Elephant from the tomb of Charlemagne. To face p. 290
Plate VIII
The fringe of the robe from the Tomb of Charlemagne. To face p. 291.
[Plate VII] shows one medallion of a piece of silk found on the body of Charlemagne when the grave was opened in the time of the present German Emperor. It is certainly not of Charlemagne’s time. But it seems a fairly safe guess to suppose that his well-known regard for his favourite beast Abulabaz, who died only four years before him, caused his son to have the body wrapped in one of the robes decorated with elephants which we know that he possessed; and that either in the year 1000, when Otho III opened the tomb, or in 1166, under Barbarossa, when Charlemagne was canonized, this piece of silk replaced the decayed robe originally buried there. We know of the two elephant-robes referred to from Anastasius[270], who gives an enormous list of the art works in gold and silver and silk and cloth of gold which were wrought for Leo III, Charlemagne’s contemporary. One item is “two robes of Syrian purple, with borders of cloth of gold wrought with elephants”. These robes Leo gave to Charlemagne.
We can all but give the exact date of this remarkable Byzantine beast. The inscription breaks off exactly where the date came. The Greek inscription worked in the stuff ([Plate VIII]) sets forth that it was made “under Michael the great chamberlain and controller of the privy purse of the emperor, when Peter was the manager of Zeuxippos”, i. e. the Byzantine court factory in Negropont. Then comes the tantalizing Indictionos (? B), and the date is lost.
Dreger, in his Europäische Weberei und Stickerei,[271] gives some early examples of elephants in art. His Figure 37b shows an archaic silver relief of an elephant with a castle containing armed men. His Figure 37a shows a silk stuff of the seventh or eighth century, of Asiatic manufacture, with circular medallions containing elephants, griffins and winged horses, hippogryffs; and he remarks that “the elephant is one of the most holy beasts of Buddhism”. This silk stuff is shown in our [Plate IX] from a photograph of the original. A comparison of these elephants with the elephant shown in [Plate VIII] makes it fairly clear that the Charlemagne stuff is later than the other, while in all of the details of the beast itself, ears, three toes, eye, trunk, they are exactly the same. Each has a tree behind the elephant; but while the Charlemagne tree is a piece of stiff conventional work, the other is a natural tree with leaves and fruit, much resembling the vegetable ornamentation of some early Egyptian stuffs. Another feature pointing in the same direction is the thirty-two conventional patterns on the circular enclosing border. These in the earlier piece are twenty-eight plain disks.
There is an example of sculptured elephants something like this one, but much more like the real beast, especially about the feet. The elephants are the legs of the ivory chair[272] of Urso, at Canossa; he was Bishop of Bari and Canossa 1078-89.
Something should be said about the language spoken by the people of France and Germany in the times with which we are dealing, the reference to a rustic tongue being not infrequent.
In the Council convened by Charlemagne at Tours in the year 813, equally representing Eastern France and Western France, Austrasia and Neustria, Germany and the Galliae, the bishops in the Transalpine Empire were enjoined to be diligent in preaching, and to take care that their discourses should be rendered either into Romana Rustica or into Theotisc or Deutsch, that all might understand. It may be of interest to give the earliest specimens we have of these native languages. Philologically, these examples are of the very highest importance.