 Okay, let's get started. Okay, good evening everyone. We're just gonna wait a few minutes or so more while all of the participants join. Okay, I see the numbers slowing down. So I think what we'll do is we'll start with the introduction and people can join as they do. Okay, so good evening and welcome everyone joining us tonight online for the fifth lecture in our series, Britain in the World and the Middle Ages, Image and Reality, hosted by the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art. My name is Lloyd DeBeer and I'm one of the co-conveners along with my colleague, Jessica Bambine. Before we jump into the lecture, we're just gonna have a couple of house keeping notes. So the session is gonna last roughly 45 minutes and is gonna be followed by an opportunity to ask questions. The session will end no later than 7.30. Audience members, if we can ask you to type your questions into the Q&A function. I know that it's down there near the chat function if we could just push you to the Q&A box. This session will be recorded and it's gonna be made available to the public later on. Close captioning is available. If you'd like this, click the CC button on your screen to enable captions. Moving on though to our lecture tonight. It is my absolute pleasure and delight to introduce our speaker tonight, Dr. Amanda Leister who's currently senior lecturer at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts where she's taught since 2006. This is not long after completing her PhD at Harvard in 2003. Amanda's one of those rare scholars who ranges far and wide with ease, both in terms of geography and the objects that she works on. And her impressive list of publications demonstrates this taking us from Moisac to the Alhambra to Avignon. And it's for this reason that we invited Amanda to participate in our series which as most of you will know by now is about exploring Britain's place in the medieval world in as broad as possible sense. We are of course thrilled that she said yes because Amanda is always thinking about the bigger picture. England might be a focus tonight but the Eastern Mediterranean or the Islamic world are not far from her mind. For the last few years, Amanda's been engaged in a major research project centered on an extraordinary group of 13th century foretells of the British Museum. Some of the fruits of which we'll see tonight. But in the coming years, there will be much more from Amanda. She is preparing two books, one called English Bodies, Imported Silks, The Impact of Islamic and Byzantine Textiles in Gothic England. And the other, Bringing the Holy Land Home, The Crusades, Church of the Abbey and the Reconstruction of a Medieval Masterpiece. And this second publication is the companion to a major exhibition of the same name. One that Amanda herself has curated which will be opening next year at Holy Cross. So lots of exciting things to come. But for now, I'll hand over to you, Amanda, for your talk tonight titled Movement. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Can you see my screen? Yes. Yes. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Lloyd, for that kind introduction. I'm most grateful to Lloyd De Beer and Jessica Berenwein for inviting me to speak and to the Palm Mountain Center for hosting us. This lecture series, Britain and the World in the Middle Ages, Image and Reality, is designed to open our eyes to Britain's rich connections to other locations around the medieval globe. My theme, Movement, enables me to track the physical translations of objects from one place to another. Other lectures in this series have already alluded to the importance of the movement of objects and materials. Henry III's gold coin, made from gold, carried from the Sahara and collected for his ill-fated crusading efforts in the 1250s. The 14th century English-made jugs found in a palace of Ghana. The luck of Eden Hall, a 14th century enameled glass beaker made in Syria or Egypt, which made its way to Northern England. The name given to the Islamic glass beaker in 1677, the luck of the House of Eden Hall, suggests not only the prestige, but the talismanic power of objects that came from far away. The loss or breakage of the luck of Eden Hall could bring tragedy to the family that owned it. The exotic origins of unusual imported objects gave them a kind of presence and potential agency. They were strange. They could do things. They could be effective in both sacred and secular spheres. In my lecture today, I'm going to examine a particular body of influential objects that moved. Fine silk textiles like this one, woven around the Byzantine and Islamic Mediterranean, carried by boat and horseback into London, into Canterbury, into Durham. Let me echo Tom Nixon's point from last time that although these textiles moved vast distances, they were conveyed across those distances by another of middlemen on shorter journeys. This textile, which was woven around the 7th century in the Eastern Mediterranean, fits the description of a lost silk owned by King Henry III of England in the 13th century, showing the Old Testament hero, Samson, here, tearing apart a lion under an arcade by which is meant this gently undulating series of arches. Henry III's Samson silk, which we can imagine looked a lot like this, would have been woven overseas, but carried to England in multiple steps, probably by repeated gifting, in a long process that could well have taken centuries. Like other objects that moved, these silk textiles appeared as powerful presences in medieval Britain. They were used to drape the coffins of the recently deceased as offerings to celebrate births, as dedications to saints to bring good fortune in wars with whales or further away in the Holy Land. My thesis is this, the movement of Islamic and Byzantine silks into medieval Britain was significant, not only in itself, but because of the impact that those imported textiles had on British art. Ultimately, I suggest that imported silks enabled the later medieval English elite to express their varied ambitions, using a widely understood, cosmopolitan visual vocabulary, and that these imported silks also inspired local production in media like floor tiles and wall painting in ways that have not yet been sufficiently recognized. Paying attention to the movement of textiles enables a new view of canonical works of British medieval art and architecture. For instance, many features of Westminster Abbey, a preeminent monument of mid-13th century English architecture, are understood as a response to French architecture, particularly Paz. Additionally, the energetic tinted line drawings of the monk Matthew Parris and face this little self-portrait at St. Paul's. These are considered among the most significant manuscript illuminations of mid-13th century England. And these are generally understood within a distinctly English tradition. I do not mean to contest either of these readings which are long-standing and well-supported. However, I do wanna suggest that there are other aspects of medieval English visual culture, which we've been missing. Much of English medieval public display was constructed through other media that have not survived as well. Faded wall paintings, fragile textiles used as dress and wall hangings. Even objects like pictorial floor tiles, which tend to escape the notice of paintings driven and architecture driven scholarship. These other media clearly exhibited England's reliance not just on Western Europe, but clearly on the Eastern Mediterranean. These other media also played a substantial role in the public articulation of authority and prestige. Realized, for instance, that Westminster Abbey would have been enlivened by gatherings in which many of the elite wore Byzantine and Islamic textiles, as is witnessed by surviving medieval inventories from ecclesiastical collections in London. The