Page:Textile fabrics; a descriptive catalogue of the collection of church-vestments, dresses, silk stuffs, needle-work and tapestries, forming that section of the Museum (IA textilefabricsde00soutrich).pdf/102

 haste had been called upon to draw up a will; other men, however small their learning, always spelled the word "orphrey," in English, and "auriphrygium," in Latin. In the Exeter inventory, given by Oliver, "cum orphrey de panno aureo, &c. cum orphrais, &c." are found; and the cope bequeathed by Henry Lord de Scrope, 1415, had its "orphreis" "embraudata nobiliter cum imaginibus," &c. The many beautiful orphreys on the Lincoln vestments are fully described in the "Monasticon Anglicanum:" no one could be more earnest in commanding the use on vestments of the auriphrygium, or embroidered "orphrey" than St. Charles Borromeo.

While Phrygia in general, Babylon in particular became celebrated for the beauty of its embroideries: "colores diversos picturæ intexere Babylon maxime celebravit et nomen imposuit;" and those who have seen the sculptures in the British Museum brought from Nineveh, and described and figured by Layard, must have witnessed how lavishly the Assyrians must have adorned their dress with that sort of needlework for which one of their greatest cities was so famous.

Up to the first century of our era, the reputation which Babylon had won for her textiles and needlework still lived. Josephus, himself a Jew, who had often been to worship at Jerusalem, tells us that the veils of its Temple given by Herod were Babylonian, and of the outer one that writer says:—"there was a veil of equal largeness with the door. It was a Babylonian curtain, embroidered with blue and fine linen, and scarlet and purple, and of a texture that was wonderful."

What the Jews did for the Temple we may be sure was done by Christians for the Church. The faithful, however, went even further, and wore garments figured all over with passages from Holy Writ wrought in embroidery. From a stirring sermon preached by St. Asterius, bishop of Amasia in Pontus, in the fourth century, we learn this. Taking for his text, "a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen," this father of the Church, while upbraiding the world for its follies in dress, lets us know that some people went about arrayed like painted walls, with beasts and flowers all over them; while others, pretending a more serious tone of thought, dressed in clothes figured with a sketch of all the doings and wonders of our Lord. "Strive," thunders forth St. Asterius, "to follow in your lives the teachings of the Gospel,