hand of the skeleton. Near it was a small silver ring (Plate II.,
fig. 4); six circular pendants of thin gold plate,
(Plate I., figs. 1—6), with gold loops for suspension, lay between the
shoulders. A large number of beads were found about the centre of the
grave, and amongst them lay two small circular bronze fibulae (Plate
I.,
figs. 8, 9), of the shape and pattern so common in Kent, which had
probably been suspended from the same wire,—a bead being found attached
to a small portion of wire which had passed through the loop of one of the
fibulae.1
of their manufacture between Frithestan’s
consecration to the See of Winchester, 905, and the death of Elfeda,
second Queen of Edward the Elder, which occurred before 916 (the date of
Edward’s third marriage). All the five ornaments—stole, maniple,
girdle, and bracelets—appear by strong evidence to have been placed on
the Saint’s body in 934, two years after Frithestan’s death, by
Athelestan, Edward’s son and successor. (See Raine’s ‘St. Cuthbert,’
pp. 202—209.)
Mr. Raine also quotes from the manuscript account, by
Reginald the Monk, of the removal of the Saint’s body to Durham
Cathedral, in 1104, a description of some similar gold embroidery, which
formed the border and cuffs to a dalmatic then discovered and |
|
removed.
(P. 89, and App. p. 4.) The gold thread found in the grave at Sarr
answers most exactly to this description of St. Cuthbert’s stole, etc.
It is flat, and woven; the thread of silk or other substance which was
interwoven with it has perished, but in the less frayed parts, the
spaces where such threads have passed through are most evident. The art
of wire-drawing is believed is to have been unknown till the fourteenth
century, and this flat thread, delicate as it is, must have been formed
on the anvil. Its evident process of manufacture, and its use for
weaving or embroidery, are most curiously illustrated by a passage in
the Mosaic description of the ephod made for Aaron :—" And
they did beat the gold into thin plates, and cut it into wires, to work
it in the blue, and in the purple, and in the scarlet, and in the
fine linen, with cunning work." (Exod. xxxix. 3.)
The breadth of our woven fragment appears to have been
rather less than a quarter of an inch,—it is too frayed for
ascertaining its length ; but from the position in which it was found,
we may conclude that it formed either the border of the sleeve, as in
the earlier discovery of St. Cuthbert, or (more probably, there being no
corresponding fragment) a bracelet, as in the later. It is a slight help
towards fixing the date of this grave to know that exactly similar
ornaments were made for and worn by Anglo- Saxons of high rank at the
beginning of the tenth century.- T. G. F.]
1. It may well have been a habit to include within the acus
of a fibula the wire which strung a necklace of beads, for greater
security to necklace and fibula. |