A great deal of Byzantine tapestry, with other hangings and carpets, was brought into Western Europe, by those returning from the First Crusade (1096–1099); and after 1146, when Count Robert of Sicily brought home from his expedition into Greece some captive silk-workers, and established a manufactory for brocades and damasks at Palermo, beautiful materials were carried northward from Italy.
During the early centuries the use of tapestry was very extensively devoted to the decoration of churches, and therefore represented scenes from the Scriptures, and lives of the Saints and the Virgin.
Cathedrals and monasteries were very rich in hangings of tapestry, brocades, and embroideries of various kinds, as well as stuffs on which ornaments were laid and sewn. About 985, the Abbot Robert of the monastery of Saint Florent of Saumur, ordered a number of curtains, carpets, cushions, _dossers_ and wall-hangings, all of wool; and, moreover, had two large pieces of tapestry made in which silk was introduced, and on which lions and elephants were represented upon a red background.
In 1133, another Abbot of the same monastery had two _dossers_ made to hang in the choir during festivals. On one of these the twenty-four elders of the Apocalypse with citharas and viols were depicted. The hangings he got for the nave, represented centaurs, lions and other animals.
On all festal occasions, the cathedrals were beautifully decorated with superb tapestries. Some of them served as hangings and door-curtains, others draped the altars, while the seats and backs of the benches were covered with pieces called _bancalia_, _spaleriae_, and _dossalia_. Tapestries also covered the baldachins, or canopies; and foot-carpets, called _substratoria_, _tapetes_, _tapeta_, or _tapecii_ were lavishly spread upon the ground.
During the thirteenth century tapestries came into general use for hangings in private mansions. It is not unlikely that Baldwin, Count of Flanders, who came into power in 1204, stimulated the work of the Netherland looms; for, from the very opening years of the thirteenth century, the Flemish weavers adopted brighter colours in their tapestries; and Damme, the poet of Bruges, received all kinds of goods from the East, including “seeds for producing the scarlet dye.”