Abbey's altars and walls would have been adorned with imported silks on special occasions. Realized too that Matthew Parris described a vision in one of his histories in which the deceased King John appeared wearing textile called Imperiali, which should be understood in relation to explicitly Byzantine production. Matthew Parris also donated an Islamic or Byzantine silk with eagles, perhaps like this one, to his beloved church at St. Baldwin's, with the directive that it be used to honor the Blessed Virgin. These historical references show how the English elite relied on Eastern Mediterranean textiles that highly charged historical moments and in the most socially significant spaces where royal and ecclesiastical power dynamics were formed and displayed. So that concludes my introduction. The remainder of today's lecture will be laid out as follows. My thesis has two halves, the movement of imported silks into Britain and the impact of those silks on British art. So the remainder of today's lecture also has two halves, the first on imported silks in Britain, the second on the impact those silks had. Each of those halves is then divided into two parts. If you're paying attention, this means we now have quarters. In the first half, I look at X10 silks and then records of silks. And then in the second half, I look at the churchy tiles, which are floor tiles, and then at some wall paintings. Silk, weight for weight could be as valuable as gold in the Middle Ages. A silk textiles tight weave structure and aptitude for taking dye mean that it can be used to create sophisticated figural imagery in deep, rich, lasting colors. Silk textiles are woven from long shimmering threads produced by silkworms. Silk was cultivated in China for millennia and both the materials and practices of silk making gradually spread restward along the silk roads. Here you see Han China, Roman Empire over here, England up here. We're talking about the first century or so of common era. So when the Romans became familiar with silk, they fell in love with it. And after the fall of the Roman Empire, the eastern half of the Roman Empire survived as the Byzantine Empire with its capital in today's Istanbul, Byzantine Constantinople. There is a lovely little legend about how two monks smuggled silkworms out of China and delivered them to the Byzantine Emperor in the sixth century. And indeed the Byzantines did begin their own silk making industry. So if we jump forward in time, here's the Byzantine Empire around 1100 still centered on Constantinople. Both the later Byzantines and the Islamic rulers, remember the birth of Islam and its incredible expansion began in the seventh century. They both become renowned for their silk making. Here's a Byzantine Emperor wearing an impressive silk with griffins and roundels. The importance of wearing and gifting silk was endemic to the imperial Byzantine court and to the Islamic Abbasid and Fatimid courts and the courts of Islamic Spain. Not only silk, but also silk related practices were gradually adopted from the Eastern Mediterranean courts by those of Western Europe. Note that this map also shows you the Norman kingdom of Sicily. This is an incredible embroidered silk mantle made for the Christian Norman ruler, Roger II of the multicultural medieval kingdom of Sicily. The mantle shows two lions subduing camels set with pearls, sapphires, garnets, metal filigree and enamel. Silk was adopted not only by the Normans in Sicily but also by the Carolingians, Atonians and the Holy Roman emperors in Germany as well as the people court in Rome. Each of these courts gifted silks to other courts and displayed silks at their own public ceremonial. To be a ruler was in part expressed by displaying and gifting silk. Nor, of course, was silk confined to the nominally secular circumstances of courts. Silk was a significant part of religious observance across various religions and regions. I'm showing you here a painting in the National Gallery from around 1500 showing St. Giles St. Mass. It shows us the interior of the French church. What I want you to focus on is the fabulous importance of silks and other rich textiles. Giles' brilliant vestments, the verdant green curtains, the rich red woven altar frontal, a geometric carpet in jewel tones, the king's little table, covered in a silk cloth woven with gold thread, yet another precious textile here, yet another on the altar supporting Giles' manuscript. The role played here by silk would not have been uncommon in wealthy churches throughout later medieval Europe and in Britain. Christian saints relics were wrapped in silk. Church walls were hung with silk. Alters could be draped with silk underneath the linen altar cloth. Vestments were made of silk. For the Christians of Western Europe, the culture of silk usage in the Eastern Mediterranean and especially in the Holy Land made an impact and led to many individuals bringing home both the expectations and materials of those practices. From Papal Rome to Paris to the village of Caddington in Bedfordshire, and yes, I have a record of imported silk in medieval Caddington, silk was a desirable material. So now we're moving to talk about extant silks remaining from medieval English contexts. Scholars have long known that some imported silks remained from medieval British contexts used as clothing and shrouds and tombs and as seal bags and relic wrappers and church treasuries. I'm showing you here one of the exquisite seal bags. Now these are intended to protect fragile wax seals on medieval documents made from imported silk at Canterbury Cathedral. This seal bag shows a bird with streamers flying behind its neck and deep green and gold against ruby red ground. Only a small number of imported silks actually survived from English medieval context though. These seal bags are important survivals. Silks from tombs are another group of important survivals. I show you here drawings of some of the imported medallion silks, medallion meaning that the designs are repeated in roundels and medallions. These survived from burial contexts. In this case, these are all from the tomb of St. Cuthbert. When Cuthbert's tomb during Cathedral was examined in 1827, Onlookers discovered a wide variety of textiles including two full-width silks both ascribed to the period around 800, one Byzantine and showing design depicting the earth and ocean, central Asian of uncertain decoration as well as two textiles probably made in Spain in the 11th and 12th century, one bearing a stamped design of a mounted falconer and one bearing a double headed peacock. The number of surviving figural silks imported from Iberia, Byzantium, the Near East and Central Asia that remain from medieval British context like Cuthbert's tomb or at least the number known to me is perhaps a few dozen. However, what I found out recently is that careful consideration of royal and ecclesiastical inventories, histories, wills and other documents can yield a comparatively large amount of new evidence for the existence of Islamic and Byzantine textiles in medieval England. In fact, nearly 200 Byzantine, Islamic or other imported silks have left traces in medieval English records. So now we're gonna move from extant silks to records of silks. For instance, again at the tomb of St. Cuthbert and I'm showing you here Durham Cathedral to remind you of that context, we read that the teenage 10th century King Edmund made a brief visit there. Edmund had just attained his kingship was off to war. On his way, he stopped at Cuthbert's tomb where he placed with his own hand two gold bracelets and two Greek meaning Byzantine cloths on top of Cuthbert's holy body. As this pre-battle offering suggests, often imported silks were offered at altars in association with war, either before setting out or after the return home. In the next century, Knut, the 11th century King of