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/392



pattee, done in silver thread, measuring 2-1/2 inches, one above, the other below our Lord, in the middle of the ground, which is crimson, and wrought all over with gracefully twined flower-bearing branches; and each evangelist is shut in by a quarter-circle border charmingly worked with a wreath of leaves quite characteristic of our 13th century work. All the draperies, inscriptions, and ornamentation, now looking so black, were originally wrought in silver thread that is thus tarnished by age.
 * dicate the curly wavings of their locks. There are two crosses, rather

Among the liturgical rarities in this extensive and precious collection of needlework, not the least is the present Russo-Greek "sindon," or ritual winding-sheet, used in a portion of the Eastern Church service on the Great Friday and Great Saturday, as the Orientals call our Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

The colour itself—purplish crimson—of the silk ground upon which our Lord's dead body lies, as it were, outstretched upon the winding-sheet in the grave, is not without a symbolic meaning, for amongst the Greeks, up to a late period, of such a tint were invariably the garments and the stuffs employed on every occasion any wise connected with the dead, though now, like the Latins, the Muscovites at least use black for all such functions.

All around the four borders of this sindon are wrought in golden thread, now much tarnished, sentences of Greek, but written, as the practice is among the Sclaves, in the Cyrillian character, thus named from St. Cyrill, the monk, who invented that alphabet a thousand years ago, as one of the helps for himself and his brother St. Methodius, in teaching Christianity to the many tribes of the widely-spread Sclavonian people, as we noticed in our Introduction, § 5.

Beginning at the right-hand side, from that portion of the silk being somewhat torn, the words are not quite whole, but those that can be read, say thus:—"Pray for the servant of God, Nicolaus and his children. Amen;" here, no doubt, we have the donor's name, and the exact time itself of this pious gift was put down, but owing to the stuff being, at this place too, worn away, the date is somewhat obliterated, but seems to be the year 1645.

All the other sentences are borrowed from the Greek ritual-book known as the [Greek: Hôrologion] or Horologium, in the service for the afternoon on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Along the lower border runs this "troparion," or versicle:—[Greek: Hô euschêmôn Iôsêph apo tou xylou kathelôn to achranton sou Sôma, sindoni kathara eilêsas kai arômasin en mnêmati kainô kêdeusas apetheto]. "The comely Joseph (of Arimathea) having taken down from the wood (of the cross) the spotless body of Thee (O Jesus),