Needlework As Art Part 52

He describes the subjects embroidered on it thus: "No border round the curved edge. The orphrey is divided into tabernacles containing an archbishop, two bishops, and three kings and queens. Between the tabernacles are four angels, each accompanied by one of the evangelistic symbols. The body of the cope is cut into a most elaborate system of tabernacles, with a centre compartment of a different form for the group of the Crucifixion. The subjects are chiefly from the life of our Lord and the Blessed Virgin. The small quasi-hood is embroidered with two wyverns or griffin-like creatures.

The pelican and the phnix are introduced over the top central group of the enthronement of our Lady."

Mr. Clifford gives the history of the Cope of Pius II. (Bartolomeo Piccolomini, "aeneas Silvius") fifteenth century. It is a masterpiece of Italian embroidery of the early Renaissance. The material was gold brocade, covered with wonderful designs carried out in needlework, representing saints and angels, trees and birds, and arabesques. The whole was adorned with pearls and precious stones valued at 80,000.

At his death the pope bequeathed this vestment to the cathedral of his native town. The cope was stolen in March, 1884, from the treasury at Pienza; and shortly afterwards discovered in the shop of a dealer in antiquities at Florence, but completely stripped of its precious stones and of some of its more valuable embroidery. After magisterial investigation, the cope was restored to Pienza.

The cope at Bologna is thus described: "Subjects from the New Testament contained in two rows of tabernacle compartments, twelve in lower, seven in upper row. Spandrils occupied by angels playing on various musical instruments. After each row, a border containing medallions with heads (of angels, prophets, &c.), twenty-three in lower, nine in upper row. No orphrey; no border or outside curve; quasi-hood very small."

APPENDIX VI., TO PAGE 326.

_From Rock's "Textiles," p. 275._

"The Syon Monastery Cope; ground green, with crimson interlacing barbed quatrefoils, enclosing figure of our Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Apostles, with winged cherubim standing on wheels in the intervening s.p.a.ces, and the orphreys, morse, and hem wrought with armorial bearings; the whole done in gold, silver, and various coloured silks. English needlework, thirteenth century; 9 feet 7 inches by 4 feet 8 inches.

"This handsome cope, so very remarkable on account of its comparatively perfect preservation, is one of the most beautiful among the several liturgical vestments of the olden period anywhere to be now found in Christendom. If by all lovers of mediaeval antiquity it will be looked upon as so valuable a specimen of art of its kind and time, for every Englishman it ought to have a double interest, showing, as it does, such a splendid and instructive example of the opus 'Anglic.u.m,' or English work, which won itself so wide a fame, and was so eagerly sought after throughout the whole of Europe during the Middle Ages."

Dr. Rock gives a list of the subjects. St. Michael overcoming Satan (from Rev. xii. 7, 9). The next quatrefoil above this is filled with the Crucifixion. Here the Blessed Virgin is arrayed in a green tunic, and a golden mantle lined with vair; her head is kerchiefed, and her uplifted hands sorrowfully clasped. St. John--whose dress is all of gold--is on the left, at the foot of the cross, upon which the Saviour, wrought all in silver--a most unusual thing--with a cloth of gold wrapped about His loins, is fastened by three (not four) nails.... In the highest quatrefoil is figured the Redeemer in glory, crowned as a king, and seated on a cushioned throne. Resting upon His knee and steadied by His hand is the Mund, or ball representing the earth.... This is divided into three parts, of which the largest, an upper horizontal hemicycle, is coloured crimson (now faded to a brownish tint), but the lower hemicycle is divided vertically in two, of which one portion is coloured green, and the other white or silvered....

The next two subjects to be described are--one on the right hand, the death of the Blessed Virgin Mary; the other, on the left, her burial....

Below the burial we have our Lord in the garden, signified by two trees; still wearing the crown of thorns; our Lord in His left hand holds the banner of the Resurrection, and with His right bestows His benediction on the kneeling Magdalene, who is wimpled, and wears a mantle of green, shot yellow, over a light purple tunic.

Below, but outside the quatrefoil, is a layman clad in gold, upon his knees, and holding a long, narrow scroll bearing words which cannot now be satisfactorily read.

Lowermost of all we see the Apostle St. Philip, with a book in one hand, in the other the flaying knife.

A little above him St. Peter, with his two keys, one gold, the other silver; and somewhat under him is St. Andrew with his cross. On the other side of St. Michael and the Dragon is St. James the Greater--sometimes called of Compostella, because he lies buried in that Spanish city--with a book in one hand and in the other a staff, and slung from his wrist a wallet, both emblems of pilgrimage to his shrine in Galicia.... In the next quatrefoil above is St. Paul with his sword, and over to the right St. Thomas; still further to the right St. James the Less. Just above is our Saviour, clad in a golden tunic, and carrying a staff, overcoming the unbelief of St. Thomas.

