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/434



rare now, served as the covering for the steps that led up to the altar, and corresponded to what in some old English church inventories were called pedalia, or pede-cloths:—"Church of our Fathers," i. 268. Finer sorts were spread on high feast days upon the long form where sat the precentor with his assistant rulers of the choir, or upon the stools which they separately occupied. Ib. ii. 202.

8358.

Liturgical Cloth of grey linen thread, figured all over with subjects from the New Testament, angels, apostles, flowers, and monsters. Rhenish, end of the 14th century. 10 feet by 3 feet.

This curious and valuable piece, of the kind denominated "opus araneum," or spider-web, is very likely the oldest as well as one among the very finest specimens yet known of that peculiar sort of needlework. The design is divided into two lengths, one much shorter than the other, and reversed; thus evidently proving that its original use was to cover, not the altar, but the lectern, upon which the Evangeliarium, or Book of the Gospels, is put at high mass for the deacon to sing the gospel from: judging by the subjects wrought upon it, and in white, it appears to have been intended more especially for the daily high mass, chaunted in many places every morning in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Beginning at the lower part of the longer length, we see an angel, vested like a deacon, in an appareled and girded alb, playing the violin, then six apostles—St. Simon with the fuller's bat in his hand, St. Matthias with sword and book, St. James the Greater with pilgrim's bourdon or staff, St. Jude, or Thaddeus, with club and book, St. Andrew with book and saltire cross, St. Thomas with spear; then another like vested angel sounding a guitar—all of which figures are standing in a row amid oak boughs and flowery branches. Higher up, and within a large quatrefoil encircled by the words:—"Magnificat: Anima: mea: Dominum;" the Visitation, or the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Elizabeth, both with outstretched hands, one towards the other, the first as a virgin with her hair hanging down upon her shoulders, the second having her head shrouded in a hood like a married woman; they stand amid lily-bearing stems (suggested by the lesson read on that festival from Canticles ii.); in each of the north and south