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/120

 his cloak in two, that he might give one-half to a beggar man; and with St. Dunstan singing mass, and wrought by the monks of St. Alban's.

Though practised far and wide, the art of weaving tapestry became most successfully followed in many parts of France and throughout ancient Flanders where secular trade-gilds were formed for its especial manufacture, in many of its towns. Several of these cities won for themselves an especial fame; but so far, at last, did Arras outrun them all that arras-work came, in the end, to be the common word, both here and on the Continent, to mean all sorts of tapestry, whether wrought in England or abroad. Thus is it, we think, that those fine hangings for the choir of Canterbury Cathedral, now at Aix-en-Provence, though made at home, perhaps too by his own monks, and given to that church by Prior Goldston, 1595, are spoken of as, not indeed from Arras, but arras-work—"pannos pulcherrimos opere de arysse subtiliter intextos."

Arras is but one among several other terms by which, during the middle ages, tapestry was called.

From the Saracens, it is likely Western Europe learned the art: at all events its earliest name in Christendom was Saracenic work—"opus Saracenicum"—and as our teachers, we too wrought in a low or horizontal loom. The artizans of France and Flanders were the first to bring forwards the upright or vertical frame, afterwards known abroad as "de haute lisse," in contradistinction to the low or horizontal frame called "de basse lisse." Those who went on with the latter unimproved loom, though thorough good Christians, came to be known, in the trade, as Saracens, for keeping to the method of their paynim teachers; and their produce, Saracenic. In year 1339 John de Croisettes, a Saracen-tapestry worker, living at Arras, sells to the Duke of Touraine a piece of gold Saracenic tapestry figured with the story of Charlemaine: "Jean de Croisettes, tapissier Sarrazinois demeurant à Arras, vend au Duc de Touraine un tapis Sarrazinois à or de l'histoire de Charlemaine." Soon however the high frame put out of use the low one; and among the many pieces of tapestry belonging to Philippe Duke of Bourgogne and Brabant, very many are especially entered as of the high frame, and one of them is thus described:—"ung grant tapiz de haulte lice, sauz or, de l'istoire du duc Guillaume de Normandie comment il conquist Engleterre."