with rows of the crenelated pattern surmounted by a
vine.

These fragments have belonged each to a very large and freely woven
silk shawl or mantle. The circles are about two feet across. There is
a different arrangement of the threads in each web, giving different
fine diapers, and the last described has a raised pattern which might
have been intended to represent water.

[Illustration: Pl. 36.
NORMAN AND PERSIAN TYPE.
A Silk Wrapping on the body of St. Cuthbert. Durham.]

[Illustration: Pl. 37.
GRAECO-EGYPTIAN STYLE.
A Silk Wrapping on the body of St. Cuthbert. Durham.]

[Illustration: Pl. 38.
Boat with coloured sail, from the tomb of Rameses III. at Thebes.
(Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," iii. p. 211.) Explanatory of
the design on St. Cuthbert's silk shroud, pl. 37.]

It is most likely that in the twelfth century, or even a little
later, the body of St. Cuthbert was wrapped in these shawls, and so
left when at the Reformation, his shrine was destroyed, and the coffer
containing his remains buried in the same place, and piously concealed
till our own day. I shall describe the beautiful embroideries in which
the body had been clothed in the tenth century when I come to the
subject of English work.

The third period of silk-weaving art is unmistakably Sicilian. At the
end of the thirteenth century and beginning of the fourteenth, Palermo
struck out her own line. The Greek cross appears in various forms. The
designs are of a wonderful richness and capricious ingenuity. They
show alike Asiatic, African, and European animals, and every kind of
mythological creature--griffins, dragons, dogs, and harts, with large
wings; swans, pheasants, and eagles, single or double-headed, often
pecking at the sun's rays; beautifully drawn foliage and flowers, and
heraldic emblems and coats-of-arms. One peculiarity of the third
period is the frequent use of green patterns on "murrey"-coloured
grounds.

All this splendour of design was commonly lavished on poor material.
The silks continued to be mixed with cotton, and the gold, or rather
the gilding, was so base that it has almost always become black on the
foundation strips of parchment or paper.[263]

The heraldic silks are mostly of the time of the Crusades, when the
distinguished pilgrims and warriors, especially the English, made
Sicily their half-way house to the Holy Land, and brought from thence
fabrics woven to suit their ta