FROM GOAR long abandoned or forgotten, although as late as 1688 Randle Holmes, Academy of Armory, refers to ‘the flap or fann to drive away flies from the chalice.’ Its sole reminiscence in the west is in the large flabella of peacocks’ feathers carried at solemn festivals in procession before the Pope. In the Greek Church, the fan is still delivered to the deacon at ordination as the symbol of his sacred office.
From the period of the final break up of the Roman Empire to that of the Crusades the general use of the fan was discontinued in Europe, and was probably only adopted by highly placed personages; during these early periods, however, it was still the religious fly-flap or flabellum, d’émouchoir, and Blondel infers from the circumstance, of Étienne Boileau not referring to it in his Livre des Mestiers (1200), that even at this time it no longer served any domestic purpose except in very rare instances.
The earliest English reference to the fan appears to be the following:—
‘In the thirtieth year of King Edward I., precept was given to Nicholas
Pycot, Chamberlain, of the Guildhall of London that he should cause to be sold all pledges for any debt whatsoever then in his custody.
‘In an inventory of pledges sold for arrears on the King’s Tallage, 31 Edward I., 1303. One fan (value not stated) taken from Henry Gyleberd of the ward of Basseshawe for 2s. 8d., which he owes of arrears of the fifteenth.’[74]
The oldest existing Christian fan, and the most famous of the few fans of which we have any record during the Middle Ages, is that which has become identified with Theodolinda, Queen of the Lombards, the saintly princess, who possessed a nail of the holy cross which was ultimately used as a setting to the Iron Crown of the kings of Lombardy. This fan is preserved as a sacred relic in the Cathedral of Monza near Milan. Superstition has invested it with magical powers. Pilgrimages are made to Monza by village maidens, often from a long distance, on a certain day of the year, as the act of touching it is believed to facilitate and promote their marriage projects. It is of the cockade shape, formed of vellum, of the beautiful purple hue we find in contemporary manuscripts; it is decorated with an alternating diaper of Romanesque ornament in gold and silver, and round its outer border on either side is the following inscription in Latin hexameters, which is given by Mr. W. Burges, Archæological Journal, vol. xiv., on the one side:
✠ ‘Ut sis conspectu praeclara et cara venusta,