Upon his knees that Apostle feels, with his right hand held by the Redeemer, the spear wound in His side.

As at the left side, so here, quite outside the sacred history on the cope, we have the figure of an individual probably living at the time the vestment was wrought. The dress of the other shows him to be a layman; by the shaven crown of his head, this person must have been a cleric of some sort; but we cannot tell ... for the canvas is worn quite bare, so that we see nothing now but the lines drawn in black to guide the embroiderer.... This Churchman holds up another scroll bearing words which can no longer be read.

"When this cope was new, it showed, written in tall gold letters more than an inch high, an inscription now cut up and lost ... the word _ne_, and a V on some of the shreds are all that remains of it.

"In its original state it could give us the whole of the twelve Apostles. Portions can still be seen.... The lower part of the vestment has been sadly cut away, and reshaped with the fragments; perhaps at that time were added the present heraldic orphrey, morse, and border, probably fifty years later than the other portions of this matchless specimen of the far-famed 'Opus Anglic.u.m.'" "Of angels,"

the "nine choirs," and the three great hierarchies, Cherubim, Seraphim, and Thrones, are figured here. Led a good way by Ezekiel, but not following that prophet step by step, our mediaeval draughtsmen found out for themselves a certain angel form. To this they gave a human shape, that of a comely youth; clothing him with six wings, with human feet; instead of the body being full of eyes, the wings are often composed of the bright-eyed feathers of the peac.o.c.k. On this cope the eight angels standing upon wheels are so placed that they are everywhere nearest to those quatrefoils wherein our Lord's Person comes, and may therefore be taken as representing the upper hierarchy of the angelic host. The other angels, not upon wheels, no doubt belong to the second hierarchy; while those that have but one pair of wings (not three) represent the lowest hierarchy. "All, like our Lord, are barefoot. All of them have their hands lifted in prayer.... For every lover of English heraldry this cope, so plentifully blazoned with armorial bearings, will have a special value, equal to that belonging to many an ancient roll of arms." The orphrey, morse and hem contain the arms of Warwick, Castile and Leon, Ferrars, Geneville Everard, the badge of the Knights Templars, Clifford, Spencer, Lemisi or Lindsey, Le Botiler, Sheldon, Monteney of Ess.e.x, Champernoun, England, Tyddeswall, Grandeson, FitzAlan, Hampden, Percy, Chambowe, Ribbesford, ByG.o.d, Roger de Mortimer, Golbare or Grove, De Ba.s.singburn, with many others not recognized, and frequent repet.i.tions.... "Besides their heraldry, squares at each corner are wrought with swans and peac.o.c.ks of curious interest for every lover of mediaeval symbolism...." These coats of arms, being mostly blazoned on lozenge-shaped shields, suggest that possibly they record those of the n.o.ble ladies who worked the border; while those on circles may be the arms of religious houses or donors.

"A word or two upon the needlework; how it was done; and the now unused mechanical appliance to it after it was wrought, so observable on this vestment, lending its figures more effect."

"We find that for the human face, all over this cope, the first st.i.tches were begun in the centre of the cheek, and worked in circular lines, into which, after the first start, they fell, and were so carried on through the rest of the flesh tints.

"Then with a little iron rod, ending in a small bulb slightly heated, were pressed down those parts of the faces worked in circles, as well as the wide dimple in the throat. By the hollows thus sunk a play of light and shadow is brought out that lends to the parts so treated a look of being done in low relief. Upon the lightly clothed figure of our Lord the same process is followed, and shows a noteworthy example of the mediaeval knowledge of external anatomy.

"We must not, however, hide from ourselves that the unequal surfaces, given by such a use of the hot iron to parts of the work, expose it to the danger of being worn by friction more than other parts, and soon betray the damage by their threadbare, dingy look, as is the case in the example just cited. The method for grounding the quatrefoils is remarkable for being done in a long zigzag diaper pattern (laid st.i.tch)....

"The st.i.tching on the armorial bearings is the same as that now followed in many trifling things worked in wool (cross st.i.tch).

"The canvas (or linen) for every part of this cope is of the finest sort, but its crimson canvas lining is thick and coa.r.s.e....

"A word or two about the history of this fine cope...."

Dr. Rock now enters into the history of the guilds, which included n.o.ble laymen and women, and members of the clergy; and tells us that the rolls of these a.s.sociations sometimes grew to be exceedingly wealthy. He says that each of these guilds had usually in its parish church a chapel or altar of its own, splendidly provided for, to which offerings were spontaneously given by individuals, or by members clubbing together that their joint gift might be the more worthy.

