The Wonder of Embroidery Fabric of Britain

For much of the Middle Ages, England excelled at ecclesiastical art.

Our religious wall paintings, stained glass,

church sculpture and carvings were amongst the finest in Europe.

But there's a forgotten art,

of which we were the very best in the Western world -

the art of embroidery.

For almost 300 years,

the work of English embroiderers was sought all over Christendom.

The extraordinary Bayeux Tapestry showed what we were capable of,

but it was just a hint of the glories to come.

And when the fanaticism of the Reformation engulfed England,

and so much of our religious art was destroyed,

it was the sumptuous embroidered vestments of the church

which were easily rolled up and spirited away.

Now the best medieval English embroidery is abroad,

or has only been brought back to the UK in modern times.

This is the unsung story of English embroidery, of a golden age,

and how, against all the odds,

some of the greatest masterpieces survived.

It's almost as if this whole piece has been signed with a needle,

"This is from England."

You almost want to stroke it, touch it,

but...absolutely forbidden.

The English elevated the craft of embroidery

into an art of stunning realism and emotion. This is deliberate.

This is designed to shock, to scare, to intimidate.

Fragile and faded, English embroidery gives us

an extraordinary glimpse into the medieval world.

These days, everyone's well-dressed,

particularly, it seems, here in Rome.

But 700-800 years ago, fine clothing was a rarity,

afforded only to the rich.

Medieval English embroidery was nothing short of pure luxury,

famed and desired across Europe.

In the inventories of castles, palaces and cathedrals,

it was referred to as Opus Anglicanum.

Simply put - English work.

The greatest patron of Opus Anglicanum was the Catholic Church.

For more than 200 years, from the early 1100s until the middle of the 14th century,

English embroiderers were as highly sought-after

as the best architects, sculptors and painters

that Europe had to offer.

In the Medieval period, most people couldn't read,

so the look of the liturgy was paramount.

Religious vestments - especially the cope, a bishop's outer cloak -

needed to evoke the Majesty of Christ.

But over the centuries, the cope evolved

into an illuminated manuscript in fabric,

depicting scenes from the life of Christ

and the lives of the Saints - a visual sermon in stitchwork.

In the Archbasilica of St John Lateran in Rome,

fragile and faded, kept in gloomy conditions behind protective glass,

is a masterpiece of embroidery, dating back almost 700 years.

It's the Lateran Cope.

It's the first time I've seen it, and I've got to say,

it's absolutely astonishing.

It's almost bewildering.

And it's not just the fineness of the detail, the craftsmanship,

this combination of taste

and piety and ostentation...it's actually the scale of the thing.

What we've got to remember is, this isn't just a piece of art -

it's designed to be worn.

It's a processional cape for the church's top brass.

I mean, I'm reasonably tall,

and I've got to stretch on tiptoes just to reach the top of it.

And what we can see here is the ophrey at the top.

This would have hung down here

while the rest of the piece just enveloped whoever was wearing it.

In fact, if you come in closely here, you can see there's some wear,

and that would have come from the right shoulder of the man

lucky enough to be enveloped by this piece.

There's some fantastically rich imagery here.

We have - it's hard to know where to start - down the back here,

this would've been on the broad of the shoulders, trailing down behind whoever was wearing it,

the centrepiece, obviously the crucifixion here.

And down here, we've got this... It's almost like a cartoon strip...

We have the annunciation, the nativity,

the adoration of kings. It's telling a story as it sweeps past.

All the wear and tear on the piece is here on the fringe at the bottom.

And so we can imagine that's where it's worn away as it's just

flowed behind whoever was wearing it, dragging on the ground.

This was something that was used, it was processional -

you can imagine the gold glinting in the light, candlelight, or out in the street.

Over here what captures my eye, we have these griffins,

these little griffins just here, I really like those.

Over here, we've got angels, but here we have the lives

of the saints, so here we have St Andrew martyred on his cross here.

But this is what's really interesting. This is St Edmund of Bury.

He's been martyred,

he's been killed in 869 by the Great Viking heathen army,

killed for refusing to renounce Christianity.

And they're firing arrows into him. One, two, three, four,

five arrows, and they also cut his head off, just to be sure.

But his presence here's important,

because it's a clue about the origins of the cope.

St Edmund wasn't very well-known outside England,

so the fact that he's here tells us that this is English work.

English embroiderers had immense technical prowess.

They gave the human body a naturalism that brought

stories of Christ and the saints to life.

And the human face, so often inscrutable in Gothic art,

acquired a new emotional realism in the hands of English embroiderers.

Round the corner, at the Vatican museum,

is another survival of Opus Anglicanum,

where the human drama of the crucifixion is at its most moving.

