by Krista West
During the long period of silk production in Byzantium, the residents of Constantinople were not the only people who desired beautiful silk brocades. There was a steady stream of visitors to the imperial city who, after witnessing the splendor of Constantinopolitan dress, also wanted to possess these lovely fabrics. Diplomats and important visitors were given gifts of silks and they took these back to their homelands where the lustrous beauty of these textiles created a sensation. Other cities with textile production centers wanted to learn to make the Byzantine-styled silks, but production methods were held tightly as state secrets of the highest order.
Everyone wanted Byzantine silk, but its high value and the massive amounts of revenue it produced insured that the Byzantines kept the knowledge of its manufacture undisclosed. Textile artisans in other European lands began to unravel the simpler methods of its fabrication, but knowledge of the finer, higher-quality silk techniques was a closely guarded secret until well past the tenth century. The Byzantines knew the value of what they possessed, so much so that one Byzantine emperor wrote to warn his son against “giving barbarians imperial cloth, imperial crowns, and the technique of Greek fire.”19 Eventually, though, other cities in Europe began to solve the puzzle of how to create the higher-grade silks, with the various city-states of Italy leading the way sometime around the mid-twelfth century.20 This is not surprising when one considers the regular commercial interchange between Italy and Byzantium. The Crusaders’ sack of Constantinople in 1204 was most likely a significant turning point, as scholar David Jacoby explains:
Venice became the second major manufacturer of silks in the Christian West. The chronological conjunction of the collapse of silk manufacture in Constantinople in the wake of the Latin conquest of the city in 1204 and the launching of high-grade silk production in Venice around that time does not appear to have been coincidental. Venetian merchants previously acquainted with Byzantine silk centers must have been instrumental in the creation of the required industrial infrastructure in their own city and in the recruitment of the required workforce. It is not impossible that silk artisans from Constantinople arrived spontaneously or were brought to Venice.21
Silk continued to be in high demand from this period forward and, after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the center of manufacture moved to the Italian city-states as well as certain other cities in Western Europe. Many of the brocade designs used in the Orthodox Christian Church today are assigned the stylistic description “Venetian” and are highly valued due to their quality and their unique large motif designs that are reminiscent of historic Byzantine silk designs. Brocade manufacturing centers were subsequently established in France and Germany during the late Medieval and early Renaissance periods and a number of metallic brocades used for vestments today come from French or German looms.
The use of high-grade silk and half-silk brocades continued in the Church until the advent of synthetic textiles which began to be developed in the late nineteenth century. Wood-based fibers, such as rayon and acetate were first utilized for “artificial” fabrics (technically not “synthetic” since the wood pulp used as the base for these fabrics is naturally occurring). The use of petroleum-based polyester for textile manufacture began in earnest in the late 1950s and within a few decades had overtaken the majority of the liturgical brocade market. While the glory days of Byzantine-silk-style vestments are not entirely over—a small quantity of hand-loomed, silk brocades are still made for liturgical use—polyester, with its advantages of durability and high color retention, is now the fiber of choice for the majority of liturgical brocades used in the Orthodox Christian Church.
While technological advances such as polyester fibers have dramatically changed the liturgical brocade market, some of the fibers used since ancient times are still preferred for vestment construction due to their unrivaled properties. Cotton canvas remains one of the best interfacings for providing stability and structure to vestment pieces due to its tight weave and remarkable durability. Silk broadcloth is still sometimes used for priest’s sticharia due to its subtle beauty and unsurpassed breathability, an important concern for someone wearing up to ten extra pounds of clothing for hours at a time. Cassocks continue to be made from fine-grade wool, the drape and elegance of which cannot be equaled by synthetics, and also from true silk crepe (as opposed to “artificial silk,” a common term for polyester or rayon silk substitutes), which is arguably the finest fabric from which a cassock can be tailored.
While hand-embroidered pieces continue to be made, their use remains largely limited to award pieces or the Holy Friday epitaphios. Hand-embroidered vestments are available, but rarely seen due to their high cost. The use of machine embroidery has become so widespread that it now constitutes a specific category of vestment fabric used for so-called “lightweight” or “summer” vestments. This type of fabric is comprised of an extra-wide ground fabric which is machine-embroidered with various traditional designs such as floral sprays or grapevines alternated with crosses in a grid pattern. The comfort of these machine-embroidered fabrics (when made into vestments, they weigh almost half the amount of a comparable brocade vestment set) as well as their beauty and durability, make these fabrics quite popular in the Church today.
Regardless of the fibers utilized, whether hand-loomed silk or modern polyester, the ancient designs of Byzantium still characterize Orthodox Christian liturgical fabrics and make them unique in the world of modern textiles. It is to the rich and sublime symbology of these designs that we shall turn next.
The Designs of Liturgical Textiles
A visit to an ecclesiastical tailoring shop in Athens or Thessaloniki is undeniably a heady experience. Everywhere one looks lie bolts of brocades in an abundance of rich, saturated colors: deep golds shot with red, brilliant whites married with silver, mellow burgundies interwoven with brighter reds and golds, vivid blues, and vibrant, multi-colored brocades in unusual and arresting color combinations—gold mixed with blue, purple, green and red, or silver mixed with green and coral. Yet when one looks closer or perhaps asks for a bolt to be brought down and laid out on the cutting table, the wonder of the colors is superseded by the complexity and beauty of the designs they enliven.
