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/533



As at the left hand, so here, quite outside the sacred history on the cope, we have the figure of an individual probably living at the time the vestment was wrought. The dress of the other shows him to be a layman; by the shaven crown upon his head, this person must have been a cleric of some sort: but whether monk, friar, or secular we cannot tell, as his gown has become quite bare, so that we see nothing now but the lower canvas with the lines drawn in black for the shading of the folds. Like his fellow over against him, this churchman holds up a scroll bearing words which can no longer be read.

When new this cope could show, written in tall gold letters more than an inch high, an inscription now cut up and lost, as the unbroken word "Ne" on one of its shreds, and a solitary "V" on another, are all that remains of it, the first on the lower right side; the second, in the like place, to the left. Though so short, the Latin word leads us to think that it was the beginning of the anthem to the seven penitential psalms, "Ne reminiscaris, Domine, delicta nostra, vel parentum nostrorum; neque vindictam sumas de peccatis nostris," a suitable prayer for a liturgical garment, upon which the mercies of the Great Atonement are so well set forth in the Crucifixion, the overthrow of Antichrist, and the crowning of the saints in heaven.

In its original state it could give us, not, as now, only eight apostles, but their whole number. Even as yet the patches on the right-hand side afford us three of the missing heads, while another patch to the left shows us the hand with a book, belonging to the fourth. The lower part of this vestment has been sadly cut away, and reshaped with shreds from itself; and perhaps at such a time were added its present heraldic orphrey, morse, and border, perhaps some fifty years after the embroidering of the other portions of this invaluable and matchless specimen of the far-famed "Opus Anglicum," or English needlework.

The early writers throughout Christendom, Greek as well as Latin, distinguished "nine choirs" of angels, or three great hierarchies, in the upper of which were the "cherubim, or seraphim, and thrones;" in the middle one, the "dominations, virtues, and powers;" in the lower hierarchy, the "principalities, angels, and archangels." Now, while looking at the rather large number of angels figured here, we shall find that this division into three parts, each part again containing other three, has been accurately observed. Led a good way by Ezekiel (i.), but not following that prophet step by step, our mediæval draughtsmen found out for themselves a certain angel form. To this they gave a human shape having but one head, and that of a comely youth, clothing him with six wings, as Isaias told (vi. 2) of the seraphim,