Copies of some of the miniatures in the Vatican Cosmas are given by N. Kondakoff, Histoire de l'Art Byzantin, Paris, 1886, Vol. I. pp. 142 to 152.
St Mark's in Venice and the churches of Ravenna and Constantinople are full of examples of this design.
This Sasanian art was an inheritance from ancient Babylon and Assyria, and was the progenitor of what in later times has been called Arab art, though the quite inartistic Arabs appear to have derived it from the Persians whom they conquered and forcibly converted to the Moslem Faith.
The mere gold of even the finest Byzantine manuscripts is never as sumptuous or as highly burnished as that in manuscripts of the fourteenth century, owing to its being usually applied as a fluid pigment, or at least not over the best kind of highly raised ground or mordant, which is described below at p. [234].
In early times and indeed throughout the whole mediaeval period very few objects of any kind were placed upon the High Altar even in the most magnificently furnished churches. In addition to the chalice and paten, and the Textus, the only ornaments usually allowed were a small crucifix and two candlesticks. The modern system of crowding the mensa of the altar with many candles and flowers did not come in till after the Reformation.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Pax was usually a separate thing, of more convenient size and weight than the heavy, gold-covered Textus.