Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/87

 pressed to expel the lye, and then laid out to dry. Whilst they are still moist, the chrysalises are extracted; each cocoon is then turned inside out, so as to make a sort of cowl. It is necessary only, to put them again into lukewarm water, after which ten or twelve of them are capped one upon another like so many thimbles, to insert a small distaff through them, when the silk may be reeled off.

Basil, in one of his Homilies, (Opp. tom. ii. p. 53. 55. ed. Benedict.) inveighs against the ladies of Cæsarea, who employed themselves in weaving gold; and he is no less indignant at their husbands who adorned even their horses with cloths of gold and scarlet as if they were bridegrooms.

The author of a Treatise "De disciplinâ et bono pudicitiæ," which is usually published with Cyprian, and which may be referred to the fourth or fifth century, thus speaks (Cypriani Opera, ed. Erasmi, p. 499.):

To weave gold in cloth is, as it were, to adopt an expensive method of spoiling it. Why do they interpose stiff metals between the delicate threads of the warp?

The same censure is implied in the following address of Alcimus Avitus to his sister.

Non tibi gemmato posuere nonilia collo, Nec te contexit, neto quæ fulguratauro Vestis, ductilibus concludens fila talentis: Nec te Sidonium bis coeti muricis ostrum Induit, aut rutilo perlucens purpura succo, Mollia vel tactu quæ mittunt vellera Seres: Nec tibi transfossis fixerunt auribus aurum.

No threaded gems have pressed thy sparkling neck: No cloth, with lines incased in ductile gold, Or twice with the Sidonian murex dyed, Has glittered on thee: thou hast never worn The fleeces soft which distant Seres send: Nor are thy ears transfixed for pendent gold.

The effect of such exhortations as the preceding, was to induce piously disposed persons to apply pieces of gold cloth to public and sacred, instead of private purposes. After this period we find continual instances of their use in the decoration of churches and in the robes of the priesthood.