Sometimes today we think of embroidery as a craft or a hobby,

something that's done by ladies of leisure.

But this is art.

The intricacy, the design,

the faces we can see, the colours throughout...

we've got the gold thread, and silver thread.

It's like painting with a needle.

Back in Britain, near Westminster Abbey, I'm on my way

to one of London's oldest ecclesiastical outfitters.

The cope was part of a whole liturgical wardrobe

that I need to understand.

Modern religious vestments may no longer be covered in dense embroidery,

but they still seek to transform the wearer

and send a message to the faithful.

The religious vestments of Opus Anglicanum are too delicate

even to touch, so this is the closest I'm going to get.

So the first thing that goes on is this, called an amice.

It was basically a neck cloth,

-but it goes over your head to start with.

-Let's get it on, then.

All right.

OK.

I feel slightly like Little Bo Peep.

I won't say you look like Little Bo Peep!

Thank you very much. You've knocked my confidence now!

Next thing is the alb.

This is this all-enveloping white garment here. In you go.

-In I go? Just diving in?

-Just diving in. Come on.

Oh, it's big!

-I told you it's all-enveloping!

-It really is!

The next thing that goes on is

the rope tie, the girdle, or sincture.

Do bishops these days have buckles? Or still ropes?

No, no, no, they still use this.

To a very large extent,

this is still the full kit which they would put on.

OK. I really feel I'm beginning to transform. Is that...

That's what it's all about - it's all about transformation,

taking you from being an ordinary person walking around the street

to become, in a sense, a special person

that's going to perform the great miracle

of transubstantiation - which is in a sense the ultimate transformation.

So in a sense, the transformation of the robes

mirrors the transubstantiation...

You can't do that unless you are a completely different person.

Well, I'm starting to feel like a completely different person.

Next thing on, the stole, and you see, all of that would have been

accompanied by a whole series of prayers.

You don't just sling this on?

-No, no, no, no.

-You're really thinking about it.

With the girdle, for example,

the prayer that goes with putting that on is,

"Gird me about oh Lord with the sincture of purity

"and quench in my heart the fire of concupancy

"and the virtue of constancy and chastity may abide in me."

Next, this is very much a medieval thing, which is the dalmatic.

It's a coloured version of the alb, really.

I presume you get more elegant as you get more experienced.

You do, yes. Last things last, this is the chasuble.

This is the maniple, OK?

This finally comes off, and that forms a collar.

I've no idea what I look like, but I feel quite smart.

You look terribly medieval.

-I do?

-Yes!

-I feel good about that, but there's something missing.

There's something missing - the mitre! Are you ready for this?

-I've been waiting all my life, I think.

-OK.

-There you go.

-Wow.

-OK. Are you ready?

-I think so.

I am almost speechless! This is quite incredible.

I honestly feel like a different person.

I've never worn anything quite like this, I think it's fair to say!

So when would I have worn this?

As a bishop you would have worn that when you were celebrating mass,

but then again, as a bishop, you wouldn't necessarily always be celebrating mass,

and when you didn't, you'd wear the cope.

-Ah. Well, can I try it on?

-OK. Let's have a go with that.

-Off with the hat.

-My favourite bit.

OK.

Oh, goodness. That's a lot heavier. What's this made of?

-This one's made of velvet.

-It's a lot heavier than the chasuble.

Mustn't forget the mitre.

-That's it.

-Tell me, what's it made up of?

What you've got is in origin, a raincoat, and what we've got on the back is what's left of the hood

that would have originally gone over your head.

And on the front, these panels here are called the ophreys.

They would have been used again for embroidery,

and they would be images of saints or scenes from the life of Christ.

So as well as looking rather grand,

I'm telling people about the history and stories of the church.

Absolutely. You'd be a bit like a stained glass window.

Well, David, thank you very much.

It's a real insight into how Opus Anglicanum and all the rest of these vestments would have been used.

-This has been terrific. Thank you.

-It's been a great pleasure.

The medieval English Church was an enormous power in the land,

richer and often more influential than the King.

It could afford to commission the best painters,

the best embroiderers, the finest materials.

But not all embroidery was about the lives of the saints.

Some celebrated the power of the sword,

the age of chivalry.

In the town of Maaseik, on the German-Belgian border,

the earliest examples of English embroidery survive.

Over 1,000 years old, these fragments are a mystery.

No-one knows whether they were secular or religious,

what they were part of, or indeed, what they were for.

We need to move forward 200 years

to encounter a piece of English embroidery whose message is unmistakable.

The Bayeux Tapestry commemorates the most significant moment

in English medieval history,

but if its narrative is clear,

it has given rise to the biggest misunderstanding

in the history of embroidery.

