Samite

{{other uses|Samite (disambiguation)}}

{{short description|Silk fabric}}

File:The "Martyr Cope" (1270).jpg Treasury.|300px]]

Samite was a luxurious and heavy silk fabric worn in the Middle Ages, of a twill-type weave, often including gold or silver thread. The word was derived from Old French samit, from medieval Latin samitum, examitum deriving from the Byzantine Greek ἑξάμιτον hexamiton "six threads", usually interpreted as indicating the use of six yarns in the warp.[http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/170388 Oxford English Dictionary Online] "samite" (subscription required), accessed 30 December 2010Lisa Mannas, Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Northern and Italian Paintings 1300–1550, Appendix I:III "Medieval Silk Fabric Types and Weaves", Yale University Press, 2008, {{ISBN|978-0-300-11117-0}},

p. 297. Samite is still used in ecclesiastical robes, vestments, ornamental fabrics, and interior decoration.George E. Linton, The Modern Textile Dictionary, NY, 1954, p. 561

Structurally, samite is a weft-faced compound twill, plain or figured (patterned), in which the main warp threads are hidden on both sides of the fabric by the floats of the ground and patterning wefts, with only the binding warps visible.Anna Muthesius, "Silk in the Medieval World". In David Jenkins, ed.: The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003, {{ISBN|0-521-34107-8}}, p. 343Dorothy K. Burnham, Warp and Weft, A Textile Terminology, Royal Ontario Museum, 1980, {{ISBN|0-88854-256-9}}, p. 180. By the later medieval period, the term samite was applied to any rich, heavy silk material which had a satin-like gloss,George S. Cole, A Complete Dictionary of Dry Goods, Chicago, W. B. Conkey company, 1892 indeed "satin" began as a term for lustrous samite.Clothing Of The Thirteenth Century, 1928 [http://www.oldandsold.com/articles09/clothes-22.shtml on-line text])

Origins and spread to Europe

File:Pheasant roundel silk samite.jpg

Fragments of samite have been discovered at many locations along the Silk Road,For an example, see [http://www.metmuseum.org/special/china/section_03_intro.asp "The Silk Road"], Metropolitan Museum of Art website, retrieved 24 May 2008 and are especially associated with the Sasanian Empire.[http://www.lesenluminures.com/pdf/imagestisseesenglish.pdf Woven Textiles: Textiles from Antiquity to the Renaissance, Gallery Les Enluminures] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080908083150/http://www.lesenluminures.com/pdf/imagestisseesenglish.pdf |date=2008-09-08 }}, retrieved 24 May 2008 Samite was "arguably the most important" silk weave of Byzantium, and from the 9th century Byzantine silks entered Europe via the trading ports in what is now Italy. Vikings, connected through their direct trade routes with Constantinople, were buried in samite embroidered with silver-wound threads in the tenth century.[http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/344vil.html Carolyn Priest-Dorman, "Viking Embroidery"], noting published excavations of graves at Valsgärde, Sweden. Silk weaving itself was established in Lucca and Venice in the 12th and 13th centuries, and the statutes of the silk-weaving guilds in Venice specifically distinguished sammet weavers from weavers of other types of silk cloth.Muthesius, "Silk in the Medieval World", p. 332-337

The Crusades brought Europeans into direct contact with the Muslim world and other sources of samite as well as other Eastern luxuries. A samite saddlecloth known in the West as the Suaire de Saint-Josse, now in the Musée du Louvre,Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, "The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field", The Art Bulletin 85.1 (March 2003:152-184), p. 154, fig. 1. was woven in eastern Iran sometime before 961, when Abu Mansur Bakhtegin, for whom it was woven, died; it was brought back from the First Crusade by Stephen, Count of Blois and dedicated as a votive gift at the Abbey of Judoc near Boulogne. At the time of the First Crusade, samite needed to be explained to a Western audience, as in the eye-witness Chanson d'Antioche (ccxxx): "Very quickly he took a translator and a large dromedary loaded with silver cloth, called "samite" in our language. He sent them to our fine, brave men..."[http://www.bu.edu/english/levine/antioch.htm On-line translated text] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080516073521/http://www.bu.edu/english/levine/antioch.htm |date=2008-05-16 }}.

The Fourth Crusade brought riches unknown in the West to the crusaders who sacked Constantinople in 1204, described by Villehardouin: "The booty gained was so great that none could tell you the end of it: gold and silver, and vessels and precious stones, and samite, and cloth of silk..."Villehardouin, Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople ([http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/344vil.html on-line text]).

Use in medieval Europe

File:Sasanian Silk Samite cloth Circa 960.jpg silk samite cloth circa 960. It was used to make the Shroud of Saint-Josse, circa 1134. Probable spoils from the First Crusade.|350px]]

Samite was a royal tissue: in the 1250s, it featured clothing of fitting status provided for the innovative and style-conscious English king Henry III, his family, and his attendants. For those of royal blood, there were robes and mantles of samite and cloth of gold.Noted by James F. Willard, reviewing Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, A.D. 1251-1253 in Speculum, 4.2 (April 1929:222–223). Samite might be interwoven with threads wrapped in gold foil. It could be further enriched by being over-embroidered: in Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail (1180s) "On the altar, I assure you, there lay a slain knight. Over him was spread a rich, dyed samite cloth, embroidered with many golden flowers, and before him burned a single candle, no more, no less."Chrétien, Nigel Bryant, tr. Perceval: The Story of the Grail 2006:207 In manuscript illuminations, modern readers often interpret rich figurative designs as embroidered, but Barbara GordonBarbara Gordon, ""Whips and angels: painting on cloth in the medieval period" ([https://web.archive.org/web/20130318195148/http://middleages.ca:80/Parma/steyned/STEYNED.html on-line text preserved at archive.org]). points out that they could equally be painted and illustrates a samite mitre painted grisaille in the Cleveland Museum of Art.Her figure 12. According to the Louvre, the most famous example of painted silk, the Parement of Narbonne, despite being a royal commission, was only made on "fluted silk imitating samite".[http://www.louvre.fr/llv/oeuvres/detail_notice.jsp?CONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198673225928&CURRENT_LLV_NOTICE%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198673225928&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=9852723696500780&baseIndex=0&bmUID=1164586172692&bmLocale=en Louvre website] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930190210/http://www.louvre.fr/llv/oeuvres/detail_notice.jsp?CONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198673225928&CURRENT_LLV_NOTICE%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198673225928&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=9852723696500780&baseIndex=0&bmUID=1164586172692&bmLocale=en |date=2007-09-30 }}

In the wrong hands, samite could threaten the outward marks of social stability; samite was specified among the luxuries forbidden to the urban middle classes in sumptuary laws by the court of René of Anjou about 1470: "In cities mercantile governments outlawed crowns, trains, cloth of samite and precious metals, ermine trims, and other pretensions of aristocratic fashion" Diane Owen Hughes, "Regulating women's fashion", in A History of Women in the West: Silences of the Middle Ages, Georges Duby et al. (Harvard University Press) 1992:139. In Florence, when the condottiero Walter VI, Count of Brienne offered the innovation of a sumptuous feast to John the Baptist in 1343, the chronicler Giovanni Villani noted among the rich trappings "He added to the other side of the palioSan Giovanni's banner. of crimson samite cloth a trim of gray squirrel skin as long as the pole."Villani, Chronicle, quoted in Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Cornell University Press) 1980:257f.

See also

Notes

{{reflist|2}}