While Phrygia in general, Babylon in particular (as Pliny also tells us) became celebrated for the beauty of its embroideries. All who have seen the sculptures in the British museum brought from Nineveh, and described and figured by Layard, must have remarked how lavishly the Assyrians adorned their robes with the needlework for which one of their greatest cities was so famous. Up to the first century of our era the reputation which Babylon had won for her textiles and needlework still lived. We know from Josephus, who had often been to worship at Jerusalem, that the veils of the Temple were Babylonian; and of the outer one that writer says: “there was a veil of equal largeness with the door. It was a Babylonian curtain, embroidered with blue and fine linen, and scarlet and purple, and of a texture that was wonderful.” What the Jews did for the Temple we may be sure was done by Christians for the Church. The faithful, however, went even further, and wore garments figured all over with sacred subjects in embroidery. We learn this from a stirring sermon preached by St. Asterius, bishop of Amasia in Pontus, in the fourth century. Taking for his text “a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen” he upbraids the world for its follies in dress, and complains that some people went about arrayed like painted walls, with beasts and flowers all over them; while others, pretending a more serious tone of thought, dressed in clothes depicting the doings and wonders of our Lord. “Strive,” St. Asterius exhorts them, “to follow in your lives the teachings of the Gospel, rather than have the miracles of our Redeemer embroidered upon your outward dress.” To have had so many subjects shown upon one garment it is clear that each must have been done very small, and wrought in outline; a style which is being brought back, with great effect, into modern ecclesiastical use. The discriminating accuracy with which our old writers noted the several kinds of textile gifts bestowed upon a church is as instructive as praiseworthy. Ingulph did not think it enough to say that abbot Egelric had given many hangings to the church at Croyland, the great number of which were silken, but he explains also that some were ornamented with birds wrought in gold and sewed on; in fact, of cut-work; others with those birds woven into the stuff; others quite plain. We find the same care taken in old inventories. By the latter end of the thirteenth century embroidery obtained for its several styles and various sorts of ornamentation a distinguishing and technical nomenclature. One of the earliest documents in which we meet with this set of terms is the inventory drawn up, in 1295, of the vestments belonging to St. Paul’s cathedral, printed by Dugdale: herein, the “opus plumarium,” the “opus pectineum,” the “opus pulvinarium,” “consutum de serico,” “de serico consuto,” may be severally found.