FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[472]Elsewhere I have spoken of dress being continually offered to the images of the pagan gods in the temples. Herodotus (ii. p. 159) tells us that Pharaoh Necho offered to the Apollo of Branchidæ the dress he happened to have worn at both his great successes (the victory of Magdalus and the taking of Cadytis). In the procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus the colossal statue of Bacchus and his nurse Nysa were draped, the former in a shawl, the latter in a tunic variegated with gold. See Yates, “Textrinum Antiquorum,” p. 369. Old clothes were sent as votive offerings to temples, and inscriptions recording lists of such decorations are still extant. SeeAppendix 1. The Greeks honoured the menders and darners, and called them “healers of clothes.” Blümner, p. 202.[473]Men in former days preferred to show by their dress their station and the company they belonged to. Guilds had their ceremonial dresses, and their “liveries,” and their cognizances, and considered it an honour to wear them. See Rock, “Church of our Fathers,” ii. p. 115.[474]Aristotle, De Mirab. Auscult., xcvi.[475]Asterius, Bishop of Amasis, in the fourth century, describes both hangings and dress embroidered with lions, panthers, huntsmen, woods, and rocks; while the Church adopted pictorial representations of Christian subjects. Sidonius alludes to furniture of like character. See Yule, “Marco Polo,” p. 68.[476]“Katalog der Theodor Graf’schen Fünde in Ægypten,” von Dr. J. Karabacek, Wien, 1883.[477]Semper, “Der Stil,” p. 28.[478]Unfortunately this axiom may be reversed. Taste only belongs to a small class, and mankind follows it, whether good or bad, if it only be the fashion.

[472]Elsewhere I have spoken of dress being continually offered to the images of the pagan gods in the temples. Herodotus (ii. p. 159) tells us that Pharaoh Necho offered to the Apollo of Branchidæ the dress he happened to have worn at both his great successes (the victory of Magdalus and the taking of Cadytis). In the procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus the colossal statue of Bacchus and his nurse Nysa were draped, the former in a shawl, the latter in a tunic variegated with gold. See Yates, “Textrinum Antiquorum,” p. 369. Old clothes were sent as votive offerings to temples, and inscriptions recording lists of such decorations are still extant. SeeAppendix 1. The Greeks honoured the menders and darners, and called them “healers of clothes.” Blümner, p. 202.

[473]Men in former days preferred to show by their dress their station and the company they belonged to. Guilds had their ceremonial dresses, and their “liveries,” and their cognizances, and considered it an honour to wear them. See Rock, “Church of our Fathers,” ii. p. 115.

[474]Aristotle, De Mirab. Auscult., xcvi.

[475]Asterius, Bishop of Amasis, in the fourth century, describes both hangings and dress embroidered with lions, panthers, huntsmen, woods, and rocks; while the Church adopted pictorial representations of Christian subjects. Sidonius alludes to furniture of like character. See Yule, “Marco Polo,” p. 68.

[476]“Katalog der Theodor Graf’schen Fünde in Ægypten,” von Dr. J. Karabacek, Wien, 1883.

[477]Semper, “Der Stil,” p. 28.

[478]Unfortunately this axiom may be reversed. Taste only belongs to a small class, and mankind follows it, whether good or bad, if it only be the fashion.

“And now as I turn these volumes over,And see what lies between cover and cover,What treasures of art these pages hold,All ablaze with crimson and gold....Yes, I might almost say to the Lord,Here is a copy of Thy WordWritten out with much toil and pain;Take it, O Lord, and let it beAs something I have done for Thee!How sweet the air is! how fair the scene!I wish I had as lovely a greenTo paint my landscapes and my leaves!How the swallows twitter under the eaves!There, now, there is one in her nest;I can just catch a glimpse of her head and breast,And will sketch her thus, in her quiet nook,For the margin of my Gospel-book.”Longfellow, “The Golden Legend” (“The Scriptorium”), p. 176.

Longfellow, “The Golden Legend” (“The Scriptorium”), p. 176.

“Upon Thy right hand did stand the queen in a vesture of gold, wrought about with divers colours.... The king’s daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold. She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework.”—Psalm xlv. 10, 14, 15.

If the Bride is the type of the Church, how truly has she been, for eighteen centuries, throughout Christendom, adorned with gold, and arrayed in raiment of needlework.

