In this and many other manuscripts of the same class a very distinct Semitic or Persian strain of influence can be traced in much of the rich conventional ornament. Very beautiful and highly decorative forms and patterns were derived from Oriental sources[49], owing to the active import into France and Germany of fine Persian carpets and textile stuffs from Moslem looms in Syria, Sicily (especially Palermo) and from other parts of the Arab world; all these textiles were designed with consummate taste and skill both in colour and drawing. _Sicilian silk cope._ Fig. 13 shows a fine specimen of woven silk from the Arab looms of Syria. It was used as an Imperial cope or mantle by various German Emperors; in the centre is a palm-tree, and on each side a lion devouring a camel, treated in a very decorative and masterly manner. The form of the conventional foliage on the lions' bodies is imitated in many manuscript illuminations, as, for example, in the ornaments of the initial _B_ shown in fig. 11, page 64. [Illustration: Fig. 13. A cope made of silk from the loom of an Oriental weaver.] _Splendour of MSS._ One important characteristic of the Carolingian manuscripts is their extreme splendour. The freely used burnished gold is often made more magnificent by the contrast of no less brilliant silver. Purple-stained vellum was largely used, and all the pigments are of the most gorgeous hues that great technical skill could produce. And yet in spite of all this magnificence of shining metals and bright colours the effect is never harsh or gaudy, owing to the taste and judgment shown by the illuminators in the way they broke up their colours, avoiding large unrelieved masses, and in the arrangement of the colours so as to give a general effect of harmony in spite of the great chromatic force of the separate parts. _Technical methods._