I do not apprehend your being disappointed with the ‘Dalmatica di San Leone,’ or your dissenting from my conclusion, that a master, a Michael Angelo I might almost say, then flourished at Byzantium.
It was in this Dalmatic—then semée all over with pearls and glittering in freshness—that Cola di Rienzi robed himself over his armour in the sacristy of St. Peter’s, and thence ascended to the Palace of the Popes, after the manner of the Cæsars, with sounding trumpets and his horsemen following him—his truncheon in his hand and his crown on his head—‘terribile e fantastico,’ as his biographer describes him—to wait upon the legate.[618]”
FOOTNOTES:
[617] In the ‘Manual of Dionysius,’ recently published by M. Didron (p. 71, &c.), these winged wheels are interpreted as signifying the order of angels commonly distinguished as Thrones. Their interpretation as the Covenants of the Law and Gospel, sanctioned by St. Gregory the Great in his Homilies, is certainly more sublime and instructive.
[618] Cited from the original life, printed in Muratori’s ‘Antiquit. Ital. Medii Ævi,’ tom. viii., by M. Sulpice Boisserée, in his essay, ‘Ueber die Kaiser-Dalmatica,’ &c.
Appendix V., to Page [320].
The Hon. and Rev. Ignatius Clifford has permitted me to make extracts from his “Memoranda of some remarkable Specimens of Ancient Church Embroidery.” First on his list is the Cope now in the possession of Colonel Butler Bowden, of Pleasington, near Blackburn, Lancashire. I give his account of the mutilated condition, from which he has made his beautifully drawn restoration. “Formerly,” he says, “portions of this cope, some made up into chasuble, stole, maniple, and some scraps detached, were at Mount St. Mary’s College, Spink Hill, near Chesterfield, Derbyshire.”
The well-known architect, the late Augustus Welby Pugin, having seen them (or at least the chasuble), wrote on the 20th April, 1849, to the Rector of the College, “I found it to be of English work of the time of Edward I., and have no hesitation in pronouncing it to be the most interesting and beautiful specimen of church embroidery I have ever seen.”
Other portions of the cope had been made up into an altar-frontal, and were in the possession of Henry Bowden, Esq., of Southgate House, Derbyshire, some four or five miles from the college.