Juvenal speaks of a green Sunshade sent with some yellow amber to a friend to celebrate her birthday and the return of spring.
En cui tu viridem umbellam, cui succina mittas
Grandia, natalis quoties redit, aut madidum ver Incipit.
And with regard to this green Sunshade, apropos of the viridem, all the commentators enter into the field, and make a deafening noise to explain that the epithet had no reference to the colour of the Sunshade, but to the spring.
Let us, if you please, leave Rome, without entering into these idle dissertations.
It would be difficult for us to find in the Middle Ages numerous manifestations of the Sunshade in private life; it was evidently adopted in the ceremonies of the Christian Church and in the royal entrées; but it was especially the privilege of the great, and never appeared save on solemn days in the processions, as later on the dais, reserved for kings and ecclesiastical nobles.
At Venice the Doge had already his celebrated Sunshade in 1176. The Pope Alexander III. had accorded to the Venetian chiefs the right to carry the Sunshade in the processions. Under the reign of the Doge Giovanni Dandolo (1288) it was ordered that the pretty golden statuette of the Annunciation should be added, which is seen represented at the top of the Sunshade of the Venetian dogate.
One can get some idea of this marvellous Sunshade, all of gold brocade, and of a pompous and original shape, by looking at most of the prints of the time, and particularly at the celebrated engraving of the Procession of the Doge, as well as at the pictures of Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Tiepolo, and the greater number of the charming Venetian painters of the eighteenth century.
It seems evident that the Roman Gauls knew the use of the Parasol, but it would not be easy to demonstrate its existence logically in the martial and Gothic epochs. One can scarcely imagine these men of arms, these gentle pages, and these noble damsels, with their lofty head-gear and long dress, defended by a frail silken encas (in case). They feared not then assuredly either sun or rain; they dreamed of nought but batailloles (little battles), according to the language of that day; everything was done in honour of the ladies, after the laws of the good King René, and the ladies would certainly never have wished at the hour of the glorious tournaments to shelter themselves at the approaches of the lists, against a sun which sparkled on the breastplate of their brave knights with as much brightness as the hope which shone in their eyes.