First things, first. The Bayeux Tapestry isn't a tapestry.

It's an embroidery.

A tapestry is woven on a loom.

An embroidery is stitched. You need a needle and thread!

And it's not even French.

It might celebrate the Norman invasion,

but academics think it was made in England and specifically in Kent.

Incredibly fragile, the 1,000-year-old Bayeux Tapestry

is entombed in a hi-tech case with low level lighting to match.

It's 230 foot long and commemorates the Battle of Hastings in 1066,

and the invasion of England by William of Normandy.

Made of dyed woollen yarn on linen, it's thought to have taken seven years to complete.

It's an astonishing piece of work that tells a dramatic story.

From the details of feeding an army

and transporting horses across the English Channel,

the makers of this tapestry wanted to preach a particular version of history.

The brilliant victory of William climaxing in the death

of King Harold and the conquest of England.

The Bayeux Tapestry may look naive in places, even unsophisticated,

but it set an English fashion for using embroidery to communicate a powerful message.

Now, we'll probably never know who designed the Bayeux Tapestry.

But we're almost certain that it was women who embroidered it.

And that's because around the time of 1066 and all that,

embroidery was a pious and acceptable occupation for women.

Even very well-off ladies did it.

We know that Canut the Great's wife embroidered altar cloths,

Edward the Confessor's wife embroidered his clothes.

The English already had a reputation.

One French writer wrote shortly after the Conquest,

"The women of England are very skilled with the needle."

So around the 11th and early 12th century, women were devoting

a considerable amount of their time to this art,

but it was men who were paying for it.

And they could afford to do this

because parts of England were awash with money.

And nowhere was richer than Canterbury,

the mother church of England.

Here, by the 12th century, the Archbishop was dressing

in the very finest clothing money could buy.

And that, of course, meant English embroidery.

The proof can be found in some extraordinary ecclesiastical slippers and boots.

Hidden away in the Cathedral archives, rarely seen or exposed to daylight,

today they're coming out of their protective wrappings.

Well, wow!

Now, this is a very early example of Opus Anglicanum

on a religious vestment.

These are buskins and slippers, so they're a bishop's footwear,

and what's remarkable about them is that they were actually

worn by a bishop, and we know which bishop -

it was an archbishop, Hubert Walter,

the Archbishop of Canterbury,

who was around in 1200, about the time of Richard the Lionheart and bad King John.

Now, these may be religious vestments,

but what's really striking about them is that the subject matter is very much secular.

So here on the buskins we have crosses, but we also have eagles,

we have stars, we have dots, and more crosses on the feet.

But on the slippers, little fleur de leys,

we have these garnets running around the top,

these dragons here,

and I really love the lions on the side here.

But what's also interesting is that they were made only a century after

the Bayeux Tapestry, and already we can see the style evolving.

So we have much finer needlework.

Silk used here instead of wool.

We've got gilt here on the eagle that we can still see glinting.

And what's extraordinary to think as we sit here looking at these is

just how much more money was spent on Opus Anglicanum in years to come.

The creation of ever more fantastic religious clothing

in the 13th century happened during a boom time for England.

The city of London had never known such an energetic age of trade

and commerce.

The boom was based on the export of wool and English sheep,

who were reputed to produce the best wool.

Selling wool to the Continent allowed England to trade in gold,

silk and precious jewels -

key ingredients to make the finest embroidery.

In 1271, an altar front for Westminster Abbey took four women

nearly four years to embroider.

The bill back then was £36.

But based on average earnings,

that's a staggering half a million pounds today.

And that's before paying for the gold, silk, pearls,

garnets and enamels.

So producing embroidery was big, big money and consequently,

there was profit to be made.

The best embroiderers worked here in the City of London,

where all aspects of trade were regulated by the Guilds.

They imposed quality control

and a monopoly grip to ensure the best trading terms.

So the fishmongers were down by the river, near London Bridge.

The merchant tailors, obviously, were on Threadneedle Street.

Just off Cheapside, the goldsmiths and silversmiths.

And cheek by jowl with them, the broderers.

These were the streets where England's finest

and most desirable luxury goods were painstakingly crafted.

And it was the Borderers Guild

that ensured English embroidery was the best.

Apprentices served seven years to learn their craft.

Pieces like this could only be produced by embroiderers

working in daylight, with the highest grade silk and gold thread.

Central to the quality of English work was

the precision of the stitchwork and the density.

Covering every inch of the fabric

and yet allowing a flexibility to the finished garment.

It was all down to two extraordinary stitches that became

the signature of Opus Anglicanum.

And set English embroiderers apart from the rest of Europe.

I'm on my way to the Royal School of Embroidery

at Hampton Court Palace to see how it's done.

