From a feeling alive in every heart throughout the length and breadth of Christendom that the best of all things ought to be given for the service of its religious rites, the garments of its celebrating priesthood, from the far east to the uttermost west, were, if not always, at least very often wholly of silk--holosericus. To this fact we have pointed for the sake of remembering that were it not so, we had been, at this day, without the power of being able to see through 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 those splendid vestments and ritual appliances enumerated with such exactness in the old inventories of our venerable cathedrals and parish churches as well as the early wardrobe accompts of our kings, the wills and bequests of our dignified ecclesiastics and nobility, to some of which documents we shall have to refer a little later. In coming westward among us, all these so much coveted stuffs brought along with them their own several names by which they were commonly known throughout the east, whether Greece, Asia Minor, or Persia. Hence when we read of Samit, ciclatoun, cendal, baudekin, and other such terms quite unknown to trade now-a-day, we should bear in mind that notwithstanding the wide variety of spelling, or rather misspelling, each of these appellations has run through, we reach at last their true derivations, and so happily get to know in what country and by whose hands they were wrought. As trade grew up, she brought these fine silken textiles to our markets, and articles of dress were made of silk for men’s as well as women’s wear among the wealthy. At what period the raw material came to be imported here, not so much for embroidery as to be wrought in the loom, we do not exactly know; but from several sides we learn that our countrywomen of all degrees busied themselves in weaving. Among the home occupations of maidens dedicated to God, St. Aldhelm, at the end of the seventh century, seems to number: “Cortinarum sive stragularum textura.”[36] In the council at Cloveshoo, under Archbishop Cuthbert, A.D. 747, nuns are exhorted to spend their time in reading or singing psalms rather than weaving and knitting vainglorious garments of many colours: “Magisque legendis libris vel canendis psalmis, quam texendis et plectendis vario colore inanis gloriæ vestibus studeant operam dare.”[37] By that curious old English book, the “Ancren Riwle,” written towards the end of the twelfth century, ankresses are forbidden to make purses to gain friends therewith, or blodbendes.[38] Were it not that the weaving especially of silk, was so generally followed in the cloister by English women, it had been useless to have so strongly discountenanced the practice. [36] De Laudibus Virginitatis, Opp. ed. Giles, 15.