Such was the superior quality of some gold thread that it was known to the mediæval world under the name of the place wherein it had been made. Thus we find a mention at one time of Cyprus gold thread--“vestimentum embrowdatum cum aquilis de auro de Cipre;”[98] later, of Venice gold thread--“for frenge of gold of Venys at vj_s._ the ounce;”[99] “one cope of unwaterd camlet laid with strokes of Venis gold.”[100] What may have been their difference cannot now be pointed out: perhaps the Cyprian thread was so much esteemed because its somewhat broad shred of flat gold was wound about the hempen twist beneath it so nicely as to have the smooth unbroken look of gold wire; while the article from Venice showed everywhere the twisting of common thread. [97] Rot. Cancel. 56 Henrici III. Compot. Will. de Glouc. [98] Mon. Anglic. ii. 7. [99] Wardrobe Accounts of King Edward IV. p. 117, ed. N. H. Nicolas. [100] Mon. Anglic. ii. 167. As now, so of old, SILKS HAD VARIOUS NAMES given them, meaning either their kind of texture and dressing, their colour and its several tints, the sort of design or pattern woven on them, the country from which they were brought, or the use for which, on particular occasions, they happened to be especially set apart. All of these designations are of foreign growth; some sprang up in the seventh and following centuries at Byzantium, and, not to be found in classic writers, remain unknown to modern Greek scholars; some are half Greek, half Latin, jumbled together; other some, borrowed from the east, are so shortened, so badly and variously spelt, that their Arabic or Persian derivation can be hardly recognized at present. Yet, without some slight knowledge of them, we may not understand a great deal belonging to trade, and the manners of the times glanced at by our old writers; much less see the true meaning of many passages in our mediæval English poetry. Among the terms significative of the kind of web, or mode of getting up some sorts of silk, we have _Holosericum_, the whole texture of which, as its Greek-Latin compound means to say, is warp and woof wholly pure silk: in a passage from Lampridius, quoted before, p. xix., we learn that so early as the reign of Alexander Severus, the difference between “vestes holosericæ,” and “subsericæ,” was strongly marked, and from which we learn that _Subsericum_ implied that such a texture was not entirely, but in part--likely its woof--of silk. Although the warp only happened to be of silk, while the woof was of gold, still the tissue was often called “holosericum;” of the vestments which Beda says[101] S. Gregory sent over here to S. Austin, one is mentioned by a mediæval writer as “una casula oloserica purpurei coloris aurea textura”--a chasuble all silk, of a purple colour, woven with gold.[102] Examples of “holosericum” and “subsericum” abound in this collection. [101] Hist. Ecc. lib. i. c. 29. [102] Bedæ Hist., ed. Smith, p. 691.