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/513



out of which is coming a dragon, and having the inscription at his feet, "Sanctus Iohannes." Lower still, St. Catherine with a book in her right hand, and in the left a sword resting on a wheel.

The front orphrey is done in applied work; the back orphrey consists of a web with a ground of gold, figured with green flower-bearing boughs, and having spaces left for the heads and hands to be filled in with needlework. The shield of arms or, with a chief azure, charged with three square buckles argent, we may presume to be the blazon of the giver of this gorgeous vestment.

8705.

Frontlet to an Altar-Cloth of diapered linen. The frontlet itself is the broad border of purple cloth on which is figured a Latin inscription within wreaths of flowers done in white linen. German, late 15th century. 10 feet 9 inches by 6-1/2 inches; the linen, 9 inches.

This is another liturgical appliance, once so common everywhere, and so often mentioned in English ecclesiastical documents, which has now become a very great rarity. From the shred of the altar-cloth itself to which it is sewed, that linen, with its fine diapering and its two blue stripes, diapered, too, and vertically woven in, must have been of a costly kind, and large enough to overspread the whole table of the altar, so that this blue frontlet fell down in front. The Latin inscription, each word parted by a wreath, from four parts of which shoot sprigs of flowers, reads thus:—"O Gloriosum lumen ec(c)lesiarum funde preces pro salute populorum." The letters, as well as all the floral ornamentation of this short prayer, are wrought in pieces of linen stitched on with red thread; and below is a worsted parti-coloured fringe, 1-3/4 inches deep. For the use of the frontlet in England, during the mediæval period, the reader may consult the "Church of our Fathers," i. 238.

8706.

An Altar-Frontal in very dark brown coarse cloth, on which are applied armorial shields, and the ground is filled in with flower-bearing branches, in worsted and