{{other uses|Samite (disambiguation)}} {{short description|Silk fabric}} [[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]] {{wikt | samite}}
'''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 name "samite" derives from Old French {{lang | fro | samit}}, from medieval Latin {{lang | la | samitum, examitum}} deriving from the Byzantine Greek ἑξάμιτον {{translit | grc | hexamiton}}, meaning "six threads", usually interpreted as indicating the use of six yarns in the 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 continues in use in ecclesiastical robes, vestments, ornamental fabrics, and interior decoration.<ref>George E. Linton, The Modern Textile Dictionary, NY, 1954, p. 561</ref>
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 {{linktext|float}}s 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'' applied to any rich, heavy silk material which had a satin-like gloss,<ref>George S. Cole, [https://books.google.com/books?id=Z8soAAAAYAAJ ''A Complete Dictionary of Dry Goods''], Chicago, W. B. Conkey Company, 1892, page 304: "Later samite was applied to any rich, heavy silk material which had a satin-like gloss, and it is probable that before the term became obsolete it was used to signify satins generally."</ref> indeed "satin" began{{when?|date=May 2025}} 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 westward spread== 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 the Sasanian Empire.<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 silks entered Western 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.<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 Crusades brought the Franks or Latins of Western Europe 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,<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 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..."<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>
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..."<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 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.<ref>Noted by James F. Willard, reviewing ''Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, A.D. 1251-1253'' in ''Speculum,'' '''4'''.2 (April 1929:222–223).</ref> 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."<ref>Chrétien, Nigel Bryant, tr. ''Perceval: The Story of the Grail'' 2006:207</ref> In manuscript illuminations, modern readers often interpret rich figurative designs as embroidered, but Barbara Gordon<ref>Barbara 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]).</ref> points out that they could equally be painted and illustrates a samite mitre painted grisaille in the Cleveland Museum of Art.<ref>Her figure 12.</ref> 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".<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 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."<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, 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 ''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>
== See also == * Coptic textiles * Sampul tapestry * Sichuan embroidery * Sogdian textiles
==Notes== {{reflist|2}}
==External links== * [http://www.greydragon.org/trips/stockholm/index4.html Embroidered red samite cope from 1270] * {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150403120315/http://www.akdn.org/museum/detail.asp?artifactid=1632# |title=Samite robe, 8th-11th century CE, Aga Khan Museum}} * [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] * [https://books.google.com/books?id=JbdS-R3y72MC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA339#v=onepage&q&f=false Samite fragment] from [Turfan], with pattern in weave
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Category:Medieval European costume Category:Medieval textile design Category:Silk Category:Woven fabrics Category:Figured fabrics