By ecclesiastical embroideries, we mean, of course, Christian work for Christian churches. The firstpictured decorations of our era, in early frescoes, mosaics, and illuminated MSS., and the first specimens that have come down to us of needlework and textiles, testify by theirnaïvetéto their date.[479]

The prosperity of the Church’s hierarchy was founded on the ruins of the Empire, over which Attila had boasted that where his horse trod no grass grew; and truly the cultivated art of those splendid days had lapsed at once to a poverty of design and barrenness of ideas which would soon have dwindled into mere primitive forms, had not a fresh Oriental impulse arrived from Syria, Egypt, and Byzantium,—and then the arts were born anew.[480]The continuity was broken; yet, being devoted to the service of the Church, the new arts were by it moulded and fostered. Little lamps twinkled here and there in monastic houses. Hangings for the churches, coverings for the altars, robes for the priests, occupied the artist and the embroiderer.

The forms, the colours, the uses, were adapting themselves to become the symbols of orthodoxies and heresies, and thus became a part of the history of the Church. The links are many between them and the history of the State; and here ecclesiastical embroideries come in as landmarks.

Royal and princely garments, which had served for state occasions, were constantly dedicated as votive offerings, and converted into vestments for the officiating priest, and so were recorded and preserved.[481]

Royal and noble ladies employed their leisure hours in work for the adornment of the Minster or the home church or chapel. Gifts of the best were exchanged between convents, or forwarded to the holy father at Rome, and were often enriched with jewels. The images of the Virgin and saints received from wealthy penitents many costly garments,[482]besides money and lands.

This dedicatory needlework has preserved to us the records of classical, Byzantine, and Arab-Gothic design, which otherwise must have been lost.

The Church records and illuminated MSS. give usmost trustworthy information of the way in which the altars, the priests, and even the kings were arrayed; and the catalogues of royal wardrobes are also very instructive, as we find how often princely gauds became, as gifts to the Church, commemorative of historical events, such as a victory or an accession, a marriage or a coronation.

Woltmann and Woermann say that the efforts of the Christians in the time of Constantine tended to delay the extinction of classical design in Rome. Of the fourth century they give as examples the mosaics of “Sta.Pudenziana,” where we can still find antique beauty of design. We may also mention the church of “St. Agnese fuori le mura,” which once contained the sarcophagi of Constantine and his mother Helena, and of which the decorations in the ceilings are entirely classical, though the motives had been transferred to Christian symbolism.[483]

The total disappearance of Greek art did not occur till the eighth century, when the new blood infused from foreign sources began to assert itself.[484]

Rome had succeeded to Greece as being the centre of Christian art, which assumed the phase commonly called the Romanesque. This was a conglomerate of Oriental, Byzantine, and Græco-Roman, varied in different countries. Then there were the Scandinavian, and Runic, and Celtic styles drifting from the North; the Lombardic, of Central Italy; the Ostro-Gothic, of Ravenna; the Byzantine, of Venice, all acting and reacting upon each other.

All these rough and inchoate attempts at the beautiful,prepared the world for the acceptance of the Arabic influence, which is said to have been imported at the end of the eleventh century by the Crusaders, to whose pious enterprise some attribute the whole of the splendid Gothic art of the three succeeding centuries. But the marking characteristic of the Arabic arch is wanting; the ogee shape is seldom to be found in Christian architecture;[485]and the pointed arch so naturally results from the intersection of the round arches, that we cannot but look upon these causes as co-incident.

I have elsewhere remarked how often in art different causes co-operate to form a style. The father and mother are of different nationalities, and the result shows the characteristics of its double parentage. The learned antiquaries, who draw their arguments mainly from the form of the arch, must settle whence and how Gothic art in stone came into Europe. It was doubtless the effect or result of more than one cause.

But in as far as it influenced textile art, we have come to the period when it must be studied in Sicily, the half-way house and resting-place of the Crusaders on their highroad to the Holy Land.

Sicily, which had succeeded to Constantinople as being the great manufacturing mart during the Middle Ages, was, in the hands of the Moors, the origin and source of all European Gothic textile art. Yet even at Palermo and Messina they were controlled by the traditions of the schools of Greece, ancient and modern, and by Babylonian, Indian, and African forms and symbolisms.

Byzantium furnished many of their designs, which weresometimes of very remote date, though pressed into the service of the new style and the Church.

