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{{other uses|Samite (disambiguation)}}
{{short description|Silk fabric}}
'''Samite''' was a luxurious and heavy [[silk]] [[textile|fabric]] worn in the [[Middle Ages]], of a [[twill]]-type [[weaving|weave]], often including gold or silver thread. The word was derived from Old French ''samit'', from medieval Latin ''samitum, examitum'' deriving from the [[Byzantium|Byzantine]] [[Greek (language)|Greek]] ἑξάμιτον ''hexamiton'' "six threads", usually interpreted as indicating the use of six yarns in the [[warp (weaving)|warp]].<ref>''[http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/170388 Oxford English Dictionary Online]'' "samite" (subscription required), accessed 30 December 2010</ref><ref>Lisa 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,▼
[[File:The "Martyr Cope" (1270).jpg|thumb|Detail from the "Martyr Cope" (1270), gold on red silk samite, brought from France in 1274. [[Uppsala Cathedral]] Treasury.|300px]]
p. 297.</ref> Samite is still used in ecclesiastical robes, vestments, ornamental fabrics, and interior decoration.<ref>George E. Linton, The Modern Textile Dictionary, NY, 1954, pg. 561</ref>▼
▲'''Samite''' was a luxurious and heavy [[silk]] [[textile|fabric]] worn in the [[Middle Ages]], of a [[twill]]-type [[weaving|weave]], often including gold or silver thread. The word was derived from Old French ''samit'', from medieval Latin ''samitum, examitum'' deriving from the [[Byzantium|Byzantine]] [[Greek (language)|Greek]] ἑξάμιτον ''hexamiton'' "six threads", usually interpreted as indicating the use of six yarns in the [[warp (weaving)|warp]].<ref>''[http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/170388 Oxford English Dictionary Online]'' "samite" (subscription required), accessed 30 December 2010</ref><ref>Lisa 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.</ref> Samite is still used in ecclesiastical robes, vestments, ornamental fabrics, and interior decoration.<ref>George E. Linton, The Modern Textile Dictionary, NY, 1954, pgp. 561</ref>
 
Structurally, samite is a [[weft]]-faced compound twill, plain or figured (patterned), in which the main [[warp (weaving)|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.<ref name="AM">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. 343</ref><ref>[[Dorothy K. Burnham]], ''Warp and Weft, A Textile Terminology'', [[Royal Ontario Museum]], 1980, {{ISBN |0-88854-256-9}}, p. 180.</ref> By the later medieval period, the term ''samite'' was applied to any rich, heavy silk material which had a satin-like gloss,<ref>George S. Cole, ''A Complete Dictionary of Dry Goods'', Chicago, W. B. Conkey company, 1892</ref> indeed "[[satin]]" began as a term for lustrous samite.<ref>''Clothing Of The Thirteenth Century'', 1928 [http://www.oldandsold.com/articles09/clothes-22.shtml on-line text])</ref>
 
==Origins and spread to Europe==
[[File:Pheasant roundel silk samite.jpg|thumb|Pheasant roundels on silk samite fragment, Central Asia, 7th or 8th century]]
Fragments of samite have been discovered at many locations along the [[Silk Road]],<ref>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</ref> and are especially associated with [[Sassanid]] [[Persia]].<ref>[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</ref> Samite was "arguably the most important" silk weave of [[Byzantium]],<ref name="AM" /> and from the 9th century [[Byzantine silk]]s entered [[Europe]] via the [[Italy|Italian]] trading ports. [[Vikings]], connected through their direct [[trade route]]s with [[Constantinople]], were buried in samite embroidered with silver-wound threads in the tenth century.<ref>[http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/344vil.html Carolyn Priest-Dorman, "Viking Embroidery"], noting published excavations of graves at [[Valsgärde]], Sweden.</ref> 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.<ref>Muthesius, "Silk in the Medieval World", p. 332-337</ref>▼
 
