Chapter 10

[138]Mon. Anglic. ed. Dugdale, new edition, p. viii. 1363,a.

[139]Ib. p. 1366,a.

[140]Wills and Inventories, t. i. p. 25, published by the Surtees Society.

[141]Ed. Halliwell, p. 163.

[142]Nicolas’s Testamenta Vetusta, t. i. p. 12.

[143]Ib. p. 14.

[144]Ib. p. 99.

Velvetis a silken textile, the history of which has still to be written. Of the country whence it first came, or the people who were the earliest to hit upon the happy way of weaving it, we know nothing. The oldest piece we remember to have ever seen was in the beautiful crimson cope embroidered by English hands in the fourteenth century, now kept at the college of Mount St. Mary, Chesterfield, and exhibited here in the ever memorable year ’62.

Our belief is, that to central Asia—perhaps China,—we are indebted for velvet as well as satin, and we think the earliest places in Europe to weave it was, first the south of Spain, and then Lucca.

In the earlier of those oldest inventories we have of church vestments, that of Exeter Cathedral,A.D.1277, velvet is not spoken of; but in St. Paul’s, London,A.D.1295, there is some notice of velvet,[145]along with its kindred web, “fustian,” for chasubles.[146]At Exeter, in the year 1327, velvet—and it was crimson—is for the first time there mentioned, but as in two pieces not made up, of which some yards had been then sold for vestment-making.[147]From the middle of the fourteenth century, velvet—mostly crimson—is of common occurrence.

The name itself of velvet, “velluto,” seems to point out Italy as the market through which we got it from the East, for the word in Italian indicates something which is hairy or shaggy, like an animal’s skin.

Fustian was known at the end of the thirteenth century. St. Paul’s Cathedral had: “Una casula alba de fustian.”[148]But in an English sermon preached at the beginning of this thirteenth century, great blame is found with the priest who had his chasuble made of middling fustian: “þe meshakele of medeme fustian.”[149]As then wove, fustian, about which we have to say more, had a short nap on it, and one of the domestic uses to which, during the middle ages, it had been put, was for bed clothes, as thick undersheets. Lady Bergavenny bequeathsA.D.1434, “A bed of gold of swans, two pair sheets of Raynes (fine linen, made at Rheims), a pair of fustians, six pair of other sheets, &c.”[150]That this stuff may have hinted to the Italians the way of weaving silk in the same manner, and so of producing velvet, is not unlikely. Had the Egyptian Arabs been the first to push forward their own discovery of working cotton into fustian, and changing cotton for silk, and so brought forth velvet, it is probable some one would have told us; as it is, weyield the merit to Asia—may be China. Other nations took up this manufacture, and the weaving of velvet was wonderfully improved. It became diapered, and upon a ground of silk or of gold, the pattern came out in a bold manner, with a raised pile; and, at last, that difficult and most beautiful of all manners of diapering, or making the pattern to show itself in a double pile, one pile higher than the other and of the same tint, now, as formerly, known as velvet upon velvet, was brought to its highest perfection: and velvets in this fine style were wrought in greatest excellence all over Italy and in Spain and Flanders. Our old inventories often specify these differences in the making of the web. York cathedral had “four copes of crimson velvet plaine, with orphreys of clothe of goulde, for standers;”[151]and besides, “a greene cushion of raised velvet,”[152]possessed “a cope of purshed velvet (redd)”[153]“purshed” meaning the velvet raised in a net-work pattern.

[145]P. 318.

[146]P. 323.

[147]Ed. Oliver, p. 317.

[148]Ed. Dugdale, p. 323.

[149]Reliquiæ Antiquæ, i. 129.

[150]Test. Vet. i. 227.

[151]Fabric Rolls, p. 309.

[152]Ib. p. 311.

[153]Ib. p. 310.

