As the Reformation in Germany was less sweeping and iconoclastic than
our own, we find there many more remains of ecclesiastical art
collected in the churches to which they have always belonged, or in
museums into which they have drifted;[499] and the Germans have thus
been enabled to do more than even the French, in training the
different schools of work throughout the Continent.

They have proved the Oriental character of the fabrics employed
through the Dark and Middle Ages, i.e. for about 1400 years, whether
they were Syrian, Indo-Chinese, Indian, Alexandrian, Greek, Sicilian,
or Spanish, or whether they had come from Asia by the north or the
south of Europe. The same traditional forms governed them all. But an
adept is able generally to class and name each specimen by the
texture of the webs, by the way gold or gilt thread is inwoven in
them, whether the metal is pure or alloyed, round or flat; also by the
mode of twisting and dyeing the wool, flax, or silk, and its quality
and colouring matter.

Among the earliest historical church embroiderers the foremost figure
is that of the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, claimed in
Wales and in the Welsh ballad of "The Dream of Maxen Wledig" as being
a Welsh princess married to the Emperor Constans. She is said to have
embroidered an image of the Virgin, which Muratori speaks of as
existing in the Church of Vercelli in the seventeenth century. Bock
says it is still there, and he quotes an ancient inventory of the
treasures of Phillip the Good, of Burgundy, which names a "Riche et
ancienne table d'autel de brodeure que on dit que la premiere
Emperriez Christienne Fist."[500] The Empress Helena died in the
fourth century.[501]

Then after a long interval comes "Berthe aux grands pieds" the mother
of Charlemagne, who in the eighth century was famed for her
needlework, which is celebrated in a poem by Adhelm in the eighth
century, quoted by Mrs. Palliser,[502] "a ouvrir si com je vous dirai
n'avoit meillior ouvriere de Tours jusqu'a Cambrai," and her
grand-daughter Gisela followed in her footsteps. Nearly contemporary,
is Aelfled's Durham embroidery,[503] described in the chapter on
English work.

Christian art before the twelfth century is very often rich, usually
picturesque, from its fulness of intention; sometimes beautiful, when
it recalls some echo from the East, or some tradition of Greek
art;[504] but the embroideries of those centuries are almost always