Suaire de St-Josse

The "Suaire de St-Josse", the "Shroud of Saint Josse" that is now conserved in the Musée du Louvre, [ Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, "The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field", "The Art Bulletin" 85.1 (March 2003:152-184), p. 154, fig. 1.] is a rich silk samite saddle cloth that was woven in northeastern Iran, some time before 961, when Abu Mansur Bakhtegin, the "camel-prince" for whom it was woven, was beheaded. It was brought back from the First Crusade by Étienne de Blois and dedicated as a votive gift at the Abbey of Saint-Josse, near Caen, Normandy.

This fragmentary textile is the only known surviving example of a silk textile produced in western Iran, in the royal workshops of the Samanid dynasty. [ [http://www.louvre.fr/llv/oeuvres/detail_notice.jsp?CONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198673226262&CURRENT_LLV_NOTICE%3C%3Ecnt_id=1013419867 Louvre Museum: "The Saint-Josse Shroud"] .] The "prince" referred to in the woven Kufic inscription, though decipherable in more than one way, os most likely to refer to the general and emir Bukhtegin, active in the service of Abd al-Malik bin Nuh, the Samanid sultan of Khorasan, 954-61.

Like many trophies of foreign adventure, both in the Middle Ages and in more modern times, in its new context, the rare textile was given new meaning, for it was used to wrap the bones of Saint Josse when he was reinterred in 1134. [M. Bernus, H. Marchal, and G. Vial, "Le Suaire de St-Josse", "Bulletin de Liaison du Centre International d'Études des Textiles Anciens" 33 (1971:1-57).]

When the Abbey of Saint-Josse was secularised just before the French Revolution, [The Abbey of Saint-Josse was closed in 1772, sold and then deismantled in 1789, leaving no traces of the monumental buildings.] the abbey church became the parish church of the French commune of Saint-Josse; the "suaire" was kept there until it was transferred to the Louvre.

Notes