Needlework As Art Part 18

It is clear that Chinese silken stuffs were not generally known in Southern Europe till the time of Julius Caesar, who displayed a profusion of silks in some of his splendid theatrical representations.

How silk first arrived from the East is disputed; some say it came by the Red Sea, and other authorities believe it was brought from China, _via_ Persia, by land.

But it is not necessary that it should have entered our civilization by only one gate. The Periplus Maris Erythraei makes frequent mention of the trade in silks, through India, by the Indus to the coasts of the Erythrean Sea. They were also brought through Bactria to Barygaza, near Surat, from a city called Thina (China?). The author of the Periplus, of course, refers to some place in the country vaguely called Serica.[229]

That the trade which brought it into Europe was difficult and limited, is proved by the fact that silk continued, even as late as the third century of our era, to be an article of luxury, of which the manufacture and use continued to be the subject of legal enactments and restrictions, for 600 years after Pamphile's first essay in silk-weaving in Cos.

"The Seres" was the name given by the ancients to the nation which produced silk; and it was undoubtedly that accepted for the distant region now called China, including Corea, and later, the kingdom of Khotan. The first mention of these people as a distinct nation is by Mela (iii. 7), who speaks of them as an "honest people, who bring what they have to sell, and return for their payments."[230]

The prevailing idea amongst the Greeks was that silk was combed from the trees. Seneca says:--

"Nor with Maeonian needle mark the web, Gathered by Eastern Seres from the trees."

Seneca the Tragedian, "Herc. aetaeus," 644.[231]

This was, till lately, believed to be only a fiction, intended to hide the truth and enhance the value of the new Coan material. But it is now ascertained that some of the wild silk in China is carried by the silkworm round the trees, wrapping them up, as it were, in large, untidy coc.o.o.ns; so that, as usual, tradition had truth for its foundation.

There was always much mysterious report about the new material.

Dionysius Periegetes tells of a barbarous people called the Seres, who "renounce the care of sheep and oxen, but who comb the coloured flowers of the desert, and with them produce woven precious stuffs, of which they make figured garments, resembling the flowers of the field in beauty, and in texture the web of the spider."[232]

There is no doubt that as Egypt was the first to weave linen, and India to produce cotton textiles, so in China originated the material of silk and its manufacture.

M. Terrien de la Couperie, who has deciphered the Archaic books of the Chinese Records, sees there excellent linguistic proofs that the Chinese nation was originally a fragment of the first Babylonian civilization. He there finds that when these Accadians arrived on the furthest eastern coast of Asia, they met with and enslaved an aboriginal race, who already cultivated the silkworm, and wove and worked its produce, and were called by them "the Embroiderers."[233]

This is supposed to have been an historical event contemporary with the life of Abraham, and, therefore, 5000 years old.

The Chinese say that Tekin or Sin, the son of j.a.phet, instructed his children in painting, sculpture, and embroidery, and in the art of preparing _silk_ for different woven fabrics.[234]

Whether we are justified or not in believing in so very early a date, at any rate we must remember that it is now ascertained that silk was used in China 2600 years before our era.

Auberville says there is a legend that the Empress Si-ling-chi[235]

(2600 B.C.) had the happy inspiration to invent the unwinding of the coc.o.o.n before the insect cut the threads; and for this discovery she was placed among the divinities.

Before her time, they had certainly for more than 300 years used the precious material in its mutilated condition.[236]

Some centuries later the Emperor Chan received tribute in linens and silken stuffs. Tissues of many colours were painted or richly embroidered.[237]

In the second century A.D., a prince of Khotan,[238] Kiu-sa-tan-na, was desirous of obtaining from China the eggs of the silkworm, but his request was refused; and it was prohibited that either eggs of the silkworm or seed of mulberry-trees should cross the border.

Then the King of Khotan asked for a Chinese princess in marriage, and this favour being granted, he found means to inform the lady privately that in her future kingdom she would find no silk to weave or work.

The dread of such an aimless life roused all her womanly instincts.

Defiance of the law, love of smuggling, and the wish to please her husband and benefit her future people, gave her courage to conceal the eggs and seeds in the folds of her dress and the meshes of her beautiful hair, and so she carried a most precious dower into her adopted country.[239] Thus was broken the spell which for more than 3000 years had confined the secret of China within the fence of its wonderful wall; and later on, A.D. 530, the eggs were brought to Byzantium.[240]

From China, therefore, comes our silk.[241] We may say it is traced to the beginning; but how far back had the archaeologist to grope before he could find it!

I transcribe a few more quotations from Yates' translations and authorities.[242]

In the Hippolytus of Euripides, 383, Phaedra _loquitur_:--

"Remove, ye maids, the vests whose tissue glares With purple and with gold; far be the red Of Syrian murex; this the shining thread Which furthest Seres gathers from the boughs."

