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/394



and spread out quite flat beneath our Lord's body, is put upon a mourning pall of red silk, which is worked all over with flowers, doubtless in allusion to this very custom of showering down upon it flowers as it is carried by.

Very like, in part, to the Greek ceremony, is the Latin rite still followed on Good Friday of kissing the crucifix as it lies upon a cushion on the steps going up to the altar, and known of old in England as creeping to the cross, the ritual for which among the Anglo-Saxons, as well as later, according to the use of Salisbury, may be seen in the "Church of Our Fathers," t. iv. pp. 88, 241. Those who have travelled in the East, or in countries where the Greek rite is followed, may have observed that, almost always, the cupola of the larger churches is painted with the celebration of the Divine Liturgy; and among the crowd of personages therein shown are usually six angels reverently bearing one of these so-figured sindons, as was noticed in the Introduction, § 5.

8279.

Portion of an Orphrey for a Chasuble; border woven in silk, with a various-coloured diapering. German, late 14th century. 3 feet.

Such textiles (for they are not embroideries) as these were evidently wrought to serve as the orphreys for liturgical garments of a less costly character, and made, as this example is, out of thread as well as silk, fashioned after a simple type of pattern.

8279A.

Linen Napkin, for a Crozier; of very fine linen, and various embroideries. German, late 14th century. 2 feet 10 inches by 6 feet.

Such napkins are very great liturgical curiosities, as the present one, and another in this collection, are the only specimens known in this country; and perhaps such another could not be found on any part of the Continent, the employment of them having been for a very long time everywhere left off. Its top, like a high circular-headed cap, 4-3/4 inches by 4 inches, is marked with a diapering, on one side lozengy, on the other checky, ground crimson, and filled in with the gammadion or filfot in one form or another. On the lozenges this gammadion is parti