Diaperwas a silken fabric, held everywhere in high estimation during many hundred years, both abroad and here in England. This we know from documents beginning with the eleventh century. What was its distinctive characteristic, and whence it drew its name, we have not been hitherto told, with anything like certainty. Several eminent men have discussed these points, but while hazarding his own conjecture, each of these writers has differed from the others. Till a better may be found, we submit our own solution.

The silk weavers of Asia had, of old, found out the way so to gear their looms, and dress their silk, or their threads of gold, that with a warp and woof, both precisely of the same tone of colour they could give to the web an elegant design, each part of which being managed in the weaving, as either to hide or to catch the light and shine, looked to be separated from or stand well up above the seeming dusky ground below it: at times the design was dulled, and the ground made glossy. To indicate such a one-coloured, yet patterned silk, the Byzantine Greeks of the early middle ages bethought themselves of the term διασπρον, diaspron, a word of their own coinage, and drawn from the old Greek verb, διασπαω, I separate, but meant by them to signify “what distinguishes or separates itself from things about it,” as every pattern must do on a one-coloured silk. Along with this textile, the Latins took the name for it from the Greeks, and called it “diasper,” which we English have moulded into “diaper.” In the year 1066, the Empress Agnes gave to Monte Cassino a diaper-chasuble of cloth of gold, “optulit planetam diasperam totam undique auro contextam.”[154]

How a golden web may be so wrought is exemplified, amid several other specimens in this collection, by the one underNo. 1270, p. 38, done most likely by an English hand. At York Minster, in the year 1862, was opened a tomb, very likely that of some archbishop; and there was found, along with other textiles in silk, a few shreds of what had been a chasuble made of cloth of gold diapered all over with little crosses, as we ourselves beheld. It would seem, indeed, that cloth of gold was at most times diapered with a pattern, at least in Chaucer’s days, since he thus points to it on the housing of his king’s horse:—

— — trapped in stele,Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele.[155]

— — trapped in stele,

Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele.[155]

[154]Chron. S. Monast. Cassin. Lib. iii. cap. 73, p. 450, ed. Muratori.

[155]Knight’s Tale, l. 2159-60.

Our oldest Church inventories make frequent mention of such diapered silks for vestments. In 1277, Exeter Cathedral had: “una (capa) de alba diapra cum noviluniis,”[156]—a cope of white diaper with half moons. It was the gift of Bishop Bartholomew,A.D.1161. Bishop Brewer,A.D.1224, bestowed upon the Church a small pall of red diaper: “parva palla de rubea diapra;” along with a chasuble, dalmatic and tunicle of white diaper: “casula, &c. de alba diapra.”[157]Among its vast collection of liturgical garments,A.D.1295, old St. Paul’s had a large number made of diaper, which was almost always white. Sometimes the pattern of the diapering is noticed; for instance, a chasuble of white diaper, with coupled parrots in places, among branches: “casula de albo diaspro cum citaciis combinatis per loca in ramusculis.”[158]Again: “tunica et dalmatica de albo diaspro cum citacis viridibus in ramunculis,”[159]where we see the white diaper having the parrots done in green. Probably the most remarkable and elaborate specimen of diaper-weaving on record, is the one that Edmund, Earl of Cornwall gave, made up in “a cope of a certain diaper of Antioch colour, covered with trees and diapered birds, of which the heads, breasts, and feet, as well as the flowers on the trees, are woven in gold thread: “Capa Domini Edmundi Comitis Cornubiæ de quodam diaspero Antioch coloris, tegulata cum arboribus et avibus diasperatis quarum capita, pectora et pedes, et flores in medio arborum sunt de aurifilo contextæ.[160]

[156]P. 297.

[157]P. 298.

[158]St. Paul’s, ed. Dugdale, p. 323.

[159]Ib. p. 322.

[160]Ib. p. 318.