These and all the streams of ecclesiastical decoration throughout Europe flowed towards Rome, and were re-issued with the fiat and seal of the Central Church, which also afterwards presided over the art of the Renaissance.[486]

By studying what remains to us of fragments and records we know all the materials which clothed the primitive and mediæval Church, and we find that there was but little originality in textile decoration or in the forms of dress, which either resembled those of the priests in the Jewish synagogue or those of the heathen temples; and were adapted from traditional patterns.

The constant repetition of the cross and the signs of the Passion, with the emblems of saints and martyrs, were interwoven with the ancient classical forms, mixed up with the old symbolisms partially altered to suit their new service of Christian art. Of course such changes were inevitable, while the old motives were being translated to the new uses.

The corselet of Amasis (the Egyptian corselet, p. 20,ante) closely resembles the Jewish ephod, which probably was borrowed from Egypt.[487]

In Rock’s “Church of Our Fathers,” vol. i. p. 409, we find mention of the consular trabea, profusely worked in gold, as being the origin of the cope.

Pl. 51.St. Mark sits with a stylus in hand, looking at a documentSee larger image

Pl. 51.

St. Mark. Anglo-Saxon Book of the Four Gospels in the Cathedral Library at York.

It has been suggested and disputed that the stole was an adaptation of the latus clavus; indeed, if we comparethe examples given by Bock[488]we can hardly doubt that the consular trabea and the latus clavus either served as the models for the Christian Bishop’s dress, or were derived from the same traditional sources. Such is the intimate chain of design from century to century, from age to age; from Egypt to the Holy Land, and thence to Rome.

Bock gives his authorities for saying that the clavus was sometimes an applied border, sometimes a loose stripe hanging down in front, as may be seen in two consular diptychs given in plate70. Much has been written on this latus clavus, its origin and meaning, and I shall return to it in reference to the chrysoclavus pattern, p. 337,post, and I refer the reader, who may wish to enter more fully into the questions raised by conflicting opinions regarding the clavus, to Marquardt’s “Handbuch Röm. Alterthümer,” vii. p. 2, pp. 528-533, where great learning and ingenuity have been expended, without arriving at any satisfactory conclusions.[489]

This keeping to the old lines and outward appearance as much as possible was mainly due to a regard for safety during the persecutions, and also to the Christian spirit of adoption and conversion, rather than that of antagonism, which influenced all their early manifestations.

This unchanging character of art was also partly owing to the absolute sterility of the ashes of Roman Imperialism.

It is true that through the Dark Ages individual genius occasionally flashed and left a mark here and there;but such phenomena are so rare, that when they occur we hesitate before we assign them to that age.

The Anglo-Saxon art of illumination shows these inspired moments; I would point to their drawings in the books in the Bodleian at Oxford, and the “Book of the Four Gospels” (of the tenth century) in the Minster Library at York, which are original and graceful, and have a reflection from the classical traditions. To an artistic eye they are beautiful. (Plate51.)

The conscientious colouring of the Anglo-Saxon MSS. is liturgical. Mr. Clapton Rolfe[490]says that the Levitical traditions in the earlier system of decoration in the Christian Church had a far stronger hold on the popular mind than we are willing now to admit; and that the five Levitical colours, gold, blue, purple, red, and white, were retained in the Christian ritual. Whenever we come across figures of Anglo-Saxon bishops, the liturgical vesture entirely agrees with the Biblical description.

Embroideries before the twelfth century generally preserve a semi-Roman, semi-Oriental character, which is nearly related to the art which is called Lombardic. This differs from what we know of Scandinavian and Celtic design through illuminated books,[491]carving on stone crosses throughout the north of Europe, Great Britain, and Ireland, and the remains we possess of their metal work. I am not aware of any ecclesiastical embroideries which show a Celtic origin,[492]unless the intertwinedpatterns on Italian dresses in paintings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries may be supposed to be derived from that source. (See p.91,ante.)

Delicate knotwork patterns in squares

Fig. 25.

In accounting for the instances of evident Oriental influence on Christian art, which came through Byzantium, we must not restrict ourselves to searching out the Arabian traditions, but we must remember also how much Babylon and Persia, as well as India, had given to the Empire of the East, and these influences were in full force at the time that Christian art was being organized.

We know, for example, that the great veil of the temple at Jerusalem, given by Herod, was Babylonian.