First, the split stitch, where the needle turns back on itself,

coming back up through the previous stitch and splitting the thread.

It gives the stitching absolute precision.

It's quite a basic principle. So I'm doing a stitch, really tiny.

Bringing my needle up through that stitch and splitting it in half.

So you just have to make sure you split it each time,

so you've got a continuous line then.

And what's the point of split stitch? Why do it?

It just makes it a very, very solid and dense area.

Everything is joined together.

And is there something you can do with split stitch that other stitches simply can't achieve?

Because of the way the stitches are worked,

it actually looks like it's shaded because it's tight in the middle.

It goes round and round, so it looks like it's got shading to it

and that's purely just the stitch. So there's no colour.

These round stitches on the cheek, that's what's giving us that effect.

Yeah. Would you like to have a little go of this one here?

Absolutely. Yeah. I'm sure I'm going to be a master at this(!)

-So what am I doing?

-Right hand underneath.

-Right hand underneath?

Yeah. Left hand on top, that's it. So you want to do a tiny little stitch.

-Just here?

-Yeah.

And then using your right hand, pull the needle through.

Oh, so it's two-handed, I see.

-Let go now on this hand.

-Let go.

-Try and split that stitch.

-I've sort of lost where my initial stitch was.

-Cos it's so tiny, yeah.

I've got pretty good eyesight, but this is difficult.

-This is really... Ah! There we go.

-That's it. Pull through.

-Bit wonky, but...

-It's all right.

-You think I've got promise?

-It's all right. Yeah, definitely.

-Yeah?

-Yeah.

-Just a matter of practice, right?

-A lot of practice.

-A lot of practice!

OK.

That's taken me about 20 seconds to do my first stitch.

How long did it take you to do what we've got so far on this face?

-About six hours' work so far on here.

-Six hours?

-Just to do this cheek...?

-Yeah.

-Do you ever get really frustrated and just throw it all up in the air?

-No.

You must be a very even-tempered person. I'm already feeling like...

'The split stitch is the secret behind the subtle

'three-dimentional impression on human faces in Opus Anglicanum.

'As the cheek work spirals to its centre,

'almost a painterly light and shade is the result.

'But it was the second technique, underside couching, that allowed

'a thick surface intensity of gold thread,

'together with a flexibility, suitable for clothing.

'The heavy gold thread is held in place on the fabric's surface

'by a second thread made of linen.'

This is underside couching, so this is gold.

-Gold?

-Yes.

-Wow!

-OK, so what's the difference?

-Well, two parts.

So they would have had silk embroidery and also,

they would have had gold on the same piece.

So we're using thread which has got real gold in it.

-So this is real gold?

-It's got real gold in there.

-Is it solid gold thread? How do you...?

-It's...

If I just break a bit from the end...

It's actually gold around the outside.

You can see it's got a silk or cotton core in the middle there.

It's wrapped around. And that just makes it a bit more flexible.

-It's actually quite a flexible thread.

-Why do you need to be so flexible?

Because we're going to take a little bit of the gold through to the back

and that's what is special about underside couching.

If you just had your gold on the top, it makes it very solid

and inflexible. And because these things were used as vestments,

so they were worn, you wanted it to be a little bit more flowing.

Let me get my hands on it then.

Right. So I'm going to bring up the needle in the right position for you.

OK. Thank you.

-So needle in your right hand.

-Right hand, OK.

And with your left hand, you want to have a bit of tension on there.

-That's it.

-I see.

-What you're doing now is you're creating a hole by holding

-that quite taut.

-Yes.

And you should be able to just about see a little space where the

thread's coming out. So you want your needle down.

-We're going back the way we came.

-That's it.

-Is that about right.

-Yeah.

-I feel like I'm a natural.

-So, right hand is now pulling the needle through.

-Yes.

You can let go of your left hand.

-This is quite hard.

-It's very hard. It's quite tough.

-Does it hurt your fingers?

-Yes. As this linen thread comes through,

it will take a bit of the gold with it and you should be able to hear it.

-And what happens if...?

-POP

-Did you hear that?

-I heard it. I heard it pop.

-That's it.

-What happens if I were to break this thread now?

If you break the gold thread, you'd have to take out the entire row.

-That would be incredible frustrating.

-That WOULD be. So let's not do that.

How often does that happen? With you? Not at all, I'm sure!

At the Victoria and Albert Museum in London,

there's a small piece of ecclesiastical embroidery

that has some of the finest stitchwork to survive.

All the trademarks of the best of Opus Anglicanum.

Split stitching in the fine details of the faces.

Underside couching for the rich gold thread background.

This is an ecclesiastical burse.

