The chasubles of Chirinos (Caravaca) and of the Chapel of the Constable in Burgos cathedral are both considered to be of Spanish-Moorish workmanship. The former is woven of silk of various colours, but without admixture of gold thread, and bears an inscription in Arabic which Amador de los Ríos has interpreted as, “Glory to our Sultan Abul-Hachach.” The same authority deduces that the fabric dates from the fourteenth or the fifteenth century—that is, from the time of the Sultan Abul-Hachach (Yusuf the First) or of his immediate successors.

The chasuble preserved at Burgos is also woven of variegated silk without gold thread, and may originally have been a tiraz, since it bears, in African letters, the inscription, “Glory to our lord the Sultan.” The date is probably the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Fragments of similar material are in the collections of Señores Osma and Miquel y Badía.

II
FRAGMENT OF THE BURIAL MANTLE OF FERDINAND THE THIRD
(Royal Armoury, Madrid)

The object represented in Plate ii. is described in the Catalogue of the Royal Armoury at Madrid as A fragment of the royal mantle in which was buried the king and saint, Ferdinand the Third of Castile (a.d. 1217–1252). Gestoso, in the course of his researches into the history of old Seville, has found that in the year 1579 Philip the Second caused an examination to be made at that city of the remains, enshrined in her cathedral, of Saint Ferdinand. The body was found “with a ring with a blue stone on a finger of the right hand, and wearing sword and spurs.” In 1677 Charles the Second sent for the ring in question, and eleven years later a fresh examination was made, when the mummy of the saint was stated to be wrapped in “clothing of a stuff the nature of which cannot now be recognised, but which is chequered all over with the royal arms of Castile, and with lions.” A third examination was made in 1729, when the “holy body of Señor San Fernando” was reported to be “covered, the greater part, with a royal mantle, of a stuff which could not be recognised for its decay: only it was seen to be embroidered with castles and lions.”

Probably, therefore, this fragment was taken to Madrid at the same time as the ring—that is, in the year 1677. It has an irregular shape, and measures eighteen inches long by thirteen and a half in breadth. The material is a woven mixture of silk and gold thread, and the decoration consists of castles and lions in gold and red respectively, upon a ground of carmine and dirty white. Count Valencia de Don Juan points out that this strip belonged to the lower end of the mantle, since it includes a portion of the border, formed by a series of horizontal stripes, blue, yellow, red, and gold. The character of the whole fragment is decidedly Mohammedan, and indicates a Mudejar fabric, made at Seville in the thirteenth century.

I find that in the Book of Chess of Alfonso the Learned (an illuminated Spanish manuscript executed in the thirteenth century, and now preserved at the Escorial), Alfonso himself is represented (Plate [iii].) as wearing a mantle with this very pattern of lions and castles contained in squares. Therefore it seems extremely probable, either that this device was not uncommon on the robes of Spanish kings, or else that at some time the body of San Fernando was enveloped in a mantle belonging to, and which perhaps had been inherited by, his son.