The window that depicts St. Aldhelm is wearing red. Take the next with a grain of salt as no docs for them yet; The chasuble is alleged to have been give to him in Rome and it is suppose to have had dragons on it and was of silk. Another source; "Bishop Aldhelm in Rome in the late 7th c. acquired a silk chasuble with a design of peacocks" If it was of silk it would have been ironic as he complained/chastised regular folk for wearing it. Fibers of the Anglo-Saxons were wool, linen, hemp, and nettle. imports were silk and possibly on a rare occasion in small sections, cotton. From: http://www.vikingsonline.org.uk/resources/articles/as_textiles.htm "Purpura Even though contemporary written sources make it clear that a fabric called purpura was prized by the Anglo-Saxons even above silk and pattern-woven silk, it is in a sense a mystery fabric because they do not specify what it is. It has been suggested that it might have been a fur or pelt, but our written sources reveal that, in spite of its etymology denoting purple, purpura was not necessarily that colour. There was a red purpura tunicle at Ely, a white purpura chasuble and a green purpura cope at Peterborough, and after the Conquest black and red purpura vestments were acquired by Rochester, and Eddius relates that St Wilfrid adorned Ripon with various distinct colours of purpura. Now while it is true that furs can be red (or russet rather), black and white, they are not, I believe, green! - so it may be reasonable to assume that purpura was not another name for fur or pelt.
Purpura would seem to have been very shiny fabric. Aelfric in his Life of St Martin describes a garment as shining like purpura. That purpura does not necessarily mean purple is easily accounted for. J André in his study on colour terms in Latin (Étude sur les Termes de Couleur dans la Langue Latine, Paris 1949) notes that even before the Middle Ages the Latin adjective purpureus had glided into meaning brightness and was used to describe: the light of day the full spectrum of the rainbow the glint of sunlight on a lightly rippled sea the shining whiteness of snow Through various writings we learn that the corpses of the Anglo-Saxon élite, both lay and clerical, were shrouded in purpura, and purpura was also used for these corpses underlays and overlays. This élite also used it for garments and vestments, and for decorating interiors of palaces, halls, and churches. We also know that purpura was thicker than normal silk. The London Inventory lists a textile as being like purpura in that it is thick and of more than one colour. For a more detailed description we must forward in time to Reginald of Durham, writing between 1165-1172. He describes St Cuthberts dalmatic as related to him by witnesses contemporary to the saints reburial at Durham in 1104. The colour, he writes, ...was a reddish purple....but this was shot with another colour, yellow, which produced ever-changing patterns of variegated colour (Dodwell), and ...this infusion of a yellow colour is discerned to be inherent in the cloth, sprinkled dropwise over the whole, and by its strength and brilliance the reddish-purple tint is made to give out a more powerful and brighter light. (Reginaldi....libellus, trans. Pace). As Dodwell points out, nowhere in the text does Reginald call this fabric purpura. It is however ...an exact description of shot-silk taffeta as it catches the light. Given that we know purpura came in variegated colours, and was a robust fabric, it is not unreasonable then to deduce, as Dodwell does, that it was the name the Anglo-Saxons applied to shot-silk taffeta. This conclusion of Dodwells is given further weight by information in the Life of St Edward (mid-11th c) that the Confessor had a ship with sails of purpura embroidered with scenes of the great sea-battles of Anglo-Saxon kings, and that King Edgar owned a cloak of distinguished purpura, and that in the 7th c King Oswalds banner was of purpura encrusted with gold. And even if purpura was not shot-silk taffeta, it is safe to eliminate fur or pelt from the theories since neither kings nor saints corpses were shrouded in this manner, and sails of fur or pelt - let alone embroidered fur or pelt, are highly unlikely, as indeed would be banners." De -----Original Message----- That's perfect, thanks Heather. I'll ask around for a small scrap of purple silk which we can claim is a piece of the miraculous chasuble, I'm sure somebody in the Barony will have something, and a piece less than an inch in size would certainly not be missed. I don't really need to document this (we had several joking suggestions for what the relic should be from our last meeting, including faking one of his bones from play-dough) but I wanted to know for my own benefit before I put out a general call for fabric scraps. Elizabeth _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
