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scraps, and spilled drinks, a function that would have sorely tested the maker's art.19
As well, the decoration of the homes of the great and rich began to be softened in appearance by the introduction of tapestries. Sewn tapestries existed in Europe before the eleventh century, of which the most famous is the Bayeux Tapestry, attributed to Queen Mathilda of Normandy.
But from the twelfth century on, woven tapestries make their appearance. The actual art of using warp and weft threads to make a decoration was known in China before Christ. Western imitations are considered to derive from Coptic Christians flourishing in the east between the third and seventh centuries.
The transmission link, however, has been not been established, whether through Spain or with the Crusaders, or through other means. The oldest dated tapestries in the Coptic style in Europe are from Germany and Oslo.20
A 12th century work in the cathedral of Halberstadt shows St Michael slaying a devil: another German tapestry of the same era, now in Oslo, shows a knight dressed in armour almost identical to that worn in the Bayeux Tapestry of c.1080. Given that armour changed rapidly and styles are very specific to an era, it seems likely that this was made within a generation of the dated work. This would suggest that tapestry making reached northern Europe very shortly after, or even possible slightly before, the First Crusade.
Over the next two hundred years, such fabrics became part of aristocratic life. The fourteenth century romance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight describes Sir Gawain as dressed in a padded undergarment of Turkish weave. A fifteenth century Scottish poem remarks on a gentleman being placed in "..a coffin /Fitted out with carpets..."
Such beautiful, civilizing objects d'art increase in frequency and complexity as the centuries go on, as trade with the East grows, and as European society and culture began to burgeon through its opening to the East.
PLEASANTLY COOLED BY FOUNTAINS
The Crusades were also responsible for revolutionising European horticulture, directly and profoundly, and with it making the lives of women richer and more luxurious than at any time for half a millenium.21
The change is encapsulated in the famous Romance of the Rose, written shortly after the Third Crusade by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun.
The Romance speaks of a symbolic garden hemmed within the high circling walls of a castle, pleasantly cooled by fountains springing from within secret glades, and planted with "every tree from the land of the Saracens": pomegranates, nutmeg, almonds, cloves, dates, figs, liquorice, aniseed, grains of Paradise, cinammon, zedoary and olive trees, mingling with northern varieties such as pear, quince, medlars, plums, apples and chestnuts.22
Bruised mint, sweet fennel, periwinkle, rose, violet, pansy, golden kingcup, pink rimmed daisies and a host of flowers, blue, gold and red, enlivened the view and sweetened the air.
Such a delightful place for repose and refreshment would have been inconceivable in the years before the Crusaders encountered similar gardens in Spain and the east. After the fall of the Roman Empire, most people in Europe had no time or space for leisure gardens such as this idealised one. It represents in itself a departure from an era of practicality and life at the edge of survival towards centuries devoted more to pleasure and luxury.
One of the only places where gardens as such survived the devastation of the barbarians was within the protective arms of the Church.
Thus, St Radegunda, the sixth century Merovingian queen, who had retired to an abbey, grew roses and other plants to strew on her table or to hang on the walls in imitation of Roman garlands.
Such plants were limited in variety and quantity, however, by a lack of time and space - as well as a suspicion of beauty in its own right - preventing the monks from cultivating a wider range of produce. Even two hundred years later, a list of herbs and plants ordered for a monastery garden belonging to Charlemagne contained only two flowers: the rose and the lily. Other Dark Age lists mention violets, mint and thyme as suitable for religious decorations, and even a later twelfth century gardening list from England adds only heliotrope and paeonies.
By contrast, the first gardening book in English - The Feate of Gardening written in the fourteenth century - contains 97 plants, including cowslip, foxglove, gentian, iris, hollyhock and lavender, as well as coloured water lillies.
Thus, a revolution had occurred, a complete rethinking of the garden and the purpose of gardening.
The roots of this grew in the gardens of the East, where Arabian and Persian gardeners had for centuries composed living works of art which were simultaneously a refuge from the outside world and also a source of life itself. Islamic science combined with a desire for cooling oases had produced gardens where fountains played amongst a cornucopia of plant varieties.
These gardens became known in Europe by reputation. Bishop Liutbrand, for example, brought back an account of the Byzantine emperor's golden tree in 968, and in 1167 a German embassy reported on the splendour of the Sultan's garden at Baghdad.
By the time of the First Crusade, gardens were customarily being established around castles, again for practical rather than recreational purposes, and across the moat an orchard for fruit trees and other kitchen plants, usually placed conveniently close to the women's quarters.
Meanwhile, in Sicily the Norman conquerors under Robert Guiscard had settled into lands from which they expelled the Saracens who had conquered the island before them. The Norman Sicilians assimilated the gardens left behind by the Arabs. So enamoured was Robert of the Arabian gardens that he walled an area some eight kilometres in circumference around his palace at Palermo and had it developed as a series of resorts for pleasure, compared by an Islamic writer to a necklace on the throat of a beautiful girl. Running through these gardens were beautiful fountains fed ingeniously by canals.
The Crusaders appear to have been astonished by the beauty of these pleasure gardens when they passed through Sicily, and lords such as Robert of Artois consciously
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