Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/341

Rh church of his alb that was wrought with English Orfrais. Nay, even at Rome, where it might have been expected that the most costly works of this description would have been sufficiently common, the English Orfrais excited both admiration and cupidity. For as we are informed by Matthew Paris, the Pope, who was Innocent IV. (1246.), observing on the copes and infulæ of certain of the ecclesiastics some very desirable Orfrais, he enquired where they were made, and being answered in England, he exclaimed, "Truly England is our garden of delight; in sooth it is a well inexhaustible; and where there is great abundance, from thence much may be extracted:" and accordingly his holiness dispatched his official letters to nearly all the abbots of the Cistercian order in England, to the prayers of whom he had just been committing himself in the chapter-house of their order, and urged them to procure for his choir, for nothing if they could accomplish it, yet, at all events, to purchase things so estimable. An order which, adds the chronicler, was sufficiently pleasing to the London merchants, but the cause of many persons detesting him for his covetousness.

Truly one cannot help feeling surprise that these Orfrais, costly and gorgeous as they no doubt were, should have excited in the eyes of the Pope such wonder and unrestrained avarice. For certainly productions of a similar kind had adorned ecclesiastical apparel from as remote a time as Leo III. (795.), since this Pontiff is commemorated by Anastasius the librarian as a great benefactor of them to the Church ; whilst the frequent enumeration of aureate and purple tissues (chrysoclaba) in his valuable catalogue of the benefactions made to various churches in Rome by the earlier Popes, is full and minute, even to the very subjects represented on the vestments, which were usually the Nativity, the Passion, and the Resurrection of our Lord.

Yet, it must not be supposed that this species of work was exclusively confined to ecclesiastical uses. It was the prevalent decoration of royal as well as of military costume, besides being employed upon various kinds of domestic furniture. King John orders Reginald de Cornhull (April 6, 1215) to furnish without delay five banners of his arms embroidered with gold. Nor ought mention to be omitted here of a passage in the French