The materials—linen, silk, and woollen—on which ecclesiastical embroideries were worked at Rome and Constantinople were accepted all over the Christian world. The fabrics were plain, striped, and figured; and came from Persia and India, Greece, Alexandria, and Egypt. Even Chinese and Thibetian stuffs are often named. Cloths of gold and silver also came from the East, as in the days of Attalus. All these furnished the grounds on which needlework was lavishly spent.

The great veils which divided the pagan and Jewish temples were at first adopted in the Christian churches, but they gradually disappeared from common use, in spite of occasional survivals and revivals during the Dark Ages.

Records exist of the hangings of the ancient basilica of St. Peter at Rome, spread between the pillars supporting the baldachino over the high altar and those of the choir; and at the Ostro-Gothic imperial court of Ravenna, in the fifth century, Maximianus ordered a set of similar splendid curtains (tetravela) to be worked for the altar. Anastasius Bibliothecarius (ninth century), in his biographies of the popes, mentions curtains and embroidered altar-pieces worked in the sixth and seventh centuries.[493]

Sergius (A.D.687) ordered four white and four scarlet curtains, and Pope John (701) hung white ones between the pillars on either side of the altar at St. Paul’s. St. Zacharias[494]gave similar hangings to the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul. Stephen IV. placed immense silver curtains at the entrance of the basilica of St. Peter’s, and in 768 gave to it sixty-five curtains of figured Syrian stuffs.[495]The same hangings prevailed at intervals in England, France, and Germany, till the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the new Gothic style of high, pointed arches altered the decorative customs.

Pl. 52.A repeating pattern of men with lions, separated horizontally by a decorative patternSee larger image

Pl. 52.

Fragments of Silk to be seen at Coire in Switzerland, also in the South Kensington Museum.

From Anastasius’s mode of speaking of ecclesiastical garments, it appears that they were named in the treasury catalogues after the animals represented on them—“the peacock garment,” “the elephant casula,” “the lion cope.” Evidently these were Oriental gold brocades, Indian or Persian, or else reproductions of their designs, and from Auberville’s and Bock’s books of engravings we can judge how they repeated and varied their motives. One woven subject, which evidently started its textile career as one of the labours of Hercules, was gradually transferred to Samson, or to Daniel in the lions’ den. (Plate 4, Auberville’s “L’Ornement des Tissus.”) (Plate52.)[496]

However, in Russia and throughout the Greek Church the ancient Byzantine use of hangings still remains in force.

The art of embroidery has always given its best efforts to these church draperies.

Rome was so laden with splendid embroideries by her eastern conquests, that probably the Christian decorators would have availed themselves of some of the accumulated stores; but we have no record of such adaptations, unless the splendid curtains and the silver hangings of Pope Stephen IV. were taken out of some imperial treasure-house.

The contrast between early ecclesiastical art and that which immediately preceded it in the palaces of the Cæsars (at Rome, Tivoli, and wherever we find their ruined glories) is most remarkable.

The lovely and the lively had been suddenly abandoned for the heavy earnest solemnity and inartistic drawing of the frescoes of the underground church of St. Clemente in Rome, and that of the early Christian mosaics.

It is as if the arts which had lent, nay, given themselves to the glorification of idols, had suddenly died out, leaving behind them neither an artist, nor a skilled artisan, scarcely a tradition.

The new Christian ideas had to be painfully recorded on sacred buildings and their furnishings for more than a thousand years; with all the patient acquiescence of untaught ignorance, and the struggling uncertainty of genius pursuing a distant glimmering light, apparently unconscious of all that had preceded it in Egyptian and classic art. The great political and religious revolutions in Europe had crushed and buried the arts under the ruins of the Empire over which Time himself seemed to have broken his hour-glass, so little was there to show any memory of their past, or hope for their future. The alternate progress and destruction of the arts in European civilization strike the student, in vivid contrast with the immutability of those of the East, especially in India and China, where the old forms were still being maintained by the swaddling bands of codified custom[497]that had restricted their development, but prolonged their existence, and so they had survived, while Greece conquered and robbed the East and Egypt, and Rome crushed Greece and was in her turn despoiled by the Goths and Huns.[498]

Christian art had to begin at the very beginning, and collect its own traditions, and organize its own forms. These gradually accumulated, availing themselves of accepted symbols, and adding to them hidden meanings. The Reformation checked this development in the north of Europe, but after 300 years we are now witnessing its revival, which is not merely owing to a religious impulse, but also to the archæological tendency of our day and to the historical interest we attach to the ceremonials of the East.

