Chapter 22

[436]Mon. Anglic. t. viii. p. 1281, ed. Caley.

[437]Antient Kalendars and Inventories, ed. Palgrave, t. ii. p. 252.

[438]Froissart’s Chronicles, by Johnes, t. ii. chap. cxiii. p. 692.

Respecting ecclesiastical symbolism, we have to observe that with regard to the subjects figured upon these liturgical embroideries, we may see at a glance, that the one untiring wish, both of the designer and of those who had to wear those vestments, was to set before the people’s eyes and to bring as often as possible to their mind the divinity of Christ, strongly and unmistakably, along with the grand doctrine of the Atonement. Whether it be cope, or chasuble, or reredos, or altar-frontal such a teaching is put forth upon it. Beginning with the divinity of our Saviour’s manhood, sometimes we have shown us how, with such lowly reverence, Gabriel spoke his message to the Blessed Virgin Mary with the mystic three-flowered lily standing up between them; or the Nativity with the shepherds or the wise men kneeling in adoration to acknowledge the divinity of our Lord even as a child just born; then some event in His life, His passion, His scourging at the pillar, the bearing of His cross, His being crowned with thorns, always His crucifixion, often above that, His upraised person like a king enthroned and crowning her of whom He had taken flesh; while everywhere about the vestment are represented apostles, martyrs, and saints all nimbed with glory, and among them, winged seraphim standing upon wheels, signifying that heaven is now thrown open to fallen but redeemed man, who, by the atonement wrought for him by our Divine Redeemer, is made to become the fellow-companion of angels and cherubim. To this same end, the black vestments worn at the services for the dead were, according to the old English rite, marked; the chasubles on the back with a green cross upon a red ground, the copes with a red orphrey at their sides, to remind those present that while they mourned their departed friend, they must believe that his soul could never enter heaven unless made clean and regenerated by the atoning blood shed for it on the cross.

At his dubbing, “unto a knight is given a sword, which is made in the semblance of the cross, for to signify how our Lord God vanquished in the cross the death of human lineage, to the which he was judged forthe sin of our first father Adam.” This we are told in the “Order of Chivalry,” translated by Caxton.[439]While stretched wounded and dying on the battle-field, some friendly hand would stick a sword into the ground before the expiring knight, that as in its handle he beheld this symbol of the cross, he might forgive him who had struck him down, as he hoped forgiveness for himself, through the atonement paid for him on the cross at Calvary.

[439]Typographical Antiquities, ed. Dibdin, t. i. p. 234.

The ages of chivalry were times of poetry, and we therefore feel no surprise on finding that each young knight was taught to learn that belonging to every article of his armour, to every colour of his silken array, there was a symbolism which he ought to know. All these emblematic significations are set forth in the “Order of Chivalry,” which we just now quoted. The work is very rare, but the chapter on this subject is given by Ames in his “Typographical Antiquities of Great Britain;”[440]as well as in “Lancelot du Lac” modernized and printed in the “Bibliothèque Bleu,” pp. 11, 12. In that black silk chasuble with a red orphrey upon which our Lord is figured hanging upon a green cross—“cum crucifixo pendente in viridi cruce,”[441]it was for a particular reason that the colour of this wood for the cross is specified: as green is the tint of dress put on by the new-born budding year, which thus foretells of flowers and fruits in after months, so was this same colour the symbol of regeneration for mankind, and the promise of paradise hereafter. For such a symbolic reason is it that, upon the wall painting lately brought again to light in West Somerton Church, Norfolk, our uprisen Lord is shown stepping out of the grave, mantled in green, with the banner of the resurrection in His left hand, and giving a blessing with His upraised right. At all times, and in every land, the “Language of Flowers” has been cultivated, and those who now make it their study will find much to their purpose in Chaucer, especially in his “Flower and the Leaf.” There speaking of “Diane, goddesse of chastite,” the poet says:—

And for because that she a maiden is,In her hond the braunch she beareth this,That agnus castus men call properly;And tho that weare chapelets on their hedeOf fresh woodbind, be such as never wereOf love untrue in word, thought ne dede,But aye stedfast, &c.[442]

And for because that she a maiden is,In her hond the braunch she beareth this,That agnus castus men call properly;

And for because that she a maiden is,

In her hond the braunch she beareth this,

That agnus castus men call properly;

And tho that weare chapelets on their hedeOf fresh woodbind, be such as never wereOf love untrue in word, thought ne dede,But aye stedfast, &c.[442]

And tho that weare chapelets on their hede

Of fresh woodbind, be such as never were

Of love untrue in word, thought ne dede,

But aye stedfast, &c.[442]

[440]Ibid.

