AN ART HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE BYZANTINE SILK INDUSTRY

The purpose of this study is to determine how silk was seen in Byzantium society.;The silk of Byzantine was manufactured for a millenium under imperial auspices, control or influence. As a consequence, the quantity and variety of documents is greater for silk than for any other medium or class of object in Byzantine art. The documents reveal surprisingly little meaning attached to individual motifs that ornamented silk; more importance was given to the ways in which it functioned. Because of those functions the exceptional legal, economic, political, and religious attention lavished on Byzantine silk tended to isolate and elevate it in the eye of the Medieval beholder.;The documentary history is first examined chronologically. The study concludes with an enumeration of the ways in which silk functioned--especially as regalia, court display, brandea, gold, laurata, and tools of statecraft.;The study is accompanied by text illustrations and a selected catalogue raisonne based on published and unpublished technical dossiers, or personal examination of the objects.