—figures of lions, griffins or eagles, as well as formal leaf-like patterns—motives that are essentially Oriental; indeed we are taken back rather to the Persia of Sassanian times than to Constantinople. What is above all noticeable is the extreme degeneracy of these motives; on some examples, as on the Halberstadt glass, the design has become a meaningless pattern. This, as in the case of other similar breakings up of design,[[82]] would point to the copying and recopying by a semi-barbarous people of a subject the original significance of which had been lost. In any case, we may see in these little beakers the last examples of a dying art. Some of them may be traced back, on the ground of their mounting, to the fourteenth, perhaps to the thirteenth, century, but the glasses themselves may well be considerably older. The important point to remember is that during the later Middle Ages the carving of glass was quite unknown in Europe, and that the art of employing the lapidary’s wheel as a cutting instrument appears to have been lost. Indeed we do not meet with carved glass again in any form until the beginning of the seventeenth century, and then the rapid development of the art by the Lehmanns and the Schwanharts at Prague is acknowledged to have depended upon technical processes learned from Italian carvers of rock crystal.
I will now enumerate the most characteristic of these carved glasses, basing my description in part upon the careful account given by Von Czihak in his Schlesische Gläser.
1. In the Museum of Silesian Antiquities at Breslau. The design consists of a vase, surmounted by a crescent and star; on either side heraldic lions, each surmounted by a small three-cornered shield, beyond them a conventionalised tree; the whole most rudely cut. (Figured by Von Czihak.)
2. In the treasury of the Cathedral at Cracow. Lions and shields as above, and eagle ‘displayed.’ It is claimed for these two glasses that they were used by St. Hedwig.
3. In the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg. Two lions ‘passant’ in the same direction; small shields as above and a griffin ([Plate XVIII.]).