Ecclesiastical Vestments: Their development and historyMacalister, Robert Alexander Stewart
History
Ecclesiastical Vestments: Their development and history
Macalister, Robert Alexander Stewart
Church vestments
_Heraldic_:
Leopards powdered with black trefoils (? leopards ermine).
'White harts crowned with chains on their necks full of
these letters S.S.'
Orphreys with diverse arms.
Mullets.
'All may God amend' (Rudyng motto), together with Rudyng
arms and badges.
'A shield paled.'
Arms of Lord Chadworth.
_Names, Initials, and Dedicatory Inscriptions_:
Ricūs de Gravesend.
T.S., I.C., O.L., P.D. (on different vestments).
Ex dono Johannis Reed Capellani Cantar' quondam cantarie
Ricardi Whitwell.
Southam ex dono Johannis Southam.
Ex dono Mʳⁱ Willelmi Smyth archidiaconi Lincoln.
In many vestments, especially among those of early date, the embroidery
is of a distinctly Oriental character, which, if not actually Byzantine,
is founded on Byzantine models. These were popularized throughout Europe
by the Mohammedan weavers and their successors of the royal
establishment in Sicily. Often vestments are found bearing Arabic or
other Oriental inscriptions; these are sometimes meaningless, like the
patterns formed with Arabic letters on many Eastern shawls and cloths of
modern times, but occasionally they give important information as to the
date and origin of the vestment which they decorate. The coronation
vestments of the German Emperors, now at Vienna, are of entirely Eastern
character, and the cope bears inscriptions in Cufic characters, telling
us that it was made at Palermo in 1133. Occasionally the Eastern
ornaments and inscriptions are _forged_ (alas, for mediaeval morality!),
in order to counterfeit the workmanship of the highly popular Eastern
looms. Sometimes we find clumsy imitations of Arabic words treated
ignorantly by the forger as ornaments, the word being written correctly,
though in an obviously amateurish manner, from right to left, and a
replica _reversed_ set opposite to it, in order to balance it
symmetrically!
No country excelled England in embroidered work in the middle ages.
Matthew Paris's story of Pope Innocent IV's admiration of some English
vestments is well known. His holiness, 'seeing some desirable orphreys
in the copes and _infulae_ of certain English ecclesiastics, asked where
they had been made. "In England," was the answer. "Truly is England our
garden of delights," said he; "truly is it a well inexhaustible; and
where much is, thence can much be extorted." Whereupon the Pope, allured
by the lust of the eyes, sent his sealed letters to nearly all the
abbots of the Cistercian order in England (to whose prayers he had just
been committing himself in the chapter-house of the Cistercian order)
that they should not delay to send those orphreys to himself—getting
them for nothing, if possible—to decorate his chasubles and choral
copes.' Matthew Paris concludes his narrative by telling us that the
London merchants were gratified enough, but that many were highly
offended at the open avarice of the Head of the Church.[81]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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