It was in Germany, and especially in the intermediate tract that for a time existed as an independent kingdom—in Lotharingia, I mean—that the old traditions seem to have held their ground most firmly. To Germany from time to time during the Middle Ages came new waves of influence from the East, by various and sometimes very circuitous paths,—in Charlemagne’s time by way of Ravenna and Rome, more directly from Constantinople in the tenth century, when Otto the Great married his son to the grand-daughter of the Greek Emperor. About the same time we hear of Greek craftsmen at work in German monasteries, as at Reichenau on the lower Lake of Constance, where, by the way, a great slab of bluish-green glass, traditionally of Byzantine origin, is still preserved.[78] [Illustration: _PLATE XVIII_ GLASS CUP, CARVED IN HIGH RELIEF GERMAN OR ORIENTAL. TWELFTH OR THIRTEENTH CENTURY] But it was probably by more remote paths, through Poland and other Slavonic lands to the east,[79] that the designs on the only specimens of mediæval glass still existing in Germany that show distinctly oriental motives[80]—if indeed the glasses are not themselves Oriental—found their way westward. I refer to the rare carved goblets, about which so much has been written in Germany. The glass of these little cylindrical cups—they vary in height from three to five inches—is of a yellowish-green or brownish tint, at times indeed nearly colourless; it contains many bubbles. These so-called Hedwig glasses are carved in high relief on the outside: as many as nine examples have been described by Von Czihak (_Schlesische Gläser_, p. 184 _seq._), but of these only two can in any way be brought into connection with St. Hedwig.[81]