Clothing made wholly or in part out of silk, nevertheless, became every year more and more sought for. So remunerative was the trade of weaving the raw material into its various forms, that, by the revised code of laws for the Roman empire published A. D. 533, a monopoly in it was given to the court, and looms worked by women were set up in the imperial palace. Thus Byzantium became and long continued famous for the beauty of its silken stuffs. Still, the raw silk itself had to be brought thither from abroad; until two Greek monks, who had lived many years among the Chinese, learnt the whole process of rearing the worm. Returning, they brought with them a number of eggs hidden in their walking-staves; and, carrying them to Constantinople, they presented these eggs to the emperor who gladly received them. When hatched the worms were distributed over Greece and Asia minor, and very soon the western world reared its own silk. In some places, at least in Greece, the weaving not only of the finer kinds of cloth but of silk fell into the hands of the Jews. Benjamin of Tudela, writing in 1161, tells us that the city of Thebes contained about two thousand Jewish inhabitants. “These are the most eminent manufacturers of silk and purple cloth in all Greece.” South Italy wrought rich silken stuffs by the end of the eleventh century; for we are told by our countryman Ordericus Vitalis, who died in the first half of the twelfth century, that Mainerius, the abbot of St. Evroul at Uzey in Normandy, on coming home brought with him from Apulia several large pieces of silk, and gave to his church four of the finest ones, with which four copes were made for the chanters. From a feeling alive in the middle ages throughout the length and breadth of Christendom, that the best of all things ought to be given for the service of the Church, the garments of its celebrating priesthood were, if not always, at least very often wholly of silk; holosericus. Owing to this fact, we are now able to learn from the few but tattered shreds before us what elegantly designed and gorgeous stuffs the foreign mediæval loom could weave, and what beautiful embroidery our own countrywomen knew so well how to work. These specimens help us also to rightly understand the description of the splendid vestments enumerated with such exactness in the old inventories of our cathedrals and parish churches, as well as in the early wardrobe accompts of our kings, and in the wills and bequests of dignified ecclesiastics and nobility.