Perhaps the cleric and the layman worked on the cope may have been the donors. Dr. Rock suggests that possibly Coventry may have been the place of its origin, "where the famous Corpus Christi plays" (which this cope so well ill.u.s.trates) "drew crowds every year to see them, as is testified by the Paston letters. Taking this old city as a centre, with a radius of no great length, we may draw a circle on the map enclosing Tamworth, tower and town, Chartley castle, Warwick, Charlcote, and Althorp. The lords of these broad lands would, in accordance with the religious feelings of those times, become brothers of the famous Guild of Coventry, and on account of their high rank find their arms embroidered on the vestments belonging to their fraternity. That such a pious queen as the gentle Eleanor, wife of Edward the First, who died 1290, should have in her lifetime become a sister is very likely, so that we may easily account for the shield--Castile and Leon."

The other n.o.ble shields may possibly record munificent benefactions.

"The whole must have taken very long in the working, and the probability is that it was embroidered by the nuns of some convent which stood in or near Coventry....

"Upon the banks of the Thames at Isleworth, near London, Henry V.

built and munificently endowed a monastery, to be called 'Syon,' for the nuns of St. Bridget's order. Among the earliest friends of this new house was a Master Thomas Graunt, an official in one of the Ecclesiastical Courts of the kingdom. In the Syon Nun's Martyrologium--a valuable MS. lately bought by the British Museum--this Churchman is gratefully recorded as the giver to their convent of several precious ornaments, of which this very cope seemingly is one. It was the custom for a guild or religious body to bestow some rich church vestment upon an ecclesiastical advocate who had befriended it by his pleadings before the tribunal, and thus to convey their thanks to him with his fee. After such a fashion this cope might easily have found its way, through Dr. Graunt, from Warwickshire to Middles.e.x.

"At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign it went with the nuns, as they wandered in an unbroken body through Flanders, France, and Portugal, where they halted. About sixty years ago it came back again from Lisbon to England, and has found a home in the South Kensington Museum."

For want of s.p.a.ce I have been obliged to omit a great deal of Dr.

Rock's interesting account of the Syon Cope. The reader is referred for further details, especially regarding the heraldry and the subjects in the quatrefoils, to Rock's "Textile Fabrics," pp. 275-291, in the South Kensington Museum (No. 9182).

APPENDIX VII., TO PAGE 350.

The a.s.syrians were great in fringes. Of this we can judge from their sculptures, in which the rich deep and broad fringe forms the ornament and accentuates the shaping of the garments of kings and priests and n.o.bles. Loftus, in his "Babylon and Susiana," tells of the only actually existing remnant of their textile art of which I can find any record. Some terra-cotta coffins were opened at Warka (the ancient Erech), and in one of them was a cushion, on which the head, gone to dust, had reposed. It was covered with linen--fringed. Nothing else had survived the ages except a huge wig of false hair. Such fragmentary echoes from a life, a civilization, and an art dead for thousands of years, are curiously pathetic, and touch and startle the thinking mind.

APPENDIX VIII., TO PAGE 369.

The following poem from the Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf shows that the hospitable hall of the Saxon earl was hung with tapestry embroidered with gold.

Fla pra was Much people were Wera and Wifa pe pat win rued Men and women who that wine house Gest sele gyredon gold f.a.g scinon That guest-hall garnished. Cloths embroidered with gold Web-after wagum. Wundersina feld Those along the walls many wonderful sights Sioga gustryleum para pe on swyle stara ?

To every person of those that gaze on such.

Translation by Thomas Arnold.

The poem of Beowulf is supposed to have been written in the early part of the twelfth century.

The lines which follow are from a poem, recomposed from earlier sagas, in the beginning of the twelfth century. It serves to show that arras was used in bedrooms thus early in Germany.

From the "Niebelungen Lied," ubersetzt von Karl Simrock, p. 294.

Manche schmucke Decke von Arras da lag Aus lichth.e.l.lem Zeuge und manches Ueberdach Aus arabischer Seides so gut sie mochte sein, Daruber lagen leisten du gaben herrlicher Schein.

I owe these notices to the kindness of the Rev. A. O. Winnington Ingram.

APPENDIX IX., TO PAGE 362.

_Abridged from Trans. by Sir G. Dasent._

(_From the Ezrbyggja Saga._)

In that summer in which Christianity was established by law in Iceland (A.D. 1000), there came a ship from off the sea out to Snowfellsness, in Iceland. It was a Dublin ship, and on board it were Irishmen and men from Sodor and the Hebrides, but few Nors.e.m.e.n.... On board the ship was a woman from the Hebrides, whose name was Thorgunna. Her shipmates said that they were sure she had such treasures with her as would be hard to get in Iceland.