Originally, it would have been folded down the middle,

to form the bag that held the Corporal,

the cloth that the Chalice is placed on during Mass.

The quality of the embroidery on this is just unbelievable.

It looks impressive by the naked eye,

but when you get under the magnifying glass,

what you can see is that each stitch is absolutely perfect.

And if we look at the Virgin here, she has really feminine features.

And then if we move over to Christ on the cross here,

the hair is what impressed me. The hair has been done...

It really has the texture of hair.

It's astonishing this has been done with a needle.

When we get to his abdomen, he has six pack abs.

This is anatomically correct.

The stitching is circular and very tight.

I'm amazed to see this on something that's from the early 14th century.

And then we move across to this scene here

and this is coronation of the Virgin in Heaven.

And originally, I wasn't sure

whether this was God the Father or God the Son who was crowning

her, but if we look really closely here, his hands...

..and his feet, we can actually see the stigmata, the wounds.

There's been...red...

There are red stitches coming through each of his hands

and his feet.

Just within this little outline, the quality and the depth

and the fineness of the work on this piece is just phenomenal.

Trade with Italy took many of the finest examples of English

embroidery abroad and today, it's where most Opus Anglicanum survives.

To the best dressed Italian clerics,

owning vestments made in England was a mark of piety and sophistication.

I'm heading for the romantic setting of Ascoli Piceno,

a fine Renaissance town, built out of the local marble.

Many vestments, copes and chasubles were commissioned specifically

by the popes, but others were made as gifts to curry political favour.

In fact, by 1295, the Vatican inventory lists no fewer

than 80 separate pieces of Opus Anglicanum.

And here, in Ascoli Piceno on Italy's east coast, is

a particularly splendid example,

which oddly was used to fund part of this fantastic cathedral.

For centuries, the Cope here was kept here at the local cathedral.

But these days, it enjoys a safer home at the town's civic museum.

Because even here in Italy,

many English copes did not enjoy a trouble-free history.

It's not just the ravages of decay that have taken their toll,

but the extravagance of the work that was an everlasting temptation.

Unmistakeably English. How do we know?

Well, if we look at the technical details, all over,

there's a huge amount of gilt threads surviving

and it's the underside couching that's very typical of English work.

We also have split stitch on the clothes

and where it survives on the faces.

The faces themselves, the details and expressions feel very English.

But if that's not enough,

what we also have on the clothes of the characters all over this

cope and particularly down here,

the Virgin Mary, we have these lions, passant guardant.

And that's the English royal symbol.

It's almost as if this whole piece has been signed with a needle -

this is from England.

What we don't have along the ophrey at the top

here are the hundreds of pearls which were once attached.

They were sold in 1798 to fund the building which we've just

seen round the corner, the Capella del Sacrementa.

But what I find really interesting is that each of these circles

shows a scene from the life of a different pope.

I like to call it the "Pope Cope". They're quite carefully arranged.

So along the top, we have the early popes,

all of whom have been martyred.

On the middle row, the subject matter changes.

And these are all popes who are famed for their interpretation

of scriptures.

Down the bottom is where it gets really interesting.

These were all popes who were alive at around the time this piece

was made, mid-13th century. And the really intriguing one is down here.

This is Clement IV.

And he gives us a clue as to the whole provenance of this

piece of English work.

We think this cope was commissioned by Ottobono Frieschi,

who was a cardinal legate sent to England by Clement IV.

He was sent to make peace between Henry III

and his rebellious barons and bishops.

And it's likely that Ottobono commissioned

this as a political gift for his master.

And it seems like it worked because a few years later,

Ottobono was Pope himself, as Hadrian V.

But the story of this Cope doesn't end there.

If copes were extremely valuable in the Middle Ages,

by the 20th century, they were worth a small fortune.

Easily wrapped up and spirited away, the Ascoli Piceno Cope

mysteriously disappeared from the local cathedral in 1902.

Two years later,

the missing Cope was spotted on display on London at the V&A,

where it had been loaned by its owner, or so he thought,

the American banker JP Morgan.

There was a huge public outcry.

Scandal, ruined reputations,

even reports that the guy who'd fenced it

had killed himself in prison.

Happily, in 1907, JP Morgan bequeathed it and it came home.

But you'll notice it's here, in the Civic Museum,

and not across the road in the cathedral.

You almost get the feeling the locals

didn't quite trust the priests any more.

The joy of a life lived according to Christian principles

inspired many of the English cope makers to depict images of beauty -

scenes of redemption to lift people's religious imagination.

But in the lives of the saints, there were also dire warnings

that a Christian life could mean suffering and pain.

There were no newspapers in the Middle Ages.

So the best way to get across

any political, social or religious message

was through public spectacle.

For the church, the most important message was the life of Christ.

So in religious art from the period,

we see the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection.

But there were other stories, too,

particularly the lives of the saints.

And it's when we start to understand these,

we realise what the people who wore and saw all this refinery

were really thinking.

Bologna in northern Italy -

in the city museum is one of the best preserved pieces

of Opus Anglicanum.

But to save its delicate colours,

it hangs in a basement in sepulchral gloom.

This is the Bologna Cope.

And I could stand in front of it all day

because what this cope does

is take us directly into the medieval religious mindset.

It's constructed very carefully.

There are two, almost, strips, almost like comic strips, here.

And they're telling us particular stories,

both from the life of Christ.

And they're the two most important stories from the life of Christ.

We start on this outer semicircle, here...

..with the story of Christ's birth.

And it goes chronologically.

So up here we have the archangel Gabriel appearing

to the Virgin Mary

and he's holding something that says Ave Maria.

And here we have the second really big story in the Christian calendar

and it's Christ's death - his Passion, his crucifixion.

And I want to pick out a few details, here.

If we come down, this is the shepherds.

They're being spoken to by the angel and he's pointing at the star.

Everything is in this fine detail.

But what we can see is there are two sheep beneath them,

one of the shepherds is playing an instrument

that looks like a bagpipe.

The artist has been very, very careful about what he's done here.

I think you can imagine the people seeing this,

feeling like it related to their own lives.

And that is what medieval religion and spectacle is all about.

There's something else that I find fascinating.

Oh, these angels are absolutely delightful.

Each of them is playing a different instrument.

So one of them's playing a harp, one of them's playing a pipe, here.

Anyone who'd ever heard music, played music,

would be able almost to hear the music of the angels playing.

It's so specifically and deliberately, beautifully done.

But the Bologna Cope has a dark side -

an embroidered vision designed not just to inspire

but to instil fear.

This is one of the most horrible images on this whole cope.

It's the massacre of the innocent.

And we have this awful image of a soldier

with his spear thrust through a child, waving it aloft.

And here, I mean, a truly horrific image.

It's a woman holding the severed head of her child.

And that chimes up here

when we have the story of Christ's Passion.

We have this hell mouth

and this beastly mouth sort of roars open

and within it, we have these sinners -

pleading towards Christ, desperate for release.

This is deliberate.

This is designed to shock, to scare, to intimidate,

to fill people with the horror and the majesty of God.

To medieval eyes, the jaws of hell would have been unmistakable.

A life of sin guaranteeing an afterlife of eternal torment

in the sulphurous fires of hell.

And of course, as ever,

the embroiderers haven't been able to resist

leaving an English signature.

Now, this cope tells us principally about the life of Christ.

But here we have St Thomas, or to us Thomas Becket.

Here he is on what would have been the right front of the cope.

And his story follows on from that of Christ's birth,

right through to the epiphany. And yet, here is Becket.

He has nothing to do with the rest of this story.

This is the story from 1170 -

Becket was killed in his own cathedral by four knights acting,

or acting so they thought, on the orders of King Henry II.

Becket's presence on this cope tells us

something important about the place of martyrdom.

Martyrdom is something great,

martyrdom is something holy,

martyrdom is something that is almost the pinnacle

of religious nobility.

So what do we have?

Well, we have the liturgical seasons - the life of Christ.

We have music, we have colour, we have redemption, we have hell,

we have pain, we have gold.

I think everything you need to know

about Christian belief in the Middle Ages

is here in this cope.

Back at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

is one of the few pieces in Britain to rival the finest in Italy.

Even so, what you see today has had to be patched together.

Because in spite of its vibrant colour,

this cope has had a particularly rough ride through history.

This beautiful cope was made sometime between 1330 and 1350,

at the absolute zenith of Opus Anglicanum.

And I've been lucky enough to be allowed inside the display case

to take a closer look.

But obviously this thing is priceless

so once I'm inside, I've been told I mustn't move around.

Some time during its long history, this cope was sliced up

to create various ecclesiastical vestments,

even an altar frontal.

But it has been painstakingly stitched back together

with inserts of darker red velvet filling in the missing sections.

I've got to say it's a very strange sensation

to be here inside the display case.

But it's also mesmerizing to be this close.

You almost want to stroke it, to touch it.

But absolutely forbidden.

The Butler-Bowden Cope is one of the most ornate, complex and ambitious

to survive in anything like its original state.

Underside couching and split stitching

define the bishops and kings in glorious colour and detail.

There are also brilliant depictions of the natural world -

exotic parakeets

and, most remarkably,

leopard heads that still retain the sea pearls

sewn onto their faces.

This cope gives just a hint of how jewels and precious stones

were once a vibrant part of ecclesiastical embroidery.

