_Names, Initials, and Dedicatory Inscriptions_: Ricūs de Gravesend. T.S., I.C., O.L., P.D. (on different vestments). Ex dono Johannis Reed Capellani Cantar' quondam cantarie Ricardi Whitwell. Southam ex dono Johannis Southam. Ex dono Mʳⁱ Willelmi Smyth archidiaconi Lincoln.
In many vestments, especially among those of early date, the embroidery is of a distinctly Oriental character, which, if not actually Byzantine, is founded on Byzantine models. These were popularized throughout Europe by the Mohammedan weavers and their successors of the royal establishment in Sicily. Often vestments are found bearing Arabic or other Oriental inscriptions; these are sometimes meaningless, like the patterns formed with Arabic letters on many Eastern shawls and cloths of modern times, but occasionally they give important information as to the date and origin of the vestment which they decorate. The coronation vestments of the German Emperors, now at Vienna, are of entirely Eastern character, and the cope bears inscriptions in Cufic characters, telling us that it was made at Palermo in 1133. Occasionally the Eastern ornaments and inscriptions are _forged_ (alas, for mediaeval morality!), in order to counterfeit the workmanship of the highly popular Eastern looms. Sometimes we find clumsy imitations of Arabic words treated ignorantly by the forger as ornaments, the word being written correctly, though in an obviously amateurish manner, from right to left, and a replica _reversed_ set opposite to it, in order to balance it symmetrically!
No country excelled England in embroidered work in the middle ages. Matthew Paris's story of Pope Innocent IV's admiration of some English vestments is well known. His holiness, 'seeing some desirable orphreys in the copes and _infulae_ of certain English ecclesiastics, asked where they had been made. "In England," was the answer. "Truly is England our garden of delights," said he; "truly is it a well inexhaustible; and where much is, thence can much be extorted." Whereupon the Pope, allured by the lust of the eyes, sent his sealed letters to nearly all the abbots of the Cistercian order in England (to whose prayers he had just been committing himself in the chapter-house of the Cistercian order) that they should not delay to send those orphreys to himself—getting them for nothing, if possible—to decorate his chasubles and choral copes.' Matthew Paris concludes his narrative by telling us that the London merchants were gratified enough, but that many were highly offended at the open avarice of the Head of the Church.[81]