By degrees the word “diaper” became widened in its meaning. Not only all sorts of textile, whether of silk, of linen, or of worsted, but the walls of a room were said to be diapered when the self-same ornament was repeated and sprinkled well over it. Thus, to soothe his daughter’s sorrows, the King of Hungary promises her a chair or carriage, that—

Shal be coverd wyth velvette reedeAnd clothes of fyne golde al about your heede,With damaske whyte and azure bleweWell dyaperd with lylles newe.[161]

Shal be coverd wyth velvette reede

And clothes of fyne golde al about your heede,

With damaske whyte and azure blewe

Well dyaperd with lylles newe.[161]

Nay, the bow for arrows held bySweet Lookingis, in Chaucer’s “Romaunt of the Rose,” described as—

painted well, and thwittenAnd over all diapred and written, &c.[162]

painted well, and thwitten

And over all diapred and written, &c.[162]

Even now, our fine table linen we call “diaper,” because it is figured with flowers and fruits. Sometimes, with us, silks diapered were called “sygury:” una capa de sateyn sygury, cum ymagine B. M. V. in capucio.[163]

[161]Squire of Low Degree, ed. Ritson.

[162]“Romaunt of the Rose,” l. 900.

[163]Fabric Rolls of York Cathedral, p. 230.

In their etymology of diaper, modern writers try to draw the word from Yprès, or d’Ypriès, because that town in Belgium was once celebrated, not for silken stuffs, but for linen. Between the city and the name of “diaper” a kinship even of the very furthest sort cannot be fairly set up. From the citations out of the Chronicle of Monte Cassino we learn, that at the beginning of the eleventh century, the term in use there for a certain silken textile, brought thither from the east, was “diasperon.” We find, too, how that great monastery was in continual communication with Constantinople, whither she was in the habit of sending her monks to buy art-works of price, and bring back with them workmen, for the purpose of embellishing her Church and its altars. Getting from South Italy to England, and our own records, we discover this same Greece-born phrase, diaspron, diasper, given to precious silks used as vestments during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in London and Exeter. By the latter end of the fourteenth century—Chaucer’s time—the terms “diasper,” and “diasperatus,” among us, had slidden into “diaper,” “diaperatus,” Englished, “diapered.” Now, in this same fourteenth century, do we, for the first time, meet a mention of Yprès; and not alone, but along with Ghent, as famous for linen, if by that word we understand cloth; and even then our own Bath seems to have stood above those Belgian cities in their textiles. Among Chaucer’s pilgrims—

A good wif was ther of beside BatheOf cloth making she hadde swiche an hauntShe passed hem of Ipres and of Gaunt.[164]

A good wif was ther of beside Bathe

Of cloth making she hadde swiche an hauntShe passed hem of Ipres and of Gaunt.[164]

Of cloth making she hadde swiche an haunt

She passed hem of Ipres and of Gaunt.[164]

[164]The Prologue, 447.

Neither in this, nor any other subsequent notice of Yprès weaving, is there anything which can be twisted into a warrant for thinking thedistinctive mark to have been the first employment of pattern on its webs, or even its peculiar superiority in such a style of work. The important fact which we have just now verified that several ages had gone by between the period when, in Greece, in South Italy, and England, the common name for a certain kind of precious silk was “diaspron,” “diasper,” “diaper,” and the day when, for the first time, Yprès, not alone, but in company with other neighbouring cities, started up into notice for its linens, quite overthrows the etymology thought of now-a-days for the word “diaper,” and hastens us to the conclusion that this almost ante-mediæval term came to us from Greece, and not from Flanders.

Of the several oldest pieces in this collection, there are not a few which those good men who wrote out the valuable inventories of Exeter and St. Paul’s, London, would have jotted down as “diasper,” or “diaper.” The shreds of creamy, white silk, number1239, p. 26, fully illustrate the meaning of this term, and will repay minute inspection.

