The breeding of the worm and the manufacture of its silk spread themselves with steady though slow steps over most of the countries which border on the shores of the Mediterranean; so that, by the tenth century, those processes had reached from the far east to the uttermost western limits of that sea. Even then, and a long time after, the natural history of the silkworm became known but to a very few. Our countryman Alexander Neckham, abbot of Cirencester A. D. 1213, was probably the first who tried to help others to understand the habits of the insect: his brief explanation may be found in his once popular book ‘De natura rerum,’ which has been lately reprinted by order of the Master of the Rolls.
Indian woman reeling silk from a wheel.
CHAPTER III.
Of the several raw materials which from the earliest periods have been employed in weaving, though not in such frequency as silk, one is gold: which, when judiciously brought in, adds not a barbaric but artistical richness.
The earliest written notice which we have about the employment of this precious metal in the loom, or of the way in which it was wrought for such a purpose, is in the Pentateuch. Among the sacred vestments made for Aaron was an ephod of gold, violet, and purple, and scarlet twice dyed, and fine twisted linen, with embroidered work; and the workman cut also thin plates of gold and drew them small into strips, that they might be twisted with the woof of the aforesaid colours. Instead of “strip,” the authorised protestant version says “wire;” the Douay translation reads “thread:” but neither can be right, for both of these English words mean a something round or twisted in the shape given to the gold before being wove, whereas the metal must have been worked in quite flat, as we learn from the text.
The use of gold for weaving, both with linen or by itself, existed almost certainly among the Egyptians long before the days of Moses. The psalmist describing the dress of the king’s daughter (that is, Pharaoh’s daughter), not only speaks of her being “in raiment of needlework” but that “her clothing is of wrought gold.” In order to be woven the precious metal was at first wrought in a flattened, never in a round or wire shape. To this hour the Chinese and the people of India work the gold into their stuffs after the ancient form. In the same fashion, even now, the Italians weave their lama d’oro, or the more glistening toca: those cloths of gold which to all Asiatic and many European eyes do not glare with too much garishness, but shine with a glow that befits the raiment of personages in high station.
Among the nations of ancient Asia garments made of webs dyed with the costly purple tint, and interwoven with gold, were on all grand occasions worn by kings and princes. So celebrated did the Medes and Persians become in such works of the loom, that cloths of extraordinary beauty got their several names from those peoples, and Medean, Lydian, and Persian textiles were everywhere sought for.
Writing of the wars carried on in Asia and India by Alexander the great almost four centuries before the birth of Christ, Quintus Curtius often speaks about the purple and gold garments worn by the Persians and more eastern Asiatics. Among the many thousands of those who came forth from Damascus to the Greek general, Parmenio, numbers were so clad: “They wore robes splendid with gold and purple.” All over India the same fashion was followed in dress. When an Indian king with his two sons came to Alexander, the three were so arrayed. Princes and the high nobility, all over the east, are called by Quintus Curtius “purpurati.” Not only garments but hangings were made of the same costly fabric. When Alexander wished to give some ambassadors a splendid reception, the golden couches upon which they lay to eat their meat were screened with cloths of gold and purple; and the Indian guests themselves were not less gorgeously clothed in their own national costume, as they came wearing linen (perhaps cotton) garments equally resplendent.
The dress worn by Darius, as he went forth to do battle, is thus described by the same historian: “the waist part of the royal purple tunic was wove in white, and upon his mantle of cloth of gold were figured two golden hawks as if pecking at one another with their beaks.”
From the east this love for cloth of gold reached the southern end of Italy, and thence soon got to Rome; where, even under its early kings, garments made of it were worn. Pliny, speaking of this rich textile, says: “gold may be spun or woven like wool, without any wool being mixed with it.” We are told by Verrius that Tarquinius Priscus rode in triumph in a tunic of gold; and Agrippina the wife of the emperor Claudius, when he exhibited the spectacle of a naval combat, sat by him covered with a robe made entirely of gold woven without any other material. About the year 1840 the marquis Campagna dug up near Rome two old graves, in one of which had been buried a Roman lady of high birth, inferred from the circumstance that all about her remains were found portions of such fine gold flat thread, once forming the burial garment with which she had been arrayed for her funeral.
When pope Paschal, A. D. 821, sought for the body of St. Cecily who was martyred in the year 230, the pontiff found the body in the catacombs, whole and dressed in a garment wrought all of gold, with some of her raiment drenched in blood lying at her feet. In making the foundations for the new St. Peter’s at Rome the workmen came upon and looked into the marble sarcophagus in which had been buried Probus Anicius, prefect of the Pretorian, and his wife Proba Faltonia, each of whose bodies was wrapped in a winding-sheet woven of pure gold strips. The wife of the emperor Honorius died sometime about the year 400, and when her grave was opened, in 1544, the golden tissues in which her body had been shrouded were taken out and melted, amounting in weight to thirty-six pounds. The late father Marchi also found among the remains of St. Hyacinthus several fragments of the same kind of golden web.
Childeric, the second king of the Merovingean dynasty, was buried A. D. 482, at Tournai. In the year 1653 his grave was discovered, and amid the earth about it so many remains of pure gold strips were turned up that there is every ground for thinking that the Frankish king was wrapped in a mantle of golden stuff for his burial. We have reason to conclude that the strips of pure gold out of which the burial cloak of Childeric was woven were not round but flat, from the fact that in a Merovingean burial ground at Envermeu the distinguished archæologist Cochet a few years ago came upon the grave once filled by a lady whose head had been wreathed with a fillet of pure golden web, the tissue of which is thus described: “Ces fils aussi brillants et aussi frais que s’ils sortaient de la main de l’ouvrier, n’étaient ni étirés ni cordés. Ils étaient plats et se composaient tout simplement de petites lanières d’or d’un millimètre de largeur, coupée à même une feuille d’or épaisse de moins d’un dixième de millimètre. La longeur totale de quelques-uns atteignait parfois jusqu’à quinze ou dix-huit centimètres.”
Our own country can furnish an example of this kind of golden textile. On Chessel down, in the isle of Wight, when Mr. Hillier was making some researches in an old Anglo-saxon place of burial, the diggers found pieces of gold strips, thin and quite flat, which are figured in M. l’abbé Cochet’s learned book just mentioned. Of the same rich texture must have been the vestment given to St. Peter’s at Rome in the middle of the ninth century, and described in the Liber Pontificalis as made of the purest gold, and covered with precious stones: “Carolus rex sancto Apostolo obtulit ex purissimo auro et gemmis constructam vestem, etc.”
Such a weaving of pure gold was, here in England, followed certainly as late as the beginning of the tenth century; very likely much later. In the chapter library belonging to Durham cathedral may be seen a stole and maniple, which bear these inscriptions: “Ælfflaed fieri precepit. Pio episcopo Fridestano.” Fridestan was consecrated bishop of Winchester A. D. 905. With these webs under his eye, Mr. Raine writes thus: “In the first, the ground work of the whole is woven exclusively with thread of gold. I do not mean by thread of gold, the silver-gilt wire frequently