The discovery of silk, and the way in which it spread from the Far East to Europe is shrouded in legend.
The origins of silk and its diffusion in Europe is a question which has always perplexed historians, who continue to be divided between those who argue for an Arabian matrix, and those who favour a Byzantine or Norman origin.
Sericulture, the farming of silkworms for the production of raw silk, is certainly a Chinese invention dating to approximately 4500 years ago.

In the west, China itself has often been a synonym for silk, and the route leading from China to the west was known as “the silk road”. Already two thousand years ago, silk, perfumes, spices and precious stones travelled this road from China as far as the Mediterranean. Starting from Peking, it passed through Hami in western China and then skirted the terrible Taklamakan desert, passing through the caravan cities of Aksu and Kashgar, modern-day Kashi.

From here, via either of two routes over the Himalayas, the merchants reached Samarkand and Bukhara, in modern-day Uzbekistan, and then crossed Iran to reach the coasts of the Mediterranean.
The journey took one or two years, depending on the political and military conditions of the countries passed through. This route has changed very little over the course of fifteen centuries.

In the Celestial Empire, during the Tang period (618-907), Hangzhou was the centre of silk production, and together with the two nearby cities of Wuxi and Jiaxing was known as “the home of silk”. The silk industry developed further during the Song (960-1279) and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties.
It is told in one of the books of Confucius’ sayings that the Chinese Empress Si-Ling-Chi discovered how to breed the silkworm and to weave the filaments, no less than 2600 years before Christ, and that she thus became a divinity for the grateful populace, who adored her as the “Goddess of silk”.
Jealously hoarded in the recesses of the imperial court, for many long centuries the discovery was shrouded in silence, and only in the fourth century AD did Japan and India find out about it.

Another legend tells of the cunning ruse of a Chinese princess who was given in marriage to the King of Turkestan; since she could not bear to be without her silk garments, she cunningly concealed several eggs of the precious insect in her hair.

In the first century AD, under the Emperor Augustus, Rome came into contact with the luxury of the East, and silk became the preferred fabric for female dress in the West too.
In the markets of Asia Minor, the Romans learnt that the silk came from China (in fact they called the Chinese “Seres” from the Greek word meaning silk) but they did not know of what material it was composed.

They believed that it was a vegetable product, made from plants which did not exist in Europe.
It was only later, in the sixth century after Christ, that the farming of silkworms was introduced into Mediterranean countries too, through a stratagem.

It’s told that, at a time when the Roman Empire in the West was succumbing to the wave of the barbarian invasions, and when the Latin civilisation was being conserved by the Eastern Roman Empire, two monks who had been sent by the Emperor Justinian (527-565 AD), to spread the gospel of Christ in the Asian lands, brought back to the Byzantine capital (modern-day Constantinople) several silkworm cocoons concealed within their pilgrim’s staffs.

Thus it was that, in Greece, in Persia and in the Italian cities under direct Byzantine influence, the first breeding farms were organised. In the eleventh century, the Arabs gave new impetus to the silk production in Persia, Sicily and above all in Spain. China nevertheless remained the major producer.
We could say that the diffusion of sericulture in the other European countries is due prevalently to the Italians: it was the Genoese who were the first to transfer the silk trade to Avignon, and Italian too were the first farmers of silkworms in England and in Switzerland.

This is not hard to credit, moreover, when we remember that in the Florence of Dante, with its thriving industry and trade with the countries beyond the Alps, the “Silk Guild” already existed to protect the rights of the silk-weavers.

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