To examine a selection of liturgical brocades used for Orthodox Christian vestments and altar furnishings is to take a walk through history. Here are the ancient knots and vines of the pre-Christian era, the vegetative and floral motifs of Mesopotamia, the urns of ancient Greece and Rome, and myriad variations upon that epitome of Christian symbols, the cross. No two designs are alike, though they share similar motifs and design structure. Just as the use of color within the Church maintains continuity with the ancient perception of the color spectrum, so too the designs used to ornament liturgical fabrics are marked with the most universal and lasting symbols known to humanity.
Mankind has always delighted in decorative embellishment. The history of art, and more specifically textiles, attests to this. Soon after discovering how to weave, man went on to display great ingenuity and creativity in adapting this technology for ornamentation. Some of the earliest-surviving textile fragments are not simple, plain-weave, monochromatic fabrics, but rather sophisticated checker-work designs, similar to modern-day plaids. As opposed to working with a single color in a rote fashion, the production of ornamented textiles demands great focus, time, knowledge, and skill of the artisan, all of which add to the value of the textiles produced. From the artisan’s perspective, it is far more pleasurable to see a design come alive under one’s fingers than to view a monotonous, monochromatic expanse.
To better understand the origins of liturgical textile designs, the environment in which such designs were first created and fostered, that of ancient Greece and Rome, must be considered. The people who lived in these ancient societies placed a high value on symbols and used them lavishly. In a world with many unknowns and frequent instability due to natural disasters, war, and political upheaval, symbols comforted and protected. Most of t
he symbols used in the ancient world can be categorized under two broad headings. The first group, referred to as “apotropaic” (from the Greek “to ward off”) is made up of symbols intended to deflect evils and protect the owner. The second group, “provisionary,” is comprised of symbols believed to ensure plenty. Both apotropaic and provisionary symbols were believed to be invested with supernatural powers. These images were found virtually everywhere from door lintels to domestic household goods, but especially on textiles and similar artwork such as pottery and metalwork. A tapestry-woven panel, emblazoned with provisionary animals and birds, was hung in a doorway to keep out draughts but was also considered to bring plenty to the occupant. A tunic finished with an apotropaic, knot-work border was believed to keep sickness at bay. In a time and place in which literacy was marginal, symbols functioned as a sort of supernatural shorthand and daily life was replete with them.
With the coming of Christ, there was a major shift in the understanding of these ancient symbols. No longer was man subject to the whims of unknown and frightening deities; instead, through grace, he was now under the loving and merciful care of the one, true God. The symbols that pervaded and informed daily life were seen in a new light and were redeemed to serve a new purpose, that of bringing the spiritual world ever to mind as one went about the duties and activities of the material world. The warding off of evil began to be understood as the warding off of the passions and demonic powers, whereas the desire for plenty was broadened to include not only earthly bounty and the staving off of hunger, but also the desire for spiritual riches and blessings.
This concept of the intertwining of the spiritual and material worlds was incorporated into Christian art from the earliest period but found its greatest flowering in Byzantine aesthetics. We observe this interchange of the earthly and heavenly first and foremost in iconography, but it also permeates all other art forms such as textiles, carving, and metalwork. The idea of a cosmic interchange between the spiritual and material worlds is characteristic of a fundamentally Eastern mindset; the modern mind, influenced by Western European culture over the last 500 years, prefers a more one-dimensional reality rooted in logic and reason. But the uniquely Eastern Christian worldview deeply affected early Christian art. As Byzantine scholar Slobodan Curcic states:
The crucial point is that the Byzantine conception of aesthetics in art is not at all related to the Western one. For Westerners, art was a means of representing reality and at times even bettering it, while for Byzantines, art was never an end in itself, but a facilitator of access to the spiritual world, the indescribable, non-containable universe of the divine spirit.22
Textiles—along with the other creative works of the Church such as iconography, architecture, chant, metalwork, stone and marble work, and woodcarving—formed a connection with the spiritual realm and opened to the viewer a new, heavenly vista. While supplemental factors, such as a mathematical approach to beauty, a respect for earlier classical works, and a preoccupation with color, shaped and informed Byzantine art,23 the revolutionary foundation of this new, Christ-centered art was the conviction that the material is intertwined with the spiritual, the external with the internal, the earth with heaven. This was the overarching concept in Byzantine art that informed every artistic endeavor.
It may seem disconcerting to the modern mind that so-called “secular” textiles were repurposed for religious use. But, when understood according to the ancient mindset in which substance was far more important than mere appearance, if the finest silks were those produced for the secular market then those were precisely the silks that would be deemed most suitable for a liturgical setting. Just as it would be inconceivable to the Christian of Byzantium that one would use within the church a cheap brocade marked with crosses instead of a sumptuous silk covered with flowers and vinework, even so the modern mind must lay aside the assumption that only fabrics covered in crosses can be used for religious ends. This is why an exploration of the development of secular textiles is essential to a discussion of liturgical vestments—sometimes these were the only textiles available and often they were superior in quality to all else. Additionally, due to the fragility of textiles through the ages, there is an overwhelmingly larger number of “secular” silks extant and these are the ones with which we must content ourselves when studying the history of textiles devoted to liturgical use.