As the Reformation in Germany was less sweeping and iconoclastic than our own, we find there many more remains of ecclesiastical art collected in the churches to which they have always belonged, or in museums into which they have drifted;[499]and the Germans have thus been enabled to do more than even the French, in training the different schools of work throughout the Continent.

They have proved the Oriental character of the fabrics employed through the Dark and Middle Ages, i.e. for about 1400 years, whether they were Syrian, Indo-Chinese, Indian, Alexandrian, Greek, Sicilian, or Spanish, or whether they had come from Asia by the north or the south of Europe. The same traditional forms governed them all. But an adept is able generally to class andname each specimen by the texture of the webs, by the way gold or gilt thread is inwoven in them, whether the metal is pure or alloyed, round or flat; also by the mode of twisting and dyeing the wool, flax, or silk, and its quality and colouring matter.

Among the earliest historical church embroiderers the foremost figure is that of the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, claimed in Wales and in the Welsh ballad of “The Dream of Maxen Wledig” as being a Welsh princess married to the Emperor Constans. She is said to have embroidered an image of the Virgin, which Muratori speaks of as existing in the Church of Vercelli in the seventeenth century. Bock says it is still there, and he quotes an ancient inventory of the treasures of Phillip the Good, of Burgundy, which names a “Riche et ancienne table d’autel de brodeure que on dit que la première Emperriez Christienne Fist.”[500]The Empress Helena died in the fourth century.[501]

Then after a long interval comes “Berthe aux grands pieds” the mother of Charlemagne, who in the eighth century was famed for her needlework, which is celebrated in a poem by Adhelm in the eighth century, quoted by Mrs. Palliser,[502]“a ouvrir si com je vous dirai n’avoit meillior ouvriere de Tours jusqu’a Cambrai,” and her grand-daughter Gisela followed in her footsteps. Nearly contemporary, is Aelfled’s Durham embroidery,[503]described in the chapter onEnglish work.

Christian art before the twelfth century is very often rich, usually picturesque, from its fulness of intention; sometimes beautiful, when it recalls some echo from the East, or some tradition of Greek art;[504]but the embroideries of those centuries are almost always quaint; this is invariably the archaic phase of all early art. Born in the catacombs of Rome—roused by impulses from the north, by education in the south, and everywhere encouraged by the fostering hand of the Church, and the patronage of papal and of royal and imperial houses,—it evolved its forms, and emancipated itself at last from its poor and sordid condition; and the Gothic phase of each nation attained to its own peculiar growth and characteristics; and among them the foremost in the world’s estimation was theEnglish school of embroidery, to which the next chapter is devoted.

There has been much controversy as to the date of the dalmatic of Charlemagne in the Vatican treasury. Like every good early piece of Gothic work in Italy, it is allotted to the days of Pope Boniface VIII. (thirteenth century). But when we examine this splendid relic we cannot doubt that it is of a much earlier time, as there is nothing Gothic to be found in it. It is full of the lingering traces of Greek art (not Byzantine). It reminds us most of the mosaics of Santa Pudenziana, which are always quoted to prove that Greek art still survived in Rome in the eighth century.[505]The dalmatic has been much restored, but, I believe, most carefullykept to the old lines. It is worked on a thick, dark-blue, or purple, satiny silk, which had entirely fallen into little stripes, but has been skilfully mended, and the embroidery has never been transferred. On the front is our Lord in glory, saints below, and angels above, with a border of children playing, which is truly Greek. The motive of this is the “Ibi et Ubi.” On the back is the Transfiguration, and on the humerals are the sacraments of bread and wine. The whole, as art, is beautiful; and it is historically most interesting. Lord Lindsay tells us that in the dalmatic of Charlemagne, (called that of Leo III.) Cola di Rienzi robed himself over his armour, and ascended to the Palace of the Popes after the manner of the Cæsars, with sounding trumpets before him, and followed by his horsemen—his crown on his head and his truncheon in his hand—“Terribile e fantastico.”[506]

This dalmatic must be ranked first and highest among ecclesiastical embroideries. (Plates53,54,55.)

