divided the pagan and Jewish temples were at
first adopted in the Christian churches, but they gradually
disappeared from common use, in spite of occasional survivals and
revivals during the Dark Ages.

Records exist of the hangings of the ancient basilica of St. Peter at
Rome, spread between the pillars supporting the baldachino over the
high altar and those of the choir; and at the Ostro-Gothic imperial
court of Ravenna, in the fifth century, Maximianus ordered a set of
similar splendid curtains (tetravela) to be worked for the altar.
Anastasius Bibliothecarius (ninth century), in his biographies of the
popes, mentions curtains and embroidered altar-pieces worked in the
sixth and seventh centuries.[493]

Sergius (A.D. 687) ordered four white and four scarlet curtains, and
Pope John (701) hung white ones between the pillars on either side of
the altar at St. Paul's. St. Zacharias[494] gave similar hangings to
the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul. Stephen IV. placed immense
silver curtains at the entrance of the basilica of St. Peter's, and in
768 gave to it sixty-five curtains of figured Syrian stuffs.[495] The
same hangings prevailed at intervals in England, France, and Germany,
till the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the new Gothic style
of high, pointed arches altered the decorative customs.

[Illustration: Pl. 52.
Fragments of Silk to be seen at Coire in Switzerland, also in the
South Kensington Museum.]

From Anastasius's mode of speaking of ecclesiastical garments, it
appears that they were named in the treasury catalogues after the
animals represented on them--"the peacock garment," "the elephant
casula," "the lion cope." Evidently these were Oriental gold brocades,
Indian or Persian, or else reproductions of their designs, and from
Auberville's and Bock's books of engravings we can judge how they
repeated and varied their motives. One woven subject, which evidently
started its textile career as one of the labours of Hercules, was
gradually transferred to Samson, or to Daniel in the lions' den.
(Plate 4, Auberville's "L'Ornement des Tissus.") (Plate 52.)[496]

However, in Russia and throughout the Greek Church the ancient
Byzantine use of hangings still remains in force.

The art of embroidery has always given its best efforts to these
church draperies.

Rome was so laden with splendid embroideries by her eastern conquests,
that probably the Christian decorators would have availe