England and Denmark gave a silk woven with peacocks to Glastonbury Abbey as recorded in William of Malmbury's 12th century guest oregano and lorum. This silk must have been imported as the English did not have the technology to weave silks with figural iconography at this time. To clarify, in just about every case the silks recorded in these documents have been lost but we can work to reconstruct what the lost silk might have looked like. So I show you here an extant medieval Mediterranean silk that fits the record's description, woven with multicolored figures of peacocks. This textile was woven in Islamic Spain. Knut's donated textile too then might have been made in Islamic Spain. The recorded silk was used to honor the departed spirit of King Knut's predecessor as the Chronicle Reads. Knut, King of England, hastened to Glastonbury Abbey to see the shades of his own brother Edmund. Bring this way, he had been accustomed to summoning him. Very interesting. When he'd made a speech, he placed over the sepulchre a pallium woven with multicolored figures of peacocks. The imported silk's unusual appearance and exotic origin give it a special power to honor the dead, to mark or facilitate the connection between the dead and the living. Imported silks were also given at altars to mark crusading vows. In the 13th century, King Edward I donated a Byzantine or Islamic silk with lions, hares, and trees after having recently taken the cross without going crusade. Even when such textile gifts were not made explicitly in connection with warfare, their connections to the Eastern Mediterranean destination of many crusaders enabled them to act as illusions to war. I imagine that King Richard the Lionheart's gift to Salisbury of a silk cloth showing elephants intended to hang in front of the altar might have been read in this vein, especially as Richard was celebrated as a crusader king. Richard the Lionheart's elephant textile might have looked like this one, which survives in Akhen. This exotic beast sporting a gorgeous woven saddle dueled in jingling harnesses and long eyelashes steps softly despite its bulk across floral vegetation. Many textiles like this one must have entered England due to the traveling crusaders returning home with souvenirs of their journey. Military combat between English crusaders and Muslims in the Eastern Mediterranean did not prevent so-called Saracen or Islamic silks from playing important roles in English contexts. Again, at Durham, for instance in 1284, a vestment made from Saracen cloth was being used to celebrate the day of St. Lawrence. At St. Paul's in London in 1245, a cushion made for carrying sacred texts was of Saracen work rather old. This subtly patterned silk with gold metal thread used in the Spanish tomb in 1252 is a good example of what might have been found in medieval England. While the crusades were fought against Muslim armies, Islamic silks in England were used for the finest Christian vestments and for carrying Christian manuscripts. So I've mentioned different uses for imported silks on the way to war or crusade in honor of a death. In addition, many different kinds of individuals also owned and donated imported silks. A master clothier, William Sisor, his surname, a reference to his occupation in which he used scissors, donated a magnificent imported silk in honor of King Edward I's wife, Eleanor Castile. The silk was to be used in the mass of the Blessed Virgin for the soul of the departed Eleanor. William's gifted silk was red, woven with gold and deer and trees, with later added embroidery of European coats of arms. The iconography of deer flanking a central tree is well known in West Asia. I'm showing here an example made in eighth century Egypt or Syria. This imported silk might represent both the respect and sense of loss felt by a skilled artisan for his deceased patron. There are a few instances in which we can expand these generally terse inventory references to understand more about the historical context in which imported silks might change hands. For instance, the 1295 inventory of St. Paul's in London tells us that Edward I and his queen Eleanor Castile's coming from Wales, gave two Islamic or Byzantine silks showing archers inside medallions to St. Paul's Cathedral. I'm showing you here different examples, actually three examples. Silks showing archers two from seventh century Syria, one from the eighth century. The 1295 St. Paul's inventory is unexpected inclusion of the information that Edward and Eleanor were coming from Wales, suggests that this was not just any trip to Wales but a significant trip. Most likely then, the donation followed Edward's return after English victory in the war with Wales in 1283 and his lengthy tour of Wales in 1284. In a symbolic act, Eleanor gave birth to their son, Edward II, at Canarvon Castle in Wales in April 1284. Edward I thereby stayed away from London for more than three years, returning to Westminster only after his son's first birthday in April 1285. Edward I and Eleanor's relatively prolonged stay at Westminster at this point, they remained at Westminster from April until July 1285, is the most likely period for the pair of textiles coming from Wales to be gifted to St. Paul's. Now, when Edward had been in Wales, a presentation symbolic of conquest took place and a group of Welsh men presented the conquered Welsh princes treasures to Edward, including silver and precious relics. It's tempting to believe that this recorded pair of Mediterranean maidsilks was also part of the Welsh treasure. If this was the case, the gifting of these textiles to St. Paul's, carefully noted as given by the king and queen coming from Wales, enables the textiles not just to signify that they came from Wales, but also something much larger, i.e. that these imported silks arrived at St. Paul's due to English victory in Wales, and they materially represent English possession and reuse of Welsh-owned cultural heritage. We're now moving to the second half of the lecture in which we explore the impact of imported silks on local production in Britain. I'm gonna share with you a series of discoveries that my team and I have made in what makes seem an unrelated body of objects, a group of English floor tiles known as the churchy tiles. These ceramic tiles were discovered in a highly fragmented state in the 19th century in the heart of the English countryside, a churchy abbey. Two of the best known roundels show a scene from the Crusades that of King Richard I of England, called the Lionheart, fighting Saladin, founder of the Islamic Ayubid dynasty, which encompassed a region from Egypt to the Levant and beyond. Our recent reconstruction of the churchy tiles reveals connections far beyond Britain. I will highlight the tiles debt to the global movement of luxury textiles. The red clay of Surrey appears far removed from delicate silkworms threads, harvested and woven on looms across the sea. Yeah, that's important. In fact, one of the most important points I wanna make, a well-known English artwork created from English earth, no less. In fact, there's witness to a deep and long-lived connection between English men and women and the silk culture of the Eastern Mediterranean. This approach has been theorized using the term, global, a word coined to reflect the insistent and even structuring presence of the global within the local context, the global, local, global. So rather than opposing the two spheres, seeing global and local as inter-thetical, the term global recognizes that both the global and local spheres depend upon and indeed partly construct each other. The imagery on the local tiles is informed by the trans-regional distribution of silks. The widely distributed silks are actually only used and understood in local environments, including the abbeys and palaces along the Thames. Our journey today will continue then with a fragmented pile of floor tiles and the process by which I and my co-investigators have worked to reassemble these fragments into a whole. That newly reconstructed whole then leads back to the role of imported textiles in the evil Britain. In 1853, a group of workmen preparing to build a house out of reclaimed and evil stone blocks were digging on the site of the ruined and medieval abbey at Chertsey and Serp. Chertsey abbey had been demolished in the mid-16th century under Henry VIII. Since then, the area had been strewn with bones and fragments. The workmen came across a pile of broken ceramic tiles just under the surface of the soil. At first these might not have seemed particularly impressive, simply more debris. Yet as the workers began to clear away the pieces of broken tile they must have seen beneath the centuries of caked dirt, lines of white clay across the red clay base, lines that resolved into pictures, horses hoops, lion's tails, the head of a knight. I'm showing you here a photograph of the site only a few years later in 1861, showing some of the tile fragments here, here still being unearthed. These workmen had discovered a group of ceramics we now call the Chertsey tiles. If you have visited the medieval gallery at the British Museum, you will have seen or at least walked past the most famous pair of Chertsey tiles, these two roundels I've already shown you, showing Richard the Lionheart and Salton. Among the most admired medieval ceramics in Britain, the Chertsey tiles iconic pairing is one of the most often used medieval representations of crusading combat and can therefore be found broadly across both scholarly publications and the internet, teaching history with a hundred objects, history extra, as well as in more unexpected locations, like the cover for the hit single hush by Kula Shaker, which reached number two in the UK in 1997. You may or may not remember this song, it has, I assure you, absolutely nothing to do with the crusades. Nearly all of these mold-made tiles were discovered at Chertsey Abbey, but the original molds were likely a royal commission, probably made for Henry III and Eleanor Provence at Westminster Palace around 1250. The Chertsey combat tiles, which I show here in all of their damaged glory, depict scenes of battle within a complex mosaic program, including a number of previously under-ciphered Latin inscriptions. In the 1970s, the British Museum physically reconstructed two roundels, they put them back together. These are the ones still on view in the medieval gallery. However, scholarship on the tiles to date has been limited, because nearly all their remainder exists only as hundreds of small fragments, like these, stored in museum cabinets in the British Museum, Chertsey Museum, Guilford Museum, Winchester Cathedral, and elsewhere. Our team recently completed a digital reconstruction of both the figural fragments, so these, as well as many of the texts. Digital reconstruction, this does not exist. This is a digital reconstruction made of photographs. The reconstructed texts, which you can see framing the images here, fascinatingly point to particular sources, ranging from English royal seals to widespread traditions surrounding the Old Testament figure, Samson, to Latin histories of warfare, all of which seem to have been used by the tiles designers. Previous scholarship had identified the floor as a series of famous combats. By contrast, I suggest that all of these combats act as an allusion to crusading deeds accomplished in the Eastern Mediterranean, portrayed in the light of English victory, focused on Richard the Lionheart, but with contemporary import for the mid-13th century crusading aims of the tiles presumed patrons, Henry III and Eleanor Provost. My team and I first set out to create photographic composites for each design in the combat series. We constructed these from a series of carefully controlled photographs of the fragments at the British Museum and elsewhere. So we photographed each fragment, we then digitally isolated each fragment from the spike or background, and manipulated them all in Photoshop so that they precisely overlap other fragments in the composite image. We were also able to incorporate a small number of additional fragments, not included within the drawings that were completed in the 1980s in the photographic composites. So you see in this example, we've been able to add the lion's head. The photographs also suggest that there may have been only one chevron on the knight's shield rather than two. Each pictorial roundel was originally surrounded by a combination of framing tiles, some bearing text like these, others bearing ornament. Each text tile, so like these, bore a series of up to four letters on it, but the order in which these tiles could be assembled to make words is unknown. Yet with the aid of current internet resources and purpose written computer code, we found that much more could be done with the tiles of texts. I've just published an interpretation of the 85 textual fragments in this series, reconstructing words in some phrases. The famed pair, Richard and Saladin, now for the first time, can be shown as they once were, surrounded by text. The reconstructed phrases for these roundels are as follows, Richard by grace of God, king of England, Saladin is pierced by Richard. Other reconstructed phrases include the one around Samson, the courage of Samson, the strong growth of the jaws of the lion, the knight you destroyed by means of a stick, club, I grow in power, the great lion having been penetrated, the lion perishes by means of the spear of the knight, the death of the enemy comes to pass, I defend having been raised up by their victory. This was a really fun part of the project, and I don't have time to go into the details here, but feel free to ask me more about the textual reconstructions afterwards. Finally, we assembled the image roundels and their surrounding texts into a series of letters, into a single rectangular panel, a floor, connected by ornamental hexagonal tiles and miniature roundels. The combat series tiles were originally designed to be laid this way as a mosaic pavement marked by a regular grid of roundels and what's known as a monellian pattern. This painstaking reconstruction of the Terzi combat tiles, both image and text has a floor, has enabled us to see the tile series in a new way. The subject of the combat tile mosaic was not just a series of famous combats, as previous colleagues suggested, it is instead a literary and learned compilation of crusaders and lion hunters, including biblical heroes, for example, all fighting in the Holy Land alongside Richard the Lionheart. Richard and Saladin never actually met in single combat, although they were on opposite sides in the Third Crusade. The crusading theme explicitly shown on these two roundels is echoed by other roundels, showing archers and crossbowmen dressed in crusading garments of long tunics over male armor, and particularly by a fragment showing a Muslim soldier identifiable by his headgear wounded by an arrow. In addition to military combats, like the duel between Richard and Saladin, lion fights were scattered through the floor. These take various forms. In this example, a man with curly ringlets, a soft tunic and bare feet fights a lion from a top of horse. The late antique hairstyle and clothing of the man on this tile suggest he's a classical hero, that is, he lived in a different era before the time of Richard the Lionheart. Another tile shows Samson, who tore a lion into pieces using nothing but his bare hands. While viewers today might not associate lion combats with the crusades for medieval viewers, lion combats were among a group of events that were said to occur regularly in crusading narratives. The Trissie lion combats contain elements that overlap with these narratives, a