Some of the details are curious. The whole of the blue satin ground is worked with crosses “parsemé.” Parts of the design are so adorned with larger and smaller Greek crosses—and others with the starry cross. On the shoulder is once embroidered the mystic swastika.[507]

Featuring repeated crosses and twisting vines, with numerous human figuresSee larger image

Charlemagne’s DalmaticThe Vatican, Rome

Crosses and vines, with a circle of figures around a larger, central figureSee larger image

Charlemagne’s DalmaticThe Vatican, Rome

Pl. 55.1. Courtly figures in a group; 2. Boys walking near stylised treesSee larger image

Pl. 55.

Details of Charlemagne’s Dalmatic. Vatican Treasury.

Pl. 56.Decorated with images from the life of ChristSee larger image

Pl. 56.

Cope called “of St. Silvester.” Treasury of St. John Lateran, Rome. English Embroidery, thirteenth century.

Rock says, “Those who have seen, in the sacristy of St. Peter’s at Rome, that beautiful light-blue dalmatic said to have been worn by Charlemagne when he sang the gospel at High Mass, at the altar vested as a deacon,the day he was crowned Emperor in that church by Pope Leo III., will remember how plentifully it is sprinkled with crosses between its exquisite embroideries, so as to make the vestment a real ‘stauracin.’”[508]

Pl. 57.Shows various figures. The condition is very goodSee larger image

Pl. 57.

Portion of the Cope at St. John Lateran, showing its condition.

Curving arches, each containing a person or people in medieval garbSee larger image

Pluvial, English, XIII. CenturyMuseum at Bologna

Pl. 59.Featuring Biblical characters and angels, with underlying combined circle and square patternSee larger image

Pl. 59.

The Daroca Cope. Museum at Madrid. Opus Anglicanum, fourteenth century.

Pl. 60.Features extensive metal thread embroiderySee larger image

Pl. 60.

Portion of the Cope of Boniface VIII., twelfth century. From Anagni. Now in the Vatican Collection.

Pl. 61.Madonna and child with an angel on each side of themSee larger image

Pl. 61.

Altar Frontal from Anagni, Italy.

Signor Galletti, Professor of Embroidery to the Pope, says it is undoubtedly of the eighth century. It has been suggested that the design is of the date of the Exarchate. It is, however, something of infinitely finer style; it is noble, simple Greek.

Charlemagne’s dalmatic is embroidered mostly in gold—the draperies in basket-work and laid stitches; the faces in white silk split-stitch, flat, with finely-drawn outlines in black silk. The hair, the shadowy part of the draperies, and the clouds are worked in fine gold and silver thread with dark outlines. The hands, feet, and draperies have a fine bas-relief effect. (Plate53,54,55).

The “pluvial of St. Silvester,” in the church of St. John Lateran at Rome, is probably, from its Gothic style, of the time of Boniface VIII. (thirteenth century).[509]It never served St. Silvester, except as being perhaps dedicated to him. On seeing it, one is convinced that it is English. It has one peculiarity of English Gothic design in the canopies being supported by twisted pillars of vine-stems, in this case intersected by green shoots, and carrying leaves. The angels, the two cherubim clothed in peacocks’ feathers, the fine split-stitch, the gold grounding, and the drawing are also distinctly English.

I give an outline of the pluvial from photographs,[510]and a finished woodcut of the centre to show the style and condition of the work. The design is most beautiful, and we can only regret the loss of the border, which hasbeen entirely cut off. This shows how elaborate is the design, yet how artistically arranged as a whole composition. (Plate56,57.)

It is difficult to settle the precedence between this splendid piece of church decoration and the rival pluvial of Bologna in the Museo Civico, said to have come from the church of San Giacomo. It resembles in style and execution that of St. Silvester, but its architectural arrangement contains six circles of subjects, worked like the other in silk and gold, with gold groundings; and both are embroidered on linen. On careful examination of this splendid work of art, I have come to the conclusion that it is English. (Plate58.)

The Daroca cope (lately belonging to the Archæological Museum at Madrid) is undoubtedly English. We can claim it by its peculiar shrine-work, and the twined columns on the orphreys; by the cherubim, by the peacock-feathered angels, and by the form of the panels enclosing the different subjects, from the “Life of Our Lord.” (Plate59.)