And there's the familiar figure of the martyred St Edmund of Bury,

pierced by arrows...

..a contemplative St Catherine

with the wheel she miraculously broke during her martyrdom...

..and the English King and founder of Westminster Abbey,

St Edward the Confessor.

What I really like are these Multifoil ogee arches

which seem almost to grow limbs

and bind everything together in a tableau of story telling.

That, taken together with just the sheer quality

of the stitching and the craftsmanship...

this is the absolute peak

of what English artists were able to achieve.

It's astonishing.

But if this cope represents the peak of achievement,

it's also a last gasp for Opus Anglicanum.

Just after the Butler-Bowden Cope was completed in the late 1340s,

people in southern England started dying in huge numbers.

And by 1348, death stalked the City of London -

the centre of England's embroidery industry.

First, painful lumps developed on the underarms and thighs.

Then, internal bleeding created dark blotches under the skin.

Certain death followed in a few days.

One of the worst pandemics in history had arrived in England:

The Black Death, and it sounded the death knell for Opus Anglicanum.

Across Europe, the population declined by around 40%,

but in urban centres, like London, it was much worse.

More than half the people living here died.

The Black Death was cataclysmic. Society had to completely re-adjust.

By the end of the century, the world was a very different place.

The London embroidery industry had been destroyed,

and by the time it recovered,

the initiative had been seized by Dutch embroiderers

who worked more quickly and more cheaply.

The English followed suit.

Today, the dramatic shift in style and technique

can be seen in Threadneedle Street in London,

still home to one of London's Medieval Guilds.

This is the funerary pall of the Merchant Tailors Company.

This was a piece of rich material

that was placed over the coffin

of the deceased member for funerals and for their anniversary services.

So the Merchant Tailors,

is there anything identifying the Merchant Tailors here?

You can see the scissors at the end here and also the Merchant Tailors

grew out of the fraternity of Saint John the Baptist,

and so you see John the Baptist featured prominently along the sides.

And here is St John baptising Christ,

and here, in rather gruesome detail, is the head of St John the Baptist

on a plate, with an unnecessary inscription, it seems to me,

saying "behold the head of the Baptist on a plate."

Yes, we can see blood coming out of his severed neck.

-That's quite gruesome, isn't it?

-Yes.

I'm looking at John the Baptist's face here,

and there's something definitely technically different

to the Opus Anglicanum I've seen before.

In earlier Opus Anglicanum embroidery,

the stitches carefully follow the contours of the face.

Here, they're simply arranged in parallel lines on the face.

There's much less of the vivid, realistic human features

that we've seen when things are stitched in rounder form.

What you're seeing is actually a change in which the English

are adopting Continental techniques.

Unfortunately, by this stage, England had become a follower

rather than a leader.

Were standards being kept as high as had previously been?

I think not. I think that in the early 15th century,

you'll find the Commons petitioning Henry VI in 1423

because they complained that people had, certainly embroiderers,

were mixing in bad work with good,

and that they were producing these things outside of London

to avoid the scrutiny of the King's wardens.

So by the time this is made,

is it fair to say England is no longer the leader?

The heyday of Opus Anglicanum has come to its end?

I'm afraid Opus Anglicanum had definitely

seen its heyday by this stage.

-This is a very far cry from the early pieces.

-What a shame.

With the fine techniques of English Medieval embroidery abandoned

in favour of quicker, more profitable production methods,

copied from mainland Europe,

the practice of Opus Anglicanum was dead.

And another event, no less cataclysmic than the Black Death,

would threaten even the evidence of England's great age of embroidery.

The English life, its faith, its philosophy, was about to experience a revolution.

A religious storm was brewing that would sweep away old certainties

and great works of art.

The early 16th century had seen a growing anti-Catholic feeling

spreading across Europe.

It was provoked by corruption -

the sale of church offices and indulgences.

But the sight of churchmen parading around in expensive vestments,

embroidered with gold and hundreds of jewels, can't exactly have helped!

In the 1530s, the Church of England broke with Rome.

The authority of the Pope was overturned

and replaced by that of the King.

New theological arguments outlawed

the traditional use of religious imagery.

It was the start of the Protestant Reformation in England.

Here at St Andrew's in north Burlingham in Norfolk,

the level of fanaticism's clear to see from the rood screen,

where images of the saints have been systematically vandalised.

I've never seen this before, and it's genuinely shocking.

These images have literally been defaced.

And all because they represented what was called

"the profane beast of Rome."

What you can feel from all of these images is the visceral hatred,

the violence and the fury of the men who did this.

Almost overnight,

the treasures of one age became the heresy of the next.

And Opus Anglicanum's love of depicting

the lives of the saints in stitchwork, and of the Pope's,

made it a prime target, and sadly, an art so delicate and fragile,

so tempting for its removable gold thread and jewels,

was the easiest thing to vandalise or destroy.

One of the greatest arts of the Medieval age was almost extinguished.

The flamboyant excess of English embroidery

was simply too dangerous to own,

because, wherever it was found, like this rood screen,

like stained glass windows, like carved images of saints,

like crosses in church yards, it was destroyed.

Opus Anglicanum was simply too grand, too ostentatious,

too "pope-ish" for the Reformation.

Around 30 major pieces of Medieval English embroidery

are all that survive.

Every piece, every fragment an incredible rarity.

And we know next to nothing about the men and women who designed and made these great vestments.

But in a gallery, just off the main entrance of the Victoria and Albert Museum,

there's a cope that provokes the specialists into a frenzy

of speculation and excitement.

A cope with more clues to the taste and character of its creator than any other.

Today, the Syon Cope is having a rare outing from its display case,

under the watchful gaze of V and A curator, Glyn Davies.

Mystery surrounds the origins of the cope.

It takes its name from Syon Abbey in Middlesex,

which owned it from the 15th century.

The cope survives today only because it was spirited abroad

by the intrepid nuns of Syon

who fled Reformation England, taking it with them.

It's amazing, Glyn,

to have this out of its case. How often do you take it out?

Very, very rarely.

We installed this in these new galleries in 2009.

I haven't seen it out of its case since.

And that was the first time I saw it outside its case

in my entire time here at the museum,

so this is a rare, rare opportunity. It's wonderful to see.

One thing I'm fascinated by is round here.

And this I think you can tell us a bit more about.

We know, don't we, who made this?

Well, we have some idea of the man that it was made for.

This is very unusual.

Unfortunately, it's still quite tantalising.

We don't know everything we would like to.

-But here he is.

-Who's this?

He's this chap who's kneeling down here

beneath this scene of Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene.

Christ is resurrected, he appears to Mary Magdalene

and she wants to touch him and he says,

-no, you can't touch me.

-Rather like this cope!

Absolutely!

And so kneeling in prayer beneath that you have this figure

who's wearing the robe of a monk.

We know he's a monk, and he's holding a scroll in his hands.

-It has some lettering on it.

-What does it say?

Well, it says "dawn pers dai". Just to explain that,

dawn is like "don", like Don Giovanni.

-It's a term for a gentleman.

-OK.

Pers is Piers or Peter, and dai just means of.

Normally, you would then say where he was from,

whether he was from Gloucester or wherever.

Unfortunately, it doesn't go on to tell us!

So we know that he was a monk, we know that he's wealthy -

of course he was if he could pay for this - and we know his name's Peter,

but we don't know an awful lot else about where he was from

or where this was made for.

But we know something about his tastes as a religious man.

OK. What do we know?

We know he was particularly devoted to Saint Thomas the apostle,

or Doubting Thomas, because here he is again

kneeling beneath this scene, where Thomas is being asked to

thrust his hand into Christ's side wound.

There's a lot of gold thread on this scene.

Yeah, it's very beautiful.

And I think there's a deliberate contrast with Mary Magdalene,

who's not allowed to touch Christ, and Thomas, who is.

And Thomas appears again in the next frame around,

and he's standing there with his lance,

but I think particularly interestingly,

Thomas appears a third time, and it's up here in this scene,

which is really unique in Medieval art,

because it's a combination of two scenes.

You've got the funeral of the Virgin Mary, but at the back,

you can see the Virgin's soul is going up into heaven

and there's this snake-like object being passed down to this chap

standing at the back, and that man is Thomas,

and what he's being given is the Virgin's belt, the girdle,

which is one of the key relics of the Virgin, which was kept in Pisa.

So this a truly amazing object, and it's one of so few that's survived.

How many of these do you think might originally have been in existence?

Well, it's impossible to say, but if you look at the inventories of some of the great churches

and monasteries in England at the time,

it wouldn't be unusual to find 15 or 20 copes

and 15 or 20 chasubles, sometimes many more than that, so hundreds

if not thousands of these must have existed. We must have lost over 90%.

Wow.

Today, we recognise the artistic greatness of the Medieval age

in its stained glass, its effigies and religious sculpture,

and its architecture.

We should also proclaim it as the Age of Embroidery.

It's just that so little of it has survived.

A tantalising hint of one of the greatest artistic industries

England has ever produced.

But there remains the attractive possibility

that an old Catholic family may unknowingly possess

some ancient vestments, tucked away inside a dusty chest,

or hidden behind a secret panel.

An embroidered treasure that's survived history,

just waiting to come into the light.

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