Very often the crosses woven on these fabrics were of the simplest shape; oftener were they designed after an elaborate type with a symbolic meaning about it that afforded an especial name to the stuffs upon which they were figured, the first of which that claims our notice is denominated [166] Lib. Pon. ii. 257. [167] Ibid. 258. [168] Poematum, Liber II. iv. _Gammadion_, or _Gammadiæ_, a word applied as often to the pattern upon silks as the figures wrought upon gold and silver for use in churches, we so repeatedly come upon in the “Liber Pontificalis.” In the Greek alphabet the capital letter of gamma takes the shape of an exact right angle thus, Γ. Being so, many writers have beheld in it an emblem of our Lord as our corner-stone. Following this idea artists at a very early period struck out a way of forming the cross after several shapes by various combinations with it of this letter Γ. Four of these gammas put so ┘└ ┐┌ fall into the shape of the so-called Greek cross; and in this form it was woven upon the textiles denominated “stauracinæ;” or patterned with a cross. Being one of the four same-shaped elements of the cross’s figure, the part was significant of the whole. Being, too, the emblem of our corner-stone--our Lord, the gamma, or Γ, was shown at one edge of the tunic on most of the apostles in ancient mosaics; wherein sometimes we find, in place of the gamma, our present capital Η for the aspirate, with which for their symbolic purpose the early Christians chose to utter, if not, write the sacred name. This Η is, however, only another combination of the four gammas in the cross. Whatsoever, therefore, whether of silver or of silk, was found to be marked in these or other ways of putting the gammas together, or with only a single one, such articles were called “gammadion,” or “gammadiæ;” but as often the so-formed cross was designated as “gammaed,” or “gammadia.” St. Leo gave to the Church of S. Susanna, at Rome, an altar-frontal, upon which there were four of such crosses made of purple silk speckled with gold spots; “vestem de blatthin habentem ... tabulas chrysoclavas iiii cum gemmis ornatas, atque gammadias in ipsa veste chrysoclavas iiii.”[169]