The cope of Boniface VIII. in the Vatican came from the church of his native place, Anagni (plate60), where are still very curious old embroideries (see Hon. and Rev. I. Clifford’s list of embroideries inAppendix 5). Some appear extremely ancient, but there is no sign by which they may be dated. Some are probably of the thirteenth century, and are very coarse Italian work, though finely designed (plate61). There are doubtless many interesting specimens still to be found in the sacristies of Italian churches. But they have generally been transferred to museums.

Pl. 62.Each featuring two figures, each beneath an archSee larger image

Pl. 62.

1. From Tomb in Worcester Cathedral, of Bishop Walter de Cantilupe, consecrated 1236.2. Embroidered Cope at Aix in Switzerland.

Pl. 63.See larger image

Pl. 63.

Mitre of Thomas à Becket at Sens, showing the Scandinavian Fylfot Cross (thirteenth century).Jewelled Cross on Rose-coloured Cope at Rheims (twelfth century).

In the tomb of Walter de Cantilupe (eighteenth century) at Worcester, were found the remains of a dress which is decidedly of an earlier date—evidently of Oriental material, but Anglo-Saxon work—so exactly resembling in style thatat Aix given by Bock,[511]that we can hardly doubt that they proceeded from the same workshop, or at least are of coeval design. Both are worked with a dark red outline on a red silk ground. The faces and hands are in white silk—all the rest between the outlines is gold thread, flat stitch. Bock places its date as antecedent to the tenth century, and indeed there is no reason to doubt that this is correct, though the Worcester fragment was taken out of a tomb of two centuries later. As these garments were stored in the church treasuries; and as antiquity (without an historical interest) was then of no value, these old clothes, holy by their use and office, yet by their shabbiness unfit for public show, may have been reverently disposed of in clothing the bodies of departed priests, who probably had worn those very vestments, when officiating at the altar near which they were laid to rest. When the date of the wearer of the garment is ascertained, the dress cannot be of a later period, but it may have belonged to a much earlier one. The architectural part of these two embroideries, i.e. the canopy work, resembles that of the Bayeux tapestry. Both appear to be English. (Plate62.)

Pl. 64.Figures surrounded with curving vines, and a vine border

Pl. 64.

From Tomb of Bishop William of Blois, died 1236. Worcester Cathedral Library.

Pl. 65.Showing human figures, some surrounded with an oval borderSee larger image

Pl. 65.

A portion of the Mantle embroidered by Gisela for her husband, St. Stephen of Hungary. From Bock’s “Kleinodien.”

In the eleventh century, and for some part of the twelfth, needlework design in England, France, and Germany first assumed a phase, which may be called the metal-work style. It is to be found on the robes and mitres of St. Thomas of Canterbury (Thomas à Becket) at Sens[512]—on the famous rose-red cope of satin embroidered with gold and pearls at Rheims (which we should incline to believe is English)[513](plate63). The fragment of the copeof William of Blois, found in his tomb, is in this style. (He died in 1236.) The fragments of this curious garment, worked in gold on a purple silk material, evidently Oriental, are also preserved under glass in the Cathedral Library at Worcester (plate64).

Amongst the finest instances of ecclesiastical needlework, and, indeed, we may say, of ecclesiastical art of the twelfth century, is the coronation robe of St. Stephen of Hungary, decorated by his queen, Gisela,[514]which is preserved in the Imperial Treasury at Ofen (plate65).

Of this authentic historical work we have the whole story. The original design,[515]drawn on linen, carefully coloured, is to be seen at the Benedictine convent abbey of Martinsburg, near Raab in Hungary. The care with which the work was carried out shows the value then placed on such undertakings considered as art, and it has been justified by its survival of 800 years; time having spared it owing to its perfect materials and manipulation, till it received cruel injuries by being carried off and thrown into the bog of Orsava during the revolution under Kossuth. It was, however, recovered and restored, and was worn by the present emperor at the splendid and picturesque ceremonial of his coronation at Pesth. The design reminds us of the mosaics in the apse of Santa Maria Maggiore and other churches at Rome, and it is extremely beautiful. It consists of an arrangement of medallions and inscriptions, with “metal-work” ornaments in bands alternated with smaller medallions. Yet the figures are not so finely drawn as those of the Durham relics of the beginning of the tenth century. The drawing of the figures of the Gisela mantle resembles those on the garments of Walter de Cantilupe (plate62), which, from their design and stitches, seem to be of thisperiod. The architectural parts are very like in design to those of the Bayeux tapestry, though they are infinitely better, and they have Lombardic characteristics.

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