Figure 1. Silk twill, Egypt, 6–7th century (Adele Coulin Weibel, Two Thousand Years of Textiles, Pantheon Books, Plate 52).
The earliest and most common design structure for Byzantine textiles, was the all-over design, typically laid out in a grid. Figure 1 illustrates this with a diagonal lozenge pattern that has, worked inside the lozenges, alternating designs of two birds nesting in a tree and two peacocks flanking a tree. The vinework that forms the division of the lozenges is lively and intricate and at the intersections of the lines is a cross design made of hearts. The birds and the lush vinework serve together as symbols of abundance and evoke the image of Paradise. The high contrast of the coloration makes the design exceptionally clear and crisp.
Figure 2. Silk twill, Byzantine, 12th century (Adele Coulin Weibel, Two Thousand Years of Textiles, Pantheon Books, Plate 64).
While Byzantine aesthetics were underpinned with the theology of the Orthodox Christian Church, art of the early Byzantine period was not immune to the influence of other cultural currents, especially those of neighboring empires, most notably Sassanid Persia. The early period of Byzantine art relied heavily on the roundel design, the use of which in textiles is thought to have originated in Persia. As can be observed in Figure 2, the roundel, or circle, was a geometric design, but rather than shapes that alternated every row, as with the diagonal lozenge pattern of Figure 1, roundels were stacked in neat rows both vertically and horizontally. Circles were associated with eternity, which may have been part of the appeal of this design, but it must also have been its sheer boldness and visual interest that kept it a favored design motif throughout the entire period of Byzantine silk manufacture. The center of the roundel provided an excellent canvas to display the weaver’s skill and various motifs, both secular and religious, were employed to great effect. Hunters, animals (both real and imaginary), as well as scenes such as the Annunciation pictured in Figure 3, were intricately portrayed. The border of the roundel formed a design feature in its own right and could be comprised of either simple “pearls” as in Figure 2 or complex floral work as in Figure 3. An orderly array of roundels also created a superb opportunity for secondary ornamentation in the diamond-shaped space formed between the grid of roundels, and in these interstices we see further sophisticated designs.
Figure 3. Annunciation silk, Egypt, 6th cent, Rome, Vatican, Museo Cristiano (Ernst Flemming, Encyclopedia of Textiles, Federick A. Praeger, Inc., 14).
In addition to the secondary spaces of the roundel design and their elaborate motifs, the Annunciation silk in Figure 3 displays yet another characteristic feature of Byzantine textile design: the interlocking, knotwork borders that form the roundels. In recent years, art historical scholarship has begun to explore the possibility that such borders had their origins in mosaic tile work. Regardless of their provenance, however, we know that knotwork was an especially important design element in the ancient world, as Byzantine scholar Henry Maguire recounts:
Among the most frequent motifs on textiles, especially the earlier ones, of the third to sixth centuries, are knots and interlaces. . . . The power of such designs in the supernatural realm was conveyed by the Greek language itself, for the verb “katadeo” meant both to bind physically and to bind by spells, or to enchant. Knots and interlaces were not confined to the decoration of textiles, but they appeared in several other media, especially floor mosaics.24
As Maguire explains and other scholars have suggested, there was a dynamic interchange of designs among artisans in various fields that would have been facilitated by the easy transportation of small artifacts such as ceramics, metalwork, and even sk
etches and manuscripts so that a craftsman in one field, such as goldsmithing or woodcarving, would have been aware of new textile designs and vice versa.25 It would have been normal for these various ornamental designs to flow back and forth among craftsmen and influence everything from textiles to mosaic work and ceramics. Basic lozenge patterns as well as the knotwork described above are all found frequently in mosaics of the Byzantine era and it has even been shown that the vaults in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, Italy (which contain some of the finest examples of early Byzantine mosaics still extant) took their overall design from woven silks.26 Figure 4 demonstrates how the more rigid composition of mosaic floor patterns could have been adapted to the border of textile designs: what begins in (a) as a rigid structure becomes subsequently embellished in (b), given more negative space in (c) and reaches its final sophistication in the circles-within-circles design of (d):
Figure 4. Sketch showing mosaic to textile development (R.W. Lethaby, “Byzantine Silks in London Museums,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 24, 140).
Many permutations of this interlaced border were devised because it worked well on the drawloom of the Byzantine silk industry and was highly appealing with its primary and secondary motifs forming a visual back-and-forth energy combined with a restful intricacy. A further adaptation of this design can be seen in Figure 5 below:
Figure 5. Silk, Italy, 13th century (Adele Coulin Weibel, Two Thousand Years of Textiles, Pantheon Books, Plate 168).
This adaptation in Figure 5 shows a quatrefoil medallion taking the place of the roundels and a palmette border with a very fine double outline. It is a graceful and sublime design and echoes of it can be seen in the modern liturgical brocade of Figure 6.
