The excellence of this "English work" was maintained as time went on, a proof of which is found in an anecdote related by Matthew of Paris. " About the same time" (1246), he tells us, "the Lord Pope, having observed that the ecclesiastical ornaments of some Englishmen, such as the choristers' copes and the mitres, were embroidered in gold thread after a very desirable fashion, asked where those works were made, and received answer, in England. Then said the Pope : England is verily a garden of delights for us. It is truly a never failing spring, and there where many things abound, much may be extorted." Accordingly the same "Lord Pope," being allured by the concupiscence of the eyes, sent sacred and sealed briefs to nearly all the abbots of the Cistercian order established in England, to whose prayers he had commended himself at the Chapter of Citeaux, requesting them to have forthwith forwarded to him those embroideries in gold which he preferred to all others, and with which he wished to adorn his chasubles and choral copes, as if those objects cost them nothing. This demand of the Pope did not at all displease the London merchants who traded in those embroideries, and who now sold them at their own price.

All the mediaeval embroideries, however, did not partake of the excessive costliness which, according to this account, was calculated to excite covetous desires dangerous to the welfare of the rich abbeys. In the eleventh century was executed the valuable specimen still preserved and known under the name of the Bayeux tapestry. On a linen cloth 19 inches wide and 210 feet 11 inches long, a lady, traditionally supposed to be Queen Matilda, represented the various episodes of the Conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy. But, whether due to the queen or not, this monument is not less interesting, for history, offering a crowd of details in illustration of arms and costumes, which it would be vain to seek for elsewhere.

The curious arabesques and the false Cufic inscriptions preserved in the Musec de Cluny were also embroidered on linen cloth with coloured silks by the Countess Ghisla, wife of Guifred, Count of Cerdagne. A piece analogous in workmanship and style, and shown in the same museum, dates also from the XI. century, and comes from the abbey of Saint Martin du Canigou.

At Quidlimburg, the abbess Agnes and her nuns, in 1200, executed some embroidered carpets to adorn their church.

As an instance of what embroidery painting could accomplish in the twelfth century, we may cite the episcopal ornaments of Thomas a Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, preserved in the cathedral of Sens, and figured in the "Arts au Moyen age." But a still more complete idea may be formed of the resources of art by studying at Cluny one of the Evangelists embroidered on silk in Cyprus gold; another textile embellished with coloured silks, from the rich abbey of Citeaux; the silken stuff embroidered in gold, the fragment of an old sacerdotal ornament from the monastery of Vergy, and representing, besides the Madonna and SS. Peter and Viventius, the figures of Count Manasses and of the Countess Hermengarde, accompanied with these dedicatory legends : Fratres Petrus offerens super altare hoc vestimentum integrum sacerdotale; and lower down : Comes Manasses et Hermengardis comitissa hujus monasterii fun-datores quod Vergeium dicitur, illud deo offerentes sancto que Viventio et Beatae Mariae atque Sancto Petro.

We may also mention the silk corporal embroidered in gold, on which appear Christ on the Cross between Mary and St. John, the Nativity, the Eternal Father, the symbols of the evangelists, with borders of interlacings, flowers and lilies, and especially an Italian embroidery, a sort of camaieu,. white and yellow in two shades, showing in an architectural portico of semi-circular form St. John standing encircled by a nimbus and holding the book of the gospels in his hand.

At the same time it should be remembered that the art of pictorial needlework had become universal, and in 1295 the inventory of the treasury of the Holy See mentions the embroideries of Venice, Lucca, Spain, England, and Germany. The Paris embroiderers formed a guild whose ordinances, with some names, appear in Depping's "Reglements sur les arts et metiers de Paris." Hence not without reason the Marquis de Laborde writes: "Throughout the whole of the middle ages down to the close of the sixteenth century, embroidery was an art, a serious and worthy branch of painting. The needle, like the painter's brush, moved over the cloth, leaving behind it the coloured threads, and producing a painting soft in tone and ingenious in execution - a bright painting without the play of light, brilliant but not lasting".

This was true from the twelfth century, as has been shown by M. Francis-que Michel by sundry quotations from old French poetry. In the "Roman de Perceval," Gauvain appears at the door of a tent and announces himself; whereupon a young maiden fetches a piece of Saracenic work in which he was pourtrayed: -

Si proprement avoit pourtraite L'yniage a lui et semblant faite, Que nulz homs du mont n'i fausist A lui connoistre, qui veist La pourtraiture et lui ensemble : Si tres finement le resemble.

This practice of embroidering portraits was long continued. At No. 123 of the inventory of Margaret of Austria occurs the notice: "Ung aultre riche tableau de la portraiture de madamc, fete en tappisserie apres le vif," and we shall have presently to speak of an embroidery in which are depicted Henry II. and Diane de Poitiers surrounded by persons of the Court.

If we had merely to give an idea of the number and richness of the fourteenth-century embroideries we might rest satisfied with opening the inventory of Charles V. and quoting: "Une mitre brodee sur champ blanc et orfrasee d'or trait a images, ayant appartenu au pape Urbain V. sans doute; une chappelle de camocas d'outre-mer, brodee a images de plusieurs histoires, une touaille paree, brodee a ymages de la Passion sur or." We should here also find portable paintings embroidered with the needle, such, for instance, as: " Ung ymage de saincte Agnes de brodeure. Item ung ymage de Saint George en brodeure, en ung estuy couvert de satanin ynde. * * Item ungs tableaux de brodeure, ou sont Nostre-Dame, saincte Katherine et saint Jehan l'Euvangeliste, en ung estuy couvert de veluyau vermeil, etc".