5 - Dressing the Sacred: Medallion Silks and Their Use in Western Medieval Europe

Summary

A major scholarly concern in the field of medieval costume history is the origin of the textiles: not only the source of the fiber and where the textile was woven, but also where it was found. For our present study, the final fate of textiles is at issue. Fabrics are very fragile and often survive only as fragments. Indeed, most material remains of medieval furnishings and dress come from two main categories of sources. The first one is the funerary context; the second is composed of objects kept in religious institutions. Of course, such remains provide a great deal of valuable information, but they must be contextualized properly and cannot be considered usual garments. It is clear that albs and dalmatics were far from ordinary people's clothing. In light of their extraordinary nature, how can we interpret the fabrics—sometimes found in tiny pieces—from tombs and religious treasuries? Are they representative of fashionable fabrics, or could they have had some very specific uses and meanings, even for the wealthy?

ORIGINS OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES

The silks we will consider appear to be of two main kinds of silk fabrics: samite and lampas. Samite, from the glossary of Medieval Dress and Textiles in Britain, is defined as

a plain silk cloth in weft-faced compound twill. Its appearance has the diagonal lines of a twill weave and a lustrous quality produced by the long weft floats. It was made in various weights, but was usually quite heavy and suitable as background for embroidery in gold thread. Monnas notes that though samites were sometimes woven competely in silk, they could also be half-silks, with linen main warps.

Lisa Monnas discusses variations in samites as well as their popularity and provides a useful definition of lampas:

Samite could be figured as well as plain. In the figured version, additional pattern wefts in silk or metal thread, or metal brocading wefts, created the design, but the ground wefts were concealed behind the main warps, and the surface of the textile remained uniform. Weft-faced compound twill silks were enormously successful: versions were woven in China, India, the Sassanian Empire and Byzantium, as well as in Italy and Spain, and were in production for over 500 years. …