More ancient still are other terms which we are about to notice, such as “chrysoclavus,” “stauracin,” “polystaurium,” “gammadion,” or “gammadiæ,” “de quadruplo,” “de octoplo,” and “de fundato.” First, textiles of silk and gold are, over and over again, enumerated as then commonly known under such names, in the so-called Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Liber Pontificalis seu de Gestis Romanorum Pontificum, the good edition of which, in three volumes, edited by Vignolius, ought to be in the hands of every student of early Christian art-work, and in particular of textiles and embroidery.

TheChrysoclavusor golden nail-head, was a remnant, which lingered a long time among the ornaments embroidered on ecclesiastical vestments, and robes for royal wear, of that once so coveted “latus clavus,” or broad nail-head-like purple round patch worn upon the outward garment of the old Roman dignitaries, as we learn from Horace, while laughing at the silly official whom he saw at Fondi—

Insani ridentes præmia scribæ,Prætextam et latum clavum.[165]

Insani ridentes præmia scribæ,

Prætextam et latum clavum.[165]

[165]Serm. lib. i. satir. v.

In the Court of Byzantium this device of dignity was elevated, from being purple on white, into gold upon purple. Hence came it that all rich purple silks, woven or embroidered, with the “clavus” done in gold, became known from their pattern as gold nail-headed, or chrysoclavus, a half Greek half Latin word, employed as often as an adjectiveas a substantive; and silken textiles of Tyrian dye, sprinkled all over with large round spots, were once in great demand. Shortly after,A.D.795, Pope Leo, among his several other gifts to the churches at Rome, bestowed a great number of altar frontals made of this purple and gold fabric, as we are told by Anastasius. To the altar of St. Paul’s the pontiff sent “vestem super altare albam chrysoclavam;”[166]but to another “vestem chrysoclavam ex blattin Byzanteo.”[167]Sometimes these “clavi” were made so large that upon their golden ground an event in the life of a saint, or the saint’s head, was embroidered, and then the whole piece was called “sigillata,” orsealed.

Stauracin, or “stauracinus,” taking its name from σταυρος, the Greek for “cross,” was a silken stuff figured with small plain crosses, and therefore from their number sometimes further distinguished by the word signifying that meaning in Greek,

Polystauron.Of such a textile St. Leo gave presents to churches, as we learn from Anastasius, lib. Pont. ii. 265.

How much silken textiles figured with the cross were in request for church adornment we learn from Fortunatus, who, about the year 565, thus describes the hangings of an oratory in a church at Tours—

Pallia nam meruit, sunt quæ cruce textile pulchra,Serica qua niveis sunt agnava blattea telis,Et textis crucibus magnificatur opus.[168]

Pallia nam meruit, sunt quæ cruce textile pulchra,

Serica qua niveis sunt agnava blattea telis,Et textis crucibus magnificatur opus.[168]

Serica qua niveis sunt agnava blattea telis,

Et textis crucibus magnificatur opus.[168]

Very often the crosses woven on these fabrics were of the simplest shape; oftener were they designed after an elaborate type with a symbolic meaning about it that afforded an especial name to the stuffs upon which they were figured, the first of which that claims our notice is denominated

[166]Lib. Pon. ii. 257.

[167]Ibid. 258.

[168]Poematum, Liber II. iv.

Gammadion, orGammadiæ, a word applied as often to the pattern upon silks as the figures wrought upon gold and silver for use in churches, we so repeatedly come upon in the “Liber Pontificalis.”

In the Greek alphabet the capital letter of gamma takes the shape of an exact right angle thus,Γ. Being so, many writers have beheld in it an emblem of our Lord as our corner-stone. Following this idea artists at a very early period struck out a way of forming the cross after several shapes by various combinations with it of this letterΓ. Four of these gammas put so