[441]Oliver, p. 134.

[442]Works, ed. Nicolas, t. vi. p. 259.

Were it not for this symbolism for the woodbine, we had been quite unable to understand why in our old testamentary bequests, the flower should have been so especially mentioned as we find in the will of Joan Lady Bergavenny who,A.D.1434, leaves to one of her friends, a “bed of silk, black and red, embroidered with woodbined flowers of silver,” &c.[443]Besides its symbolism of those colours—black and red—for which we have but this moment given the reasons, p. cxlix., the funeral cope which we noticed before, p.cxxvi., showed a symbolism of flowers in the woodbine wrought upon it. Sure may we be that the donor’s wish—perhaps the fingers of a weeping widow had worked it for Lincoln Cathedral—was to tell for her in after days the unfaltering love she ever bore towards her husband, and to say so every time this vestment happened to be worn at the services sounded for him. May be that quaint old likeness of Anne Vavasour, exhibited hereA.D.1868 among the “National Portraits,” and numbered 680, p. 138 of the Catalogue, had its background trailed all over with branches of the woodbine in leaf, at the particular behest of a fond spouse Sir H. Lee, and so managed that the plant’s only cyme of flower should hang just below her bosom. By Shakespeare floral symbolism was well understood; and he often shows his knowledge of it in “A Winter’s Tale,” act iv. scene iii. He gives us several meanings of flower-speech, and when he makes (Henry VIII. act iv. scene ii.) Queen Katherine say to Griffith “Farewell—when I am dead—strew me over with maiden flowers, that all the world may know I was a chaste wife to my grave,” he tells of an olden custom still kept up among us, and more fully carried out in Wales and the Western parts of England, where the grave of a dear departed one is weekly dressed by loving hands with the prettiest flowers that may be had. The symbolism of colours is learnedly treated by Portal in his “Couleurs Symboliques.”

The readers of those valuable inventories of the chasubles, copes, and other liturgical silk garments which belonged to Exeter cathedral and that of London, about the middle of the thirteenth century, will not fail to observe that some of them bore, amongst other animals, the horse, and fish of different sorts, nay, porpoises figured on them: “una capa de palla cum porphesiis et leonibus deauratis,”[444]“due cape de palla cum equis et avibus,”[445]“unum pulvinar breudatum avibus, piscibus et bestiis,”[446]“capa de quodam panno Tarsico, viridis coloris cum pluribus piscibus et rosis aurifilo contextis.”[447]Even here, underNo. 8229, p. 151, we havefrom the East a small shred of crimson silk, which shows on it a flat-shaped fish. If to some minds it be a subject of wonderment that, amid flowers and fruits, not only birds and beasts—elephants included—but such odd things as fish, even the porpoise, are to be found represented upon textiles chosen for the service of the altar, they should learn that all such stuffs were gladly put to this very use for the symbolism they carried, by accident, about them. Then, as now, the clergy had to say, and the people to listen daily to that canticle: “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; O ye angels of the Lord, O ye whales, and all that move in the waters, O ye fowls of the air, O all ye beasts and cattle, bless ye the Lord and magnify Him for ever!” Not merely churchmen, but the lay folks, deemed it but fitting that while the prayer above was being offered up, an emphasis should be given to its words by the very garment worn by the celebrant as he uttered them.

[443]Test. Vet. i. 228.

[444]Oliver’s Exeter, p. 299.

[445]Ibid.

[446]St. Paul’s, p. 316.

[447]Ibid. p. 318.

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