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/528



he lets down an azure shield blazoned with a silver cross. The next quatrefoil above this one is filled in with the Crucifixion. Here the Blessed Virgin Mary is arrayed in a green tunic, and a golden mantle lined with vair or costly white fur, and her head is kerchiefed, and her uplifted hands are sorrowfully clasped; St. John—whose dress is all of gold—with a mournful look, is on the left, at the foot of the cross upon which the Saviour, wrought all in silver—a most unusual thing,—with a cloth of gold wrapped about His loins, is fastened by three, not four, nails. The way in which the ribs are shown and the chest thrown up in the person of our Lord is quite after old English feelings on the subject. In the book of sermons called the "Festival" it is said, with strong emphasis, how "Cristes body was drawen on the crosse as a skyn of parchement on a harow, so that all hys bonys myght be tolde," fol. xxxiii. In the highest quatrefoil of all is figured the Redeemer uprisen, crowned as a king and seated on a cushioned throne. Resting upon His knee, and steadied by His left hand, is the mund or ball representing the earth—the world. Curiously enough, this mund is distinguished into three parts, of which the larger one—an upper horizontal hemicycle—is coloured crimson (now faded to a brownish tint), but the lower hemicycle is divided vertically in two, of which one portion is coloured green, the other white or silvered. The likelihood is, that such markings were meant to show the then only known three parts of our globe; for if the elements were hereon intended, there would have been four quarters—fire, water, earth, and heaven; instead, too, of the upper half being crimsoned, it would have been tinted, like the heavens, blue. Furthermore, the symbolism of those days would put, as we here see, this mund under the sovereign hand of the Saviour, as setting forth the Psalmist's words, "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof, the world and all that dwell therein;" while its round shape—itself the emblem of endlessness—must naturally bring to mind that everlasting Being—the Alpha and the Omega spoken of in the Apocalypse—the beginning and the end, Who is and Who was, and Who is to come—the Almighty. Stretching forth His right arm, with His thumb and first two fingers upraised—emblem of one God in three persons—He is giving His blessing to His mother. Clothed in a green tunic, over which falls a golden mantle lined with vair or white fur, she is seated on the throne beside Him, with hands upraised in prayer. It ought not to be overlooked, that while the Blessed Virgin Mary wears ornamented shoes, our Lord, like His messengers, the angels and apostles, is barefoot. To show that as He had said to those whom He sent before His face, that they were to carry neither