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fall into the shape of the so-called Greek cross; and in this form it was woven upon the textiles denominated “stauracinæ;”or patterned with a cross. Being one of the four same-shaped elements of the cross’s figure, the part was significant of the whole. Being, too, the emblem of our corner-stone—our Lord, the gamma, orΓ, was shown at one edge of the tunic on most of the apostles in ancient mosaics; wherein sometimes we find, in place of the gamma, our present capitalΗfor the aspirate, with which for their symbolic purpose the early Christians chose to utter, if not, write the sacred name. ThisΗis, however, only another combination of the four gammas in the cross. Whatsoever, therefore, whether of silver or of silk, was found to be marked in these or other ways of putting the gammas together, or with only a single one, such articles were called “gammadion,” or “gammadiæ;” but as often the so-formed cross was designated as “gammaed,” or “gammadia.” St. Leo gave to the Church of S. Susanna, at Rome, an altar-frontal, upon which there were four of such crosses made of purple silk speckled with gold spots; “vestem de blatthin habentem ... tabulas chrysoclavas iiii cum gemmis ornatas, atque gammadias in ipsa veste chrysoclavas iiii.”[169]

Ancient ingenuity for throwing its favourite gamma into other combinations, and thus bringing forth other pretty but graceful patterns to be wrought on all sorts of ecclesiastical appliances, did not stop here. In the “Liber Pontificalis” of Anastasius, we meet not unfrequently with such passages as these: “Cortinas miræ magnitudinis de palliis stauracin seu quadrapolis;”[170]“vela ... ex palliis quadrapolis seu stauracin;”[171]“vela de octapolo.”[172]The explanation of these two terms, “de quadrapolo,” “de octapolo,” has hitherto baffled all commentators of the text through their forgetfulness of comparing together the things themselves and the written description of them. In these texts there is evidently meant a strong contrast between a something amounting to four, and to eight, in or upon these textiles. It cannot be to say that one fabric was woven with four, the other with eight threads: had that been so meant, then the fact would have been announced by words constructed like “examitus,” p. xxxvii. As the contrast is not in the texture, it must then be searched for in the pattern of these two stuffs. Sure enough, there we find it, as “de quadrapolis” and “stauracin” were, as we see above, interchangeable terms; the first, like the second sort of textile, was figured with crosses.

Given at the end of Du Cange’s “Glossary” is an engraving of a work of Greek art, plate IX. Here St. John Chrysostom stands between St. Nicholas and St. Basil. All three are arrayed in their liturgical garments, which being figured with crosses, are of the textile calledof old “stauracin;” but a marked difference in the way in which the crosses are put is discernible. As a metropolitan St. John wears the saccos upon which the crosses are arranged thus

St. Nicholas, and St. Basil have chasubles which, though worked all over with crosses, made, as on St. John’s saccos, with gammas, are surrounded with other gammas joined so as to edge in the crosses, thus

As four gammas only are necessary to form all the crosses upon St. John’s vestment, therein we behold the textile called by Anastasius, “Stauracin de quadruplo,” or the stuff figured with a cross of four (gammas); while as eight of these Greek letters are required for the pattern on the chasubles, we have in them an example of the other “stauracin de octaplo,” or “octapulo,” a fabric with a pattern composed of eight gammas. But of all the shapes fashioned out of the repetition of the one same element, the Greek letterΓ, by far the most ancient, universal, and mystic, is that curious one particularized by many as the

[169]Lib. Pontif. ii. 243.

[170]Ib. ii. 196.

[171]Ib. ii. 198.

[172]Ib. ii. 209.

Gammadion, orFilfot, a name by which, at one time in England, it was generally known. Several pieces in this collection exhibit on them some modification of it, as Nos.1261, p. 34;1325, p. 60;7052, p. 127;8279A, p. 174;8305, p. 185;8635, p. 242;8652, p. 249. Its figure is made out of the usual four gammas, so that they should fall together thus卍: of its high antiquity and symbolism, we speak further on, section VII.