lion and soldier with a shield, a lion and a knight with a sword, a lion overcome by bare hands. The lion combats then are not separate from the narrative of Richard and Saladin's battle. These two kinds of fight occur in the same place, the Holy Land, and they're part of the same narrative. Both the soldiers and the lion hunters appeared in a varied but contiguous and continuous struggle. The fighting spills across the countryside. Men battle against other men and fierce beasts. Combatants show their God-given courage, superhuman strength. The floor contains events from the past at different times, biblical history with Samson. Reco-Roman history is suggested by the classicizing writer. Recent history under Richard the Lionheart. Still all of these events, both in the distant and more recent past, are located in the Christian Holy Land in the Eastern Mediterranean, where lions live and great deeds are done. The Terzi combat series of images and texts was an original composition, emphasizing the victory of Richard the Lionheart and the Crusades, relying on allusions to other kinds of heroic actions, many of which take on specific meaning in the context of the Crusades. This visual and textual composition is informed by a long tradition of literature about the Crusades, in which other famous figures are introduced in the context of the battle. This new reading of the floor as a narrative taking place in the Holy Land also resonates with its compositional similarity to imported medallion silks, many of which were made in the Eastern Mediterranean. Before this digital reconstruction existed, the broken tile pieces were sufficiently small, you remember, that it was difficult to grasp their original impact. As our digital reconstruction makes clear, the mosaic composition of the Terzi combat floor set figural medallions into a foliage surround with small motifs introduced between the large medallions. In England in the 13th century, when this was made, Byzantine and Islamic medallion pattern silks, which I show you here, remained the most prestigious examples of this kind of composition. Medallion pattern textiles from the Eastern Mediterranean also carry iconography very similar to the Terzi tiles. Kings on horseback, archers on horseback, lion combats. The Terzi floor then, which is about crusading, was arranged in a format that was associated with some of the finest souvenirs that came home from crusading lands. Mediterranean made roundel based silks with combat iconography, both the overall medallion composition of the combat floor and the type of iconographic motifs, mounted archers, lion combats, Samson correspond precisely to specific genres of imported silks. Mounted archers, for instance, appear on the so-called hunter silks, some of which have been ascribed to 8th century Byzantine origins. When comparing this hunter silk to one of the Terzi tiles, we see they both focus on a mounted horseman spearing a rearing lion, mounted horseman spearing a rearing lion. With a running dog inside a roundel, this so-called Amazon silk and this Terzi tile, both focus on a mounted archer facing backwards on his or her mount with the so-called Parthian shot here, facing backwards at the Parthian shot, as the horse rears or leaps in the air. Lions are present here, lions are not part of this tile, but would have been present on the adjacent tiles. Still, there are aspects that render the Terzi tiles visually distinct from the hunter and Amazon silks, like this one, for when the doubling that's so characteristic of these silks is missing in the combat tiles. There are however other textiles, like this less well known, which bear even closer resemblance to the Terzi tiles. These silks show mounted soldiers and hunters in roundels without the doubling of the main motif and with variations in the form of the horsemen. So I'm showing you here a fragment from the 6th to 9th century at the Victoria Albert Museum. This is a close-up of one of the roundels, this one here. Both this textile and the Terzi tiles then show scenes of mounted combats, often with lions, with single, not doubled motifs, showing small variations from each other in thickly framed roundels, alternating with foliate patterns. While it is unproved and probably unprovable with the designers of the combat tiles drew directly on eastern textiles' models, that situation is quite likely, given the widespread presence and prestige of imported silks around the English court. Significantly, the 1295 inventory from St. Paul's witnesses that King Edward, Henry III's son, owned and then donated imported medallion textiles displaying crossbowmen, archers, and knight's running horseback, all subjects included on the Terzi tiles. My realization of the large numbers of imported silks in 13th century England and the variety of roles that they played at charged historical moments has changed my understanding of England's visual environment. Gradually, I came to the study of native English-made artistic production with new eyes. For instance, not just the Terzi tiles, but also some 13th century English wall paintings. Wall paintings are very likely to have been inspired by Mediterranean silks, which their patrons or designers had in fact seen locally in England. Examples include these griffin in roundel wall paintings at Ely. These unfortunately survive only in copies. At Ely Cathedral, the wall paintings show what seems to be a single, heavy textile panel flanked by illusionistically draped, lighter fabric. Griffins appear in a medallion pattern with foliate forms in between. As in extant griffin silks, the painted griffins easily face each other in pairs, tails held direct. Characteristic of these English-made interpretations of Eastern Mediterranean textile imagery are the medallion pattern with foliate interpolation and the use of iconography, including combats, lions, griffins, and either paired or double-headed birds. This should not be surprising. Imported medallion silks inspired many artists in various media centuries and locales. For instance, in the Crip had shopped, painted imitations of medallion-style lion textiles are displayed. Although damaged, the wall painting shares with this 9th or 10th century Byzantine silk, its thick medallion frames, enclosing single lions with curling tails, interspersed with star-like decorative motifs. Other wall paintings echoing Eastern Mediterranean medallion textiles can be found elsewhere in France, Italy, the Levant, and beyond. Surprisingly similar wall paintings showing lions and medallions remain in late 12th or 13th century Umbria in Italy. And what is clearly articulated as a painted imitation of a hanging textile, including rings at the top from which the textile hangs and a realistically undulating surface across the fictive textile's top edge. Furthermore, the wall paintings in a palace chapel in Hungary, probably dating to the late 12th century, as well as the painted acts in the Crusader States, also present wall paintings of lions and medallions on a deep red ground. Motifs of these wall paintings that are also present in silks, I'm showing you that silk again here, include lions in intricate medallion frames, forward-facing lion faces, erect curling tails, and sometimes a raised paw. Going back to England, a lion in a medallion in English wall painting, which, according to these criteria, can reasonably interpret it in connection with imported textiles, can be found in a small church in Hampshire. Court Hampton Church is the home of 13th century wall paintings, currently difficult to read. Tristram provides a more legible drawing of these paintings in his survey of the English medieval wall painting. On the left and right walls, flanking the apps, hanging fictive textiles, wall paintings that show simple curtains delineated by ample v-shaped folds around richer vertical panels of cloth, these fictive panels show thick ornamental borders, delineated at the inside and outside by a thin ribbon-like band, and containing a section of cloth that seems to have been cut from a medallion silk containing lions. The physical practice of attaching fabric backdrops to panels of imported silk is witnessed in inventories, particularly in the papal inventories in Rome. The wall painting at Court Hampton has lost much of its original detail, but its extant lion in a medallion also shows a raised paw, an erect curved tail, and what is probably a frontal view of the lion's head. All these details correspond to other wall paintings on the continent, which imitated the appearance and placement of lion silks. The small church in Hampshire, then, evokes the use of imported lion and medallion silks. Cut down and edged with an added border, hung along its walls. We wonder, but may never know, did Court Hampton actually own textiles like these, or were these wall paintings perhaps aspirational? Perhaps the painter or patron had seen bordered silk hangings elsewhere, and although such silks were beyond the reach of this community, they could be suggested by painting in the face of their actual absence. Still, even small fragments of imported silks in England were apparently treasured, as the addition of this broad and carefully ornamented border suggests. The passing down, cutting and reuse of fragments of imported silk in England is also visible in the collection of Canterbury's seal bags, which we saw earlier, which were similarly cut down from larger pieces of imported silk. The Satan Church in Court Hampton bears a second fictive textile hanging directly across the knee from the first. While the first bore lions and medallions, the second bears paired birds in medallions, similarly attributed a broad and bordered frame and flanked by simple curtains. Just as lions were a common motif in medallion silks, so are paired birds. Those at Court Hampton are adorst. They have their backs together, but they also turn their heads toward each other, extending their wings slightly. A surviving probably Spanish silk fragment at Sont, they're similar, although not identical, adorst birds and roundels. These birds also turn their heads towards each other. This possibly Sicilian silk with paired birds provides another example of the theme. Finally, at St. Mary's, West Welton, Norfolk, the upper level of the knave is hung with illusionistic rectangular fabric panels showing griffin in roundel wall paintings. These wall paintings maintain the reddish coloring and medallion pattern frequently associated with imported silk, but to their eastern derived griffins, they add fleur de lis. I'm showing you now drawings of the painted panels because these are clearer. The drawings of the painted panels also show loops at the top and apparently embroidered edges underlining these wall paintings on lesion to textiles. What we see here may be a more complicated case of integration of elite tastes into a local idiom. Intriguingly, the West Welton griffin in roundel paintings are also accompanied by wall paintings of paired adorst regardants, so backs to each other, looking at each other birds, like we saw at Corkhampton. Both the churchy tiles and other related works, like the wall paintings at Ely, Corkhampton and West Welton, suggest that textile patterns well-known and imported silks inspired locally made English art. Through this talk, I have tried to suggest a larger narrative about the ways in which Byzantine and Islamic textiles were deeply embedded in the history of England in ways that we have until now largely missed. Furthermore, English-made art including floor tiles and wall paintings show that English patrons and artists were interested not only to acquire and display textiles from the Mediterranean, but that these imported silks also inspired local visual production. The English individuals who owned imported textiles and commissioned art based on textile motifs ranged widely. From well-known political figures like Henry III and Eleanor Provence and Edward I and Eleanor Castile, to lesser-known individuals like monks, soldiers and an artisan clothier who grieved his lost patron in Queen, yet all of these men and women while living in England chose to wear, gift, display and commission artwork inspired by textiles from the Islamic and Byzantine Mediterranean. The impact of movement is not only then seen in the objects that moved the imported silks. The impact of movement is also visible if we look closely enough on objects that never moved at all wall paintings made in place. Floor tiles molded and fired in a kiln then laid in the floor close by. Movement is visible even in objects that remained fixed. Movement is visible everywhere then if you know how to look for it. A post-release. We are hosting an exhibition based on these themes at my home institution, the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts next spring from January to April 2023. The exhibition is entitled Bringing the Holy Land Home, the Crusades, Churchy Abbey and the Reconstruction of the Medieval Masterpiece. In that exhibition, we are proud to be able to display some of the actual churchy tiles along with other objects made in England and Western Europe that show the impact of the Islamic and Byzantine Mediterranean. We will also be incorporating a CGI model of churchy abbey and I show you a sneak peek of that here including our reconstruction of the churchy tile floor. I invite you all, should your paths lead to Worcester, Massachusetts, in spring 2023, please stop by and visit us. And with this final slide about a museum exhibition, I also encourage you to attend the final lecture in the series entitled Museums. Thank you all. Amanda, thank you for that absolutely wonderful, extraordinary talk actually. And I'll just give you a minute to collect yourself while I get the Q&A box ready. Hold on one moment. So, and I might actually, in fact, start by asking you a question myself. So, one of the things that you pointed out, well, you know, a great deal of your talk, you know, really enlightened and clarified some of the connections between various parts of the world and England during the Middle Ages. But I, what was also kind of present and more implicit is some of the practices that were common to England and the rest of Europe. So, a lot of your comparative objects were things that are now in treasuries and museums in other countries of Latin Europe. So, what I wondered is, do you have any sense of whether different parts of Latin Europe or whether England was distinctive in its collecting and collecting practices in the way in which it was inspired by the Celts and other textiles or if there were, if these were just practices that were common to Latin Europe as a whole? Great question, Jessica. And it's one that I've been thinking about. I think I can answer both and. England in many ways follows the habits of other countries in Western Europe in the way that it collects, gifts, makes wall paintings based on imported textiles. I've been trying to work out if there are any features that make England distinct. And I think I've got two possibilities. I'm still working this through, but let me share with you where my thought process is at present. One, I think that England tends to work more with fragments of imported silks. The wall paintings I show, the emphasis on seal bags, those are more characteristic of English practice than they are of, say, Italian practice. And it wouldn't make sense if we think about it that these textiles have to travel the farthest distance to get up to England. It takes them a long time. They've undergone some more damage. They've been cut down a little bit more. So I do see more focus on the fragment in England. Another possibility, and I raised this only as a possibility, is that I did not get into particularly much European-made imitations of imported silks. There are some. I mean, the Italians, for instance, make some gorgeous embroidered, not woven, but embroidered imitations of imported silks. What I see in England, though, is that we don't get very many English embroideries that are really imitating imported silks that closely. And what I think I see happening here is the explicitly English practice of Opus Anglicanum, where embroidered copes and tunics are made specifically for very particular English individuals, starting to rear its head and show a kind of cultural strength. The English don't seem particularly interested in just flat-out imitating imported silks, which, for all their advantages, are not particularly relevant to particular individuals. So those are two differences that I think I would raise. Yeah, that's fascinating, actually. And I think a broader point that that raises is the way in which some of these distinctive traditions are made out of the cocktail of the global and the local and each place has its own sort of distinctive cocktail. Thank you so much. That's wonderful. So we've got a whole bunch of questions. So we have one question about the fictive textiles that you talked about. So where about in the church were the fictive textiles that you discussed found? Were they concentrated around the altar or were they distributed more generally throughout the church? Good question. Great question. So usually we see them either behind the altar, like on both sides, or on the nave as the nave goes toward the altar. So they are, as you might expect, placing extra emphasis on the space close to the altar because these textiles would do that. They would add extra emphasis on that most sacred space. Yeah, really interesting. So actually we have a question from Tom Nixon, one of our one of our other speakers saying, can you say something about the decision to translate silk designs onto floor tiles at Chertsey? Do you imagine these silks were ever displayed on the floor? So many other floor tiles are heraldic. Is there any evidence that heraldic tiles might also have a close relationship to, as it were, heraldic textiles? What a great question. Okay. So Tom has, of course, given me four questions. That's kind of one. All right. The decision to translate silk designs onto floor tiles, do I imagine that these imported silks were ever displayed on the floor? So my initial thought when I started looking into this is that, no, of course, you'd never put these silks on the floor. They're too valuable. But if you look into records, practices, there are examples of really special occasions like right near a throne, for instance, where we do seem to be getting relatively special textiles on floors. So I don't think that English people would put their best textiles regularly on the floor. However, there are certainly examples of some textiles being used on some floors on some occasions. For instance, if you look at 13th century royal weddings, one of the things that they do is that they put a textile all along the whole length of the way that the king has to walk up to the altar. So I mean, you can think about parallels to that in terms of modern day weddings even, right? Like, yeah, we put special things on the floor. Of course, we do. So I guess that's a kind of yes, kind of no answer. Question about heraldic tiles and heraldic textiles. To be honest, I had never thought of that. And I think I need to go back to my source material and think about that. So thank you, Tom. I'm making a note of that as to the exchange between heraldic imagery between tiles and textiles. Thanks very much. So we have another question from the audience. So what other visual motifs, aside from lions, birds, and warriors on horseback, have you seen undergoing movement? Sea themes, monsters, Bible stories, maidens, any of these or other? Great question. Right. How can I answer that marvelous question? Well, one way to answer that would be to think about motifs that seem to be just visual motifs without a story behind them. So that would be paired birds or motifs that do have a story behind them like say images of the Arthurian knight Tristan. Let me just say one of the interesting parts at looking cross-culturally is the realization that the very traditional focus on specific religious iconography that is something that does not move, of course, particularly across the border into Islamic countries or back and forth. So it is generally secular themes where we can see more movement across broader borders. So we have, as I've said, these decorative motifs, birds, lions, etc. And then specific ones to do with stories. You could look at various kinds of heroes. You could look at Alexander. You could look at Tristan. A number of people who have stories behind them. And those latter cases are interesting because in most cases there, we can imagine it's not just the image of Tristan or Alexander or whoever is traveling. It's also that story which is traveling across cultural boundaries and the story is getting translated as the image gets translated. Yeah. So actually, we have another question about a traveling motif. Could you say something about the Griffin motif which was important in the Eastern cultures and appeared in some of the images that you showed? Sure. Griffins are a fantastic composite creature. Bits of lions, eagles, other kinds of animals kind of joined on. They're known in the classical world. They are found all over the place both in isolated contexts and sometimes in stories. So I think I'm recalling correctly there's a few images of Alexander the Great where his chariot is raised by Griffins. So they do have a strong what? A strength of predominance in the Eastern Mediterranean but we also see them all over the place and in all kinds of media too. I mean, you could look at manuscripts, you could look at ivories, you could look at monumental stone carving, you could look at textiles, you could look at pretty much any meaning you could think of and you could find Griffins there. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to think about the way also some of these sort of images things might be very similar formally but have very different meanings and different cultures which is sort of one of the sort of fascinating aspects of your project. We have a question about the churchy roundel borders with Latin texts and whether they have any, one audience member asked whether they have any connections with ancient vessels. Interesting question. So, I see we're talking about these. There were also other forms, there's sort of pearl version of these. The closest parallel I have found for this very specific motif is in stained glass actually. There's stained glass roundels that have extremely similar motifs and that's also true, I think for some of the pearl motifs. So, this idea of some of the motifs going back to ancient vessels would be interesting to look into but the closest parallels that I've found at least are in stained glass. Interesting. Thanks very much. I think those two questions. Yeah, so I wonder if you could also just say a little bit more, I guess, about your method because one of the things that you talked about is the way in which, let me see if I can quote you exactly, essentially that there are very few of the things that you know in the records survive. So, I suppose I have first a sort of, almost a sort of factual question. Oh, you said here we go. Just about every case, the record textile has been lost. Are there exceptions to that? Are there sort of a few cases in which you can connect a record to a surviving object? Or are you sort of, and I suppose the second part of the question is if not or indeed if so, how do you use that as a building block to kind of draw connections that you're confident about between records and surviving objects? Great question. Again, thank you. So, in my massive spreadsheet of 200 plus examples, there is not a single recorded textile that I am sure I can connect to an extant textile. Your question then of how do I start to unpack those records? Is it good one? And the answer is I try to unpack those records very slowly with a lot of comparative efforts and with a lot of care. So, what I have done is I have a massive database of all kinds of figural medieval textiles made all over the world and where an English record is sufficiently specific, then I myself can be convinced that, yeah, it probably looked very like this one. And there are some English records specifically in the St. Paul's inventories that are incredibly specific. They'll describe, oh, you know, this figure has wings touching each other and the eyes are green and the trees are red and it's in large roundels. And so when I get a lot of information like that, I can be more confident of the connection that I make. When the references are more vague, of course, it's harder. Yes, the multicolored peacocks, you know, right with kids. Now, that actually is kind of helpful because there are, you know, plenty of birds that are not peacocks and then if you're looking at peacocks, you have to make sure that actually the peacock is woven with multiple colors, which isn't true of all of them. Out of them are just woven with a flat color against the ground. But it is an area where one has to sort of tread delicately and say, yeah, I guess I'd say it's probable that this record referred to something like this. But if I were not willing to make those kinds of jumps, I think that the loss would be substantial because for me, it's only when I see, when I really see what these imported textiles could have looked like, that the truth of the situation comes out to me. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I really liked the way you put it in your talk when you said that, you know, one of the connections you're making was, you know, unproven and probably improvable, but in fact likely. And I think that's quite, quite a kind of good way of constructing it conceptually. And actually, you know, it strikes me that what you're doing is some, you know, a really wonderful model for scholarship in certain aspects of this field where a lot has been lost, but a lot survives. So how to really draw what you can from what survives, despite what you know has been lost, is, you know, is a real kind of, you know, serious intellectual challenge, you know, how to fill those gaps in a way that's kind of both rigorous and substantiated, but also kind of makes creative use of the fact that, you know, indeed, there actually is a lot that survives, some of it fragmentary, some of it not in the form that we would like, but there's actually a lot there to work with for those who have the imagination to do it. So I think what you've done is really inspiring, and I really appreciate your sharing this research with everybody. So thank you so much. If nobody has, did anyone have any other questions? Oh, yes. A hand is raised by Lloyd. Lloyd, please. Hi, maybe I could ask the last question. Yes, yes, please. Go ahead. Amanda, I thought that was a really wonderful lecture. Thank you so much. The question I had was really about how much have you thought about the relationship between the silk that's being reused for seal bags and the wrapping of relics in silk? And what the wrapping of seals, wax seals and silk, might tell us a little bit about the function of those seals in their kind of afterlives. Because I imagine the situation is that some very important document is being presented to Canterbury Cathedral. They are then creating a bag out of silk that they have on site, and they are then wrapping the seal with that silk. Because in a way, silk is a terrible thing to use to protect the seal, right? You've got to create a kind of padding behind the silk. And so I just, you know, that's obviously a lot of effort to go through to kind of protect an object, but also to say something really, to say something much more about the status of that particular document. So I don't know if people have done, I imagine most of these seal bags have been detached from the seals that they originally, sadly. But, you know, the size of them, the ones you showed, I mean, they look for something like a great seal or something like that. Anyway, so I don't know. Yeah, no, that's a wonderful question. Thank you so much, Lloyd. So first of all, I get the sense with those seal bags at Canterbury, okay, so that's the collection I know the best, that there is somebody who is going through and organizing a collection of documents, and that they are, at least in some cases, batch-making the bags for documents that they've had a while. So this is a collection of documents that is very precious to them. And somebody goes through to organize and give love to that collection. It's not just, you know, one document in make a seal bag, one document in make a seal bag. And we can say this because there's two or three seal bags made from the same fabric. So it makes sense that that group, at least, is being made at the same time. Another really lovely little detail about those seal bags is that, in fact, the one that I showed, I won't take the time to dig through and pull it up, but actually shows two imported silks sewn together alongside a seam, suggesting that that piece of the seal bag was originally used for something else, presumably investment. And so somebody is cutting down textiles that have already been used and loved and giving them a second use. And I love your point about thinking about what does this silk do? And no, it's not incredibly functional. Absolutely. It's got to be about display and prestige and honoring the documents that witness the history and status of a cathedral. And I think it is interesting that we tend to think of these silk fragments as being used with relics, which of course are sacred and the seals are not. Well, seals are in a different category at least. And so the idea that you want to use silks for that, I think is fascinating. Well, I think your point is interesting about them being used for old seals. I mean, the thing in the back of my mind was this description in Mallory's death of Arthur about a seal, a seal of Arthur that was on display behind the Shrine of Edward the Confessor that had been given given to the monks of Westminster, the parchment of which had putrified and decayed. So you've just got the seal as a kind of relic in a sense. I mean, that obviously that in that case, the seal isn't wrapped in anything, not that we know of. But I just, I was thinking about something I got. I was thinking about the way that, you know, for an old seal, you might put it in this beautiful high status wrapping if you were then going to display to kind of absolutely amp up the authority of that seal, of that document. I mean, particularly if it was a forged document and a forged seal, you know, that would that would go the extra mile to convince you of its legitimacy. That's right. That's right. I just have one more point I want to add, Lloyd, and that is that the silks in that collection at Canterbury, they are all imported silks. And so I don't know if that means that somebody went through, you know, before and got rid of some locally made textiles being used as seal bags. But I love this idea that Canterbury Cathedral has chosen for their, for their own collection of documents, which of course is integral to their identity, has chosen these silks that came from so far away to add to that. You know, I love that kind of mixing going on. Mm. Thank you. Oh, thank you. And thank you very much. I mean, the only, the only thing that remains is for us all to thank you so much for this wonderful talk and everybody, please, please join us next week. Thank you, everybody.