Claudian describes a Christian lady, Proba, in the fourth century, preparing the consular robes for her two sons on their being raised to the consulate:[205]—
“The joyful mother plies her knowing hands,
And works on all the trabea golden bands;
Draws the thin strips to all the length of gold,
To make the metal meaner threads enfold.”
Pure gold was woven in the dark ages in England. St. Cuthbert’s maniple at Durham is of pure gold thread. John Garland says the ladies wove golden cingulæ in the thirteenth century; and Henry I., according to Hoveden, was clothed in a robe of state of woven gold and gems of almost “divine splendour.”[206]
A wrapping of beautiful gold brocade covered the coffin of Henry III. when his tomb was opened in 1871.[207]
The cope of St. Andrew at Aix, in Switzerland, is embroidered in a very simple pattern, with large circles containing St. Andrew’s crosses.[208] This is worked in silver wire gilt, and is Byzantine of the twelfth century.
In the writings of the Middle Ages we find constant reference to different golden fabrics. Among them are “samit” or “examitur” (a six-thread silk stuff, preciously inwoven with gold threads);[209] and “ciclatoun,”[210] which was remarkable for the lightness of its texture, and was woven with shining gold threads—but though light, it was stiff enough to carry heavy embroidery. We hear also of “baudekin,” “nak,” and cloth of pall. “Camoca” is “kincob.”
There appears to be a link between embroidery in gold and the jewellers’ work which in the Dark and Middle Ages was so often applied to ecclesiastical and royal dress and hangings. This link was beaten gold work, “aurobacutos,” “beaten work,” or “batony.”[211] Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick in the time of Henry VI., went over to France, having a “coat for my lord’s body, beat with fine gold (probably heraldic designs). For his ship, a streamer forty yards long and eight broad, with a great bear and griffin, and 400 ‘pencils’ with the ‘ragged staff’ in silver.” This mode lasted some time; for in 1538, Barbara Mason bequeathed to a church a “vestment of green silk beaten with gold.” Probably this beaten gold was really very thick gold-leaf laid on the silk or linen ground, as we see still in some Sicilian and Arab tissues. The embroidered banners taken from Charles le Téméraire, at Grandson, are finished with broad borders of gilded inscriptions, such as might be called beaten gold work.[212]
But besides this thick gold-leaf, there was another mode of enriching embroideries. Laminæ of gold were cut into shapes, and finished the work by accentuating the design in Eastern embroideries; They are found also in Greek tombs, and in the Middle Ages they varied from the little golden spangle to many other forms—circular rings, stars, crescents, moons, leaves, and solid pendant wedges of gold, all which approached the art of the goldsmith.