Silks figured with a cross, some made with four, some with eight Greek gammas, remained in Eastern Church use all through the middle ages, as we may gather from several monuments of that period. Besides a good many other books, Gori’s fine one, “Thesaurus Veterum Diptychorum” affords us several instances.[173]The name also remained to such textiles as we know from the Greek canonist Balsamon, who, writing about the end of the twelfth century on episcopal garments, calls the tunic, στιχάριον διὰ γαμμάτων or (with a pattern) of gammas—gammadion. How to this day the cross made by four gammas is woven on Greek vestments, may be observed in the plates we have given in “Hierurgia.”[174]Two late specimens of “stauracin” are in this collection under Nos.7039, p. 123;7048, p. 126; and8250A, p. 161.

[173]T. iii. p. 84.

[174]Pp. 445, 448, second edition.

Of silks patterned with the Greek cross or “stauracin,” there are several examples in this collection; and though not of the remotest period, are interesting; the oneNo. 8234, p. 154, wrought in Sicily as it is probable by the Greeks brought as prisoners from the Morea, in the twelfth century, is not without some value. In the Chapter Library at Durham may be seen a valuable sample of Byzantine stauracin “colours purple and crimson; the only prominent ornament a cross—often repeated, even upon the small portion which remains.”[175]Those who have seen in St. Peter’s sacristy 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.” It has been well given by Sulpiz Boisserée in his “Kaiser Dalmatika in der St. Peterskirche;” but far better by Dr. Bock in his splendid work on the Coronation Robes of the German emperors.

Silks, from the pattern woven on them calledde fundato, are frequently spoken of by Anastasius. From the texts themselves of that writer, and passages in other authors of his time, it would seem that the silks themselves were dyed of the richest purple, and figured with gold in the pattern of netting. As one of the meanings for the substantive “funda” is a fisherman’s net, rich textiles so figured in gold, were denominated from such a pattern “de fundato” or netted. To St. Peter’s Church at Rome the pontiff, Leo III. gave “cortinam majorem Alexandrinam holosericam habentem in medio adjunctum fundatum, et in circuitu ornatum de fundato;”[176]and for the Church of St. Paul’s, Leo provided “vela holoserica majora sigillata habentia periclysin et crucem tam de blattin seu de fundato.”[177]From Fortunatus we gather that those costly purple-dyed silks called “blatta,” were always interwoven with gold:—

Serica purpureis sternuntur vellera velis,Inlita blatta toris, aurumque intermicat ostro.[178]

Serica purpureis sternuntur vellera velis,

Inlita blatta toris, aurumque intermicat ostro.[178]

This net-pattern lingered long, and, no doubt, we find it, under a new name, “laqueatus”—meshed—as identified upon a cope made of baudekin, at St. Paul’s, London,A.D.1295: “Capa de baudekino cum pineis (fir-apples) in campis laqueatis.”[179]Modifications of this very old pattern may be seen in this catalogue (pp.35,36,154).

[175]Raine’s St. Cuthbert, p. 196.

[176]Lib. Pontif. ii. 282.

[177]Ibid. 240.

[178]De Vita S. Martini lib. ii.

[179]Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 318.

The Latin term “de fundato,” for this net-pattern, so unusual, has for many been quite a puzzle. Here, too, art-works are our best help to properly understand the meaning of the word. The person of Constantinethe Great, given by Gori,[180]as well as that of a much later personage, shown us by Du Cange, at the end of his “Glossarium,”[181]shows the front of the imperial tunic, which was purple, to have been figured in gold with a netting-pattern, marked with pearls. Gori, moreover, presents us with a bishop whose chasuble is of the same design.[182]Further still, Paciaudi, in his “De Cultu S. Johannis Baptistæ,”[183]furnishes a better illustration, if possible, by an engraving of a diptych first published by him. Here St. Jacobus, or James, is arrayed in chasuble and pall of netting-patterned silk; and of the same-figured stuff is much of the trimming or ornamentation on the robes of the B. V. Mary, but on those more especially worn by the archangels, St. Michael and Gabriel. In the diapered pattern on some of the cloth of gold found lately in the grave of some archbishop of York, buried there about the end of the thirteenth century, is the same netting discernible.

