Sartorial Splendor- Charming Chasubles

Today's installment of Sartorial Splendor brings us to the centerpiece of the series, really. The chasuble is the subject of this post. It is, in some sense, the most visible and common of priestly vestments.

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Charming Chasubles

Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the poncho

As with many of the other vestments we have covered in this series, the chasuble has its origins in the secular clothing of ancient Rome. The origins of the chasuble itself are not in dispute, unlike some other vestments. Many Latin terms were used to refer to the chasuble, including "planeta," "amphibalus" and "casula." It is from the last that we get the word chasuble; casula itself is a diminutive of casa, which is Latin for house, so casula, strictly speaking, means "little house."

The latter term, little house, directly relates to the form and function of the earliest "chasuble." It was, essentially, a kind of heavy-duty poncho, a large garment whose purpose was to cover the wearer and protect the clothes underneath. The original chasuble would have been a large, single and semi-circuluar piece of cloth with a hole cut in the middle to allow a space for the head to come through, or, alternately, two pieces of cloth sewn together. If the pieces were sewn together, then oftentimes a third piece of cloth would have been sewn over the seam- this is the origin of the "orphery" which you can see in the picture above.

The picture above presents a chasuble in the Gothic tradition, which brings me to my next point. Over time, somewhat unlike other vestments, the chasuble has undergone significant alteration. Even the efforts following Vatican II to return to a more "primitive" and "ancient" form of the chasuble are somewhat misleading- modern chasubles don't really look like the ancient secular dress of old.

If I may be permitted a tangent, I should like to make a point about that. This kind of rude antiquarianism is rather anachronistic, all things considered. One of my sources, though exceedingly sympathetic to the middle ages and therefore a wondrous one, makes a variety of comments throughout the section on chasubles about how much the chasuble has suffered in design over the years. I would like to point out that developments within the Church- within the liturgy and such- are not simply to be discarded because they are a departure from the original form. After all, chasubles used to be ponchos! Is that what we should return to? No, of course not. A slow and gradual alteration over time is not necessarily a bad thing and is, furthermore, a sign of organic growth. A harsh and unreasonable desire to strip away these developments in an immediate and stark return to some glorified past is both anachronistic and arrogant- it discards a great deal of the past in return for a narrow slice of it, it insists that *this* way is the best and *only* way to do something, etc etc. This is simply not true. Anway, I digress.

The chasuble's original form was, as I said, as a large garment meant to protect the wearer. Eventually it became an ecclesiastical garment- sometime before the sixth century; when exactly the switchover was made is hard to date specifically. It was not, however, immediately a vestment confined only to the celebrant of the Mass. Even as late as the seventeenth century there is evidence that the chasuble was worn and used outside of the context of Mass by priests. This practice, however, is no longer extant and the chasuble is now confined exclusively to priests celebrating Mass. Additionally, before the liturgical reforms following Vatican II, the concelebration of Mass was not something that occurred, and multiple celebrants around the altar wearing chasubles would have been rather unknown at the time. