Samite

Samite was a luxurious and heavy silk fabric worn in the Middle Ages, of a twill-type weave, often including gold or silver thread.

Vikings, connected through their direct trade routes with Constantinople, were buried in samite embroidered with silver-wound threads in the tenth century.

A samite saddlecloth known in the West as the Suaire de Saint-Josse, now in the Musée du Louvre,[12] was woven in eastern Iran sometime before 961, when Abu Mansur Bakhtegin, for whom it was woven, died; it was brought back from the First Crusade by Stephen, Count of Blois and dedicated as a votive gift at the Abbey of Judoc near Boulogne.

He sent them to our fine, brave men..."[13] The Fourth Crusade brought riches unknown in the West to the crusaders who sacked Constantinople in 1204, described by Villehardouin: "The booty gained was so great that none could tell you the end of it: gold and silver, and vessels and precious stones, and samite, and cloth of silk..."[14] Samite was a royal tissue: in the 1250s, it featured clothing of fitting status provided for the innovative and style-conscious English king Henry III, his family, and his attendants.

It could be further enriched by being over-embroidered: in Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail (1180s) "On the altar, I assure you, there lay a slain knight.

Detail from the "Martyr Cope" (1270), gold on red silk samite, brought from France in 1274. Uppsala Cathedral Treasury.
Pheasant roundels on silk samite fragment, Central Asia, 7th or 8th century
Sasanian silk samite cloth circa 960. It was used to make the Shroud of Saint-Josse, circa 1134. Probable spoils from the First Crusade .