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/532



hand a scabbard, and with the other is unsheathing his weapon. By the side of the bier stand two other Jews also small in size—one, the high priest. One of them has both his arms, the priest but one, all twisted and shrunken, stretched forward on the bier, as if they wanted to upset it; while the latter holds in one of his wasted hands the green bough of the palm-tree, put into it by St. John.

With regard to St. Thomas and the girdle, this cope, if not the earliest, is among the earlier works upon which that part of the legend is figured, though after a somewhat different manner to the one followed in Italy, where, as is evident from several specimens, in this collection, it found such favour.

Below the burial, we have our Lord in the garden, signified by the two trees (John xx. 17). Still wearing a green crown of thorns, and arrayed in a golden mantle, our Lord in His left hand holds the banner of the resurrection, and with His right bestows His benediction on the kneeling Magdalene, who is wimpled, and wears a mantle of green shot yellow, over a light purple tunic. Below, but outside the quatrefoil, is a layman clad in gold upon his knees, and holding a long narrow scroll, bearing words which cannot now be satisfactorily read. Lowermost of all we see the apostle St. Philip with a book in the left hand, but upon the right, muffled in a large towel wrought in silver, three loaves of bread, done partially in gold, piled up one on the other, in reference to our Lord's words (John vi. 5), before the miracle of feeding the five thousand. At the left is St. Bartholomew holding a book in one hand, in the other the flaying knife. A little above him, St. Peter with his two keys, one gold, the other silver; and somewhat under him, to the right, is St. Andrew with his cross. On the other side of St. Michael and the dragon is St. James the Greater—sometimes called of Compostella, because he lies buried in that Spanish city—with a book in one hand, and in the other a staff, and slung from his wrist a wallet, both emblems of pilgrimage to his shrine in Galicia. In the next quatrefoil above stands St. Paul with his usual sword, emblem alike of his martyrdom, and of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephes. vi. 17), and a book; lower, to the right, St. Thomas with his lance of martyrdom and a book; and still further to the right, St. James the Less with a book and the club from which he received his death-stroke (Eusebius, book ii. c. 23). Just above is our Saviour clad in a golden tunic, and carrying a staff overcoming the unbelief of St. Thomas. Upon his knees that apostle feels, with his right hand held by the Redeemer, the spear-wound in His side (John xx. 27).