[180]T. iii. p. xx.

[181]T. viii. plate 5.

[182]Ib. p. 84.

[183]P. 389.

Stripedorbarredsilks—stragulatæ—got their especial name for such a simple pattern, and at one time were in much request. Frequent mention is made of them in the Exeter Inventories, of which the one taken,A.D.1277, specifies, “Due palle de baudekyno—una stragulata;”[184]andA.D.1327, the same cathedral had, “Unum filatorium de serico bonum stragulatum cum serico diversi coloris,”[185]a veil or scarf for the sub-deacon, made of silk striped in different colours. The illuminations on the MS. among the Harley collection at the British Museum, of the deposition of Richard II. published by the Society of Antiquaries, afford us instances of this textile. The young nobleman to the right sitting on the ground at the archbishop’s sermon, is entirely, hood and all, arrayed in this striped silk,[186]and at the altar, where Northumberland is swearing on the Eucharist, the priest who is saying mass, wears a chasuble of the same stuff.[187]Old St. Paul’s had copes like it: “Capæ factæ de uno panno serico veteri pro parte albi coloris, pro parte viridi;”[188]besides which, it had offertory-veils of the same pattern, one of them with its stripes paly red and green:—“Unum offertorium stragulatum, de rubeo et viridi;” and two others with their stripes bendy-wise: “Duo offertoria bendata de opere Saraceno.”[189]York Cathedral also had two red palls paled with green and light blue: “Duæ pallæ rubiæ palyd cum viridi et blodio,”[190]so admirably edited for the Surtees Society, by Rev. Jas. Raine, jun. Under this kind of patterned silks must be put one the name for which has hitherto not been explained by our English antiquaries.

At the end of the twelfth century there was brought to England, from Greece, a sort of precious silk named thereImperial.

Ralph, dean of St. Paul’s cathedral, London, tells us, that William de Magna Villa, on coming home from his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, made presents to several churches,A.D.1178, of cloths which at Constantinople were called imperial: “Pannos quos Constantinopolis civitas vocat Imperiales, &c.”[191]Relating the story of John’s apparition,A.D.1226, Roger Wendover, and after him Matt. Paris, tells us that the King stood forth dressed in royal robes made of the stuff they call Imperial: “Astitit rex in vestibus regalibus de panno scilicet quem imperialem appellant.”[192]In the Inventory of St. Paul’s, London, drawn upA.D.1295, four tunicles, vestments for subdeacons and lower ministers about the altar, are mentioned as made of this imperial. No colour is specified, except in the one instance of the silk being marbled; and the patterns are noticed as of red and green, with lions wove in gold.[193]It seems not to have been thought good enough for the more important vestments, such as chasubles and copes. Were it not spoken of thus by Wendover and Paris, as well as by a dean of St. Paul’s, and mentioned once as used in a few liturgical garments for that cathedral, we had never heard a word about such a textile anywhere in England. Our belief is that it got its name neither from its colour—supposed royal purple—nor its costliness, but through quite another reason: woven at a workshop kept up by the Byzantine emperors, just like the Gobelins is to-day in Paris by the French, and bearing about it some small, though noticeable mark, it took the designation of “Imperial.” That it was partly wrought with gold, we know; but that its tint was always some shade of the imperial purple—hence its appellation—is a purely gratuitous assumption. Moreover, as Saracenic princes in general had wrought in their own palaces, at the tiraz there, those silks wanted by themselves, their friends, and officers, and caused them to be marked with some adopted word or sentence; so, too, the rulers of Byzantium followed, it is likely the same usage, and put some royal device or word, or name in Greek upon theirs, and hence such textiles took the name of Imperial. In France, this textile was in use as late as the second half of the fifteenth century, but looked upon as old. Here, at York, as late as the early part of the sixteenth, one of its deans bestowed on that cathedral “two (blue) copes of clothe imperialle.”[194]

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