Lucan describes the transparent material which veiled Cleopatra's form:--

"Her snowy breast shines through Sidonian threads, First by the comb of distant Seres struck; Divided then by Egypt's skilful hand, And with embroidery transparent made."

Pliny's account of silk and its manufacture is mostly fanciful, though founded on half-known facts.

The Latin poets of the Augustan age speak of silk attire with other luxurious customs from the East.[243] The Roman senate, in the reign of Tiberius, decreed that only women should wear silk, on account of its effeminacy.

Silk was acc.u.mulated for the wardrobes of the empresses till A.D.

176, when Marcus Aurelius, "the Philosopher," sold all the imperial ornaments and the silken robes of his empress by auction in the Forum of Trajan.[244]

We learn that silk was precious and fabulously esteemed to the end of the second century A.D.; but it is seldom mentioned in the third century.

aelius Lampridius speaks of a silken cord with which to hang himself, as an imperial extravagance on the part of Heliogabalus (and of this only one strand was silk); and he mentions that Alexander Severus rarely allowed himself a dress of silk (holoseric.u.m), and only gave away robes of partly silken substance.

Flavius Vopiscus says that Aurelian had no dress wholly of silk (holoseric.u.m).[245] His wife begged him to allow her a shawl of purple silk, and he replied, "Far be it from me to permit thread to be reckoned worth its weight in gold!"--for a pound of gold was then worth a pound of silk.

Flavius Vopiscus further states that the Emperor Carinus, however, gave away silken garments, as well as dresses of gold and silver, to Greek artificers, players, wrestlers, and musicians.[246]

Yates gives us a translation of an edict of Diocletian, giving a maximum of prices for articles in common use in the Roman empire. It reads like a tailor's or a dress-maker's bill of to-day:--

DENARII.

To the tailor, for lining a fine vest 6 To the same, for an opening of an edging of silk 50 To the same, for an opening and an edging of a mixed tissue of silk and flax 30 For an edging of a coa.r.s.er vest 4[247]

A monument at Tivoli is erected to the memory of his estimable wife, Valeria Chrysis, by "M. N. Poculus, silk manufacturer." This was probably an imperial office in the fourth century.[248]

From the first to the sixth centuries, poets and historians continually speak of silk,[249] praising its beauty or blaming it as extravagance or luxury; but according to Yates, all the information we collect from these sources requires to be tested as to accuracy, and is often erroneous.

I have spoken of the first silk-weaving in Cos, 300 B.C. The first arrival of the silkworm in Europe was in the sixth century, 900 years later. Cosmas Indicopleustes and another monk brought eggs from China in the hollow staves they carried in their hands. This was a great event in European commerce. The eggs were solemnly presented to the Emperor Justinian, and the monopoly of their cultivation is to be found in his law-ordaining codex.[250]

The monopoly of the silk manufactures was confined to the area of the imperial palace of Constantinople, but the cultivation of the worm gradually spread over Greece, Asia Minor, and India.

The first allusion to the use of silk in the Christian Church is by Gregory n.a.z.ianzen (A.D. 370), "Ad h.e.l.lenium pro Monarchis Carmen:"

"Silver and gold some bring to G.o.d, or the fine thread by Seres spun."[251] Basil ill.u.s.trates the idea of the resurrection by the birth of the b.u.t.terfly from the coc.o.o.n.[252]

Paul the Silentiary (A.D. 562) alludes to the frequent use of silk in the priests' vestments at the Church of St. Sophia at Constantinople.

Bede relates that the first Abbot of Wearmouth went to Rome for the fifth time in A.D. 685, and brought back with him two scarves or palls of incomparable workmanship, and entirely of silk, with which he purchased land of three families at the mouth of the Wear. Bede's own remains were wrapped in silk.

Auberville gives us, in his "Tissus," specimens of Roman silks between the first and seventh centuries, but he cannot fix their exact date.[253]

The finest webs of Holoseric.u.m from the imperial looms were generally bestowed upon the Church, and thus consecrated, the earliest ascertained specimens that have survived have been preserved; and of these, most have been found in the tombs of saints, bishops, and kings who were buried in priestly as well as in royal garments.[254]

Among the silk and satin fabrics, the tissue called "Imperial" is mentioned by several early English authors. Roger de Wendover and Matthew Paris describe the apparition of King John as clad in "royal robes of Imperial."[255] William de Magna Villa brought from Greece, in 1170, a stuff called Imperial, "marbled" or variegated, and covered with lions woven in gold.

In the Eastern Empire, this industry after a time fell into the hands of the Jews; and in 1161, Benjamin of Tudela says the city of Thebes contained about 2000 Jewish silk-weavers.

The breeding of the worm in Europe seems to have been confined to Greece from the time of Justinian to the twelfth century; but in 1148, Roger, King of Sicily, brought as prisoners of war, from Corinth, Thebes, and Athens, many silk-weavers, and settled them at Palermo.