3 - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Imagined and Reimagined Textiles in Anglo-Saxon England

Summary

In 934, King Athelstan paid a visit to the shrine of St. Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street near Durham. He left behind costly gifts: an embroidered stole covered in gold and two gold-embroidered maniples. These gifts are probably the three items—a stole, a maniple, and a textile known as Maniple II—later found with the saint's body when his tomb in Durham was opened in 1827. The extant Durham pieces are important archaeological evidence confirming the skillful and beautiful textile work the Anglo-Saxons were known for, work also attested in textual sources. But the Durham vestments may be emblematic of more than just skill and beauty; their provenance and construction highlight Anglo-Saxon attitudes toward textiles, attitudes alluded to in the Liber Eliensis (the history of the monastery at Ely) and hagiographical sources of the period. Rather than seeing expensive textiles as end-use products, many Anglo-Saxons appear to have adopted an attitude to textiles echoed in the modern catchphrase “reduce, reuse, recycle,” reimagining textiles and their constituent parts in different ways and for different needs.

The extant Durham vestments were not initially designed for St. Cuthbert. Two of the three donated articles were worked between 909 and 916 by order of Ælfflaed, one of Edward the Elder's wives and Athelstan's stepmother, as Latin inscriptions embroidered into the maniple tell us: “ÆLFFLÆD FIERI PRECEPIT / PIO EPISCOPO FRIĐESTANO” [Ælfflæd had this made / for holy Bishop Friðestan].