The Arts and Crafts of Older Spain, Volume 3 (of 3)Williams, Leonard
History
The Arts and Crafts of Older Spain, Volume 3 (of 3)
Williams, Leonard
Decorative arts -- Spain -- History
".... O Lord, burden us not too heavily. Blot out our faults, and pardon
them to us, and have mercy on us. Thou art our Lord. Grant us victory
over the infidel. There came to us a glorious prophet that was born
among us.
"On him rests the weight of your faults, and full of goodness and of
clemency he longs ardently for you to believe. If you should be
forsaken, exclaim, 'God is sufficient for me. There is no God but He. I
trust in Him, because He is Lord of the throne that is on high.'"
Miquel y Badía considers that when it was intact this object must have
measured eleven feet square. Attention was first drawn to its merit and
antiquity when it was shown at the Exposición Histórico Europea of 1892.
The chasubles of Chirinos (Caravaca) and of the Chapel of the Constable
in Burgos cathedral are both considered to be of Spanish-Moorish
workmanship. The former is woven of silk of various colours, but without
admixture of gold thread, and bears an inscription in Arabic which
Amador de los Ríos has interpreted as, "Glory to our Sultan
Abul-Hachach." The same authority deduces that the fabric dates from the
fourteenth or the fifteenth century--that is, from the time of the
Sultan Abul-Hachach (Yusuf the First) or of his immediate successors.
The chasuble preserved at Burgos is also woven of variegated silk
without gold thread, and may originally have been a _tiraz_, since it
bears, in African letters, the inscription, "Glory to our lord the
Sultan." The date is probably the fifteenth or sixteenth century.
Fragments of similar material are in the collections of Señores Osma and
Miquel y Badía.
[Illustration: II
FRAGMENT OF THE BURIAL MANTLE OF FERDINAND THE THIRD
(_Royal Armoury, Madrid_)]
The object represented in Plate ii. is described in the Catalogue of the
Royal Armoury at Madrid as _A fragment of the royal mantle in which was
buried the king and saint, Ferdinand the Third of Castile_ (A.D.
1217-1252). Gestoso, in the course of his researches into the history of
old Seville, has found that in the year 1579 Philip the Second caused an
examination to be made at that city of the remains, enshrined in her
cathedral, of Saint Ferdinand. The body was found "with a ring with a
blue stone on a finger of the right hand, and wearing sword and spurs."
In 1677 Charles the Second sent for the ring in question, and eleven
years later a fresh examination was made, when the mummy of the saint
was stated to be wrapped in "clothing of a stuff the nature of which
cannot now be recognised, but which is chequered all over with the royal
arms of Castile, and with lions." A third examination was made in 1729,
when the "holy body of Señor San Fernando" was reported to be "covered,
the greater part, with a royal mantle, of a stuff which could not be
recognised for its decay: only it was seen to be embroidered with
castles and lions."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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