The Opus Anglicanum exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum opens a window on to medieval English Catholicism and the splendour of Pre-Tridentine liturgy in this country.
Opus Anglicanum is the name given to a school of rich embroidery which flourished mainly in the 13th and 14th centuries and was principally used in the adornment of ecclesiastical vestments and furnishings. Its artisans were based in the City of London in an area near St Paul’s Cathedral, but so beautiful was its craft and colour that it was exported all over Europe. Most such work that remained in England was destroyed during the Reformation. (It’s ironic that a heresy which claimed the Bible as its only source could claim that the worship of God precludes finely adorned vestments.)
