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/57

 distinctive mark to have been the first employment of pattern on its webs, or even its peculiar superiority in such a style of work. The important fact which we have just now verified that several ages had gone by between the period when, in Greece, in South Italy, and England, the common name for a certain kind of precious silk was "diaspron," "diasper," "diaper," and the day when, for the first time, Yprès, not alone, but in company with other neighbouring cities, started up into notice for its linens, quite overthrows the etymology thought of now-a-days for the word "diaper," and hastens us to the conclusion that this almost ante-mediæval term came to us from Greece, and not from Flanders.

Of the several oldest pieces in this collection, there are not a few which those good men who wrote out the valuable inventories of Exeter and St. Paul's, London, would have jotted down as "diasper," or "diaper." The shreds of creamy, white silk, number 1239, p. 26, fully illustrate the meaning of this term, and will repay minute inspection.

More ancient still are other terms which we are about to notice, such as "chrysoclavus," "stauraccin," "polystaurium," "gammadion," or "gammadiæ," "de quadruplo," "de octoplo," and "de fundato." First, textiles of silk and gold are, over and over again, enumerated as then commonly known under such names, in the so-called Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Liber Pontificalis seu de Gestis Romanorum Pontificum, the good edition of which, in three volumes, edited by Vignolius, ought to be in the hands of every student of early Christian art-work, and in particular of textiles and embroidery.

The Chrysoclavus or golden nail-head, was a remnant, which lingered a long time among the ornaments embroidered on ecclesiastical vestments, and robes for royal wear, of that once so coveted "latus clavus," or broad nail-head-like purple round patch worn upon the outward garment of the old Roman dignitaries, as we learn from Horace, while laughing at the silly official whom he saw at Fondi—

Insani ridentes præmia scribæ, Prætextam et latum clavum.

In the Court of Byzantium this device of dignity was elevated, from being purple on white, into gold upon purple. Hence came it that all rich purple silks, woven or embroidered, with the "clavus" done in gold, became known from their pattern as gold nail-headed, or chrysoclavus, a half Greek half Latin word, employed as often as an adjective