The [[Crusade]]s brought Europeans into direct contact with the Islamic world, and other sources of samite, as well as other Eastern luxuries. A samite saddle-cloth known in the West as the ''[[Suaire de St-Josse]]'', now in the [[Musée du Louvre]],<ref>[[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.</ref> was woven in eastern [[Iran]], some time before 961, when Abu Mansur Bakhtegin, for whom it was woven, died; it was brought back from the [[First Crusade]] by [[Étienne de Blois]] and dedicated as a votive gift at the [[Saint Josse|Abbey of Saint-Josse]], 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):▼
▲Fragments of samite have been discovered at many locations along the [[Silk Road]],<ref>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</ref> and are especially associated with [[Sassanid]] [[Persia]].<ref>[http://www.lesenluminures.com/pdf/imagestisseesenglish.pdf ''Woven Textiles: Textiles from Antiquity to the Renaissance'', Gallery Les Enluminures], retrieved 24 May 2008</ref> Samite was "arguably the most important" silk weave of [[Byzantium]],<ref name="AM" /> and from the 9th century [[Byzantine silk]]s entered [[Europe]] via the [[Italy|Italian]] trading ports. [[Vikings]], connected through their direct [[trade route]]s with [[Constantinople]], were buried in samite embroidered with silver-wound threads in the tenth century.<ref>[http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/344vil.html Carolyn Priest-Dorman, "Viking Embroidery"], noting published excavations of graves at [[Valsgärde]], Sweden.</ref>
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.<ref>Muthesius, "Silk in the Medieval World", p. 332-337</ref>
 
<blockquote>"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..."<ref>[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 }}.</ref></blockquote>▼
▲The [[Crusade]]s brought Europeans into direct contact with the Islamic world, and other sources of samite, as well as other Eastern luxuries. A samite saddle-cloth known in the West as the ''[[Suaire de St-Josse]]'', now in the [[Musée du Louvre]],<ref>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.</ref> was woven in eastern [[Iran]], some time before 961, when Abu Mansur Bakhtegin, for whom it was woven, died; it was brought back from the [[First Crusade]] by [[Étienne de Blois]] and dedicated as a votive gift at the [[Saint Josse|Abbey of Saint-Josse]], 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):
▲<blockquote>"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..."<ref>[http://www.bu.edu/english/levine/antioch.htm On-line translated text].</ref></blockquote>
 
The [[Fourth Crusade]] brought riches unknown in the West to the "Frankish" crusaders who [[Sack of Constantinople|sacked Constantinople in 1204]], described by [[Geoffrey of Villehardouin|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..."<ref>Villehardouin, ''Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople '' ([http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/344vil.html on-line text]).</ref>
 
==Use in Medieval Europe==
[[File:Sasanian Silk Samite cloth Circa 960.jpg|thumb|[[Sasanian]] 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 features among the clothing of fitting status provided for the innovative and style-conscious English king [[Henry III of England|Henry III]], his family, and his attendants. For those of royal blood there were robes and mantles of samite and [[cloth of gold]].<ref>Noted by James F. Willard, reviewing ''Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, A.D. 1251-1253'' in ''Speculum,'' '''4'''.2 (April 1929:222-223222–223).</ref> Samite itself might be interwoven with threads wrapped in gold foil. It could be further enriched by being over-[[embroidery|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."<ref>Chrétien, Nigel Bryant, tr. ''Perceval: The Story of the Grail'' 2006:207</ref> In [[manuscript illumination]]s, modern readers often interpret rich figurative designs as embroidered, but LinnetBarbara KestrelGordon<ref>KestrtelBarbara Gordon, ""Whips and angels: painting on cloth in the medieval period" ([httphttps://wwwweb.archive.org/web/20130318195148/http://middleages.ca:80/Parma/steyned/STEYNED.html on-line text preserved at archive.org]).</ref> points out that they could equally be painted, and illustrates a samite [[Mitre|bishop's mitre]] painted in ''[[grisaille]]'' in the [[Cleveland Museum of Art]].<ref>Her figure 12.</ref> According to the [[Louvre]] the most famous example of painted silk, the [[Master of the Parement|Parement of Narbonne]], despite being a royal commission, was only made on "fluted silk imitating samite".<ref>[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 }}</ref>
 
In the wrong hands, samite could threaten the outward marks of social stability; samite was specified among the luxuries forbidden the urban middle classes in [[sumptuary law]]s 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" <ref>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.</ref> In Florence, when the ''[[condottiero]]'' [[Walter VI of Brienne|Walter of Brienne]] offered the innovation of a sumptuous feast to [[Saint John the Baptist|San Giovanni]] in 1343, the chronicler [[Giovanni Villani|Villani]] noted among the rich trappings "He added to the other side of the ''palio''<ref>San Giovanni's banner.</ref> of crimson samite cloth a trim of gray squirrel skin as long as the pole."<ref>Villani, ''Chronicle'', quoted in Richard C. Trexler, ''Public Life in Renaissance Florence'' (Cornell University Press) 1980:257f.</ref>
 
==In literatureSee also ==
* [[Coptic art#Textiles|Coptic textiles]]
As the premier luxury textile of the Middle Ages, samite has long been associated with [[King Arthur|Arthurian]] literature.
* [[Sampul tapestry]]
 
* [[Sichuan embroidery]]
In the dramatic and eerie manifestation of the [[Holy Grail]] in Arthur's court in the [[Romance (heroic literature)|Romance]] ''[[Queste del Saint Graal]]'', the Grail appeared, covered with a samite cloth, hung in the air a moment, and disappeared.<ref>Noted by Joseph Campbell and Eugene C. Kennedy in ''Thou art that: transforming religious metaphor'' (New World Library) 2001:30.</ref>
* [[Sogdian art#Textile arts|Sogdian textiles]]
 
It was famously referred to in the ''[[Idylls of the King]]'' cycle of poems by [[Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson|Alfred, Lord Tennyson]]. There the [[Lady of the Lake]], described in the cycle only by the same line, repeated in four different places: "Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful",<ref>[http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/idylls/chapter12.html online text]</ref> gives Arthur his sword [[Excalibur]] and then in the ''The Passing of Arthur'' catches it when it is flung into the lake as he lies dying.<ref>The cycle refers to samite as being worn by several other characters, including Arthur himself (in red) and [[Lady of the Lake|Vivien]]:
:A twist of gold was round her hair; a robe
:Of samite without price, that more exprest
:Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs,
:In colour like the satin-shining palm
:On sallows in the windy gleams of March:
(Tennyson, ''Merlin and Vivien'' ([http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/idylls/chapter6.html on-line text]) Though "Vivien" is the name of the Lady of the Lake in some versions of the Arthurian legends, in Tennyson she is a different person. The "greenery-yallery" colour of earliest willow leaves that Tennyson describes is a prominent color of the British [[Aesthetic Movement]] rather than of the Middle Ages.</ref> This appearance was referenced, too, in the film ''[[Excalibur (film)|Excalibur]]'' and even burlesqued in ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]''.
 
==Notes==
Line 37 ⟶ 33:
 
==External links==
* [http://www.greydragon.org/trips/stockholm/index4.html Embroidered red samite cope from 1270]
* [http://www.metmuseumakdn.org/exploremuseum/china_dawn/essay_silkdetail.htmlasp?artifactid=1632 Samite fragmentrobe] from8th-11th Turfan,century withCE patternAga inKhan Museum weave]
* [https://www.flickr.com/photos/27305838@N04/4450431150/ Child's coat] Sogdian samite silk, 8th century, Pritzer collection, Chicago [https://www.flickr.com/photos/27305838@N04/4450431240/in/photostream/lightbox/ (Julianna Lees Flickr album, pearl roundel in close-up)]
* [https://www.flickr.com/photos/27305838@N04/4450458234/ Sogdian samite silk child's coat] 8th century (Julianna Lees Flickr album)
* [http://www.metmuseum.org/search-results?ft=samite&x=0&y=0 Textile samples] from New York's [Metropolitan Museum]
* [http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/china_dawn/essay_silk.html Samite fragment] from [Turfan], with pattern in weave (broken link)
 
{{fabric}}
 
[[Category:Medieval European costume]]▼
[[Category:Medieval textile design]]▼
[[Category:Silk]]▼
[[Category:Woven fabrics]]
▲[[Category:Medieval costume]]
▲[[Category:Silk]]
▲[[Category:Medieval textile design]]
 
[[de:Samit]]
[[nl:Samit]]
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