The former Royal Chapter of Hall in Tirol preserves an old chasuble. Its history goes back to one dramatic chapter in the History of Central Europe – the invasion of the Mongols. The textile material is much older than the garment, which belongs to baroque times. Style and technical features make it perfectly clear that this precious silk is an example of the panni tartarici, which filled the European Markets in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Local tradition says that the chasuble was made of a robe of Saint Hedwig, who was the Duchess of Silesia. The silk is to young to have been owned by Saint Hedwig herself, who died in 1243. But the connection is not a modern invention. Written records tell us that “a robe called Saint Hedwig’s” was given to the Royal Chapter in Hall by Archduke Karl von Habsburg (1590-1624) on the occasion of his election as Head of the Teutonic Order in 1618. He had been bishop of Breslau in Silesia before and had had the possibility to take possession of a true or false relic of Hedwig. She was one of the few Silesian aristocrats who survived the invasion of the Mongols in Silesia in 1240. A large part of her vita describes the “Battle of Wahlstatt” near Liegnitz. Under the lead of her son, Duke Henry II, local noblemen and knights of the Teutonic order fought against the Mongols. Henry lost his life in the battle. Contemporaries and successors saw him as a Christian martyr; and Hedwig was venerated as the mother of a martyr.
My investigation will focus on the analysis of the object and of its history from the 17th century back to 1300. The textile material belongs to a group of silks woven in the Ilkhanid Empire. It wish to demonstrate on which ways the pannus tartaricus could have found its way from Iran to Central Europa. To reconstruct the network of contacts between the Ilkhanid Empire and Europe I will compare the object with textiles preserved in Vienna, Regensburg, and Prague. Finally, I ask for the genesis of the idea that the silk from the Ilkhanid Empire preserved in the chasuble was a relic of Saint Hedwig, mother of the knight, who fought against the mongols.
Juliane von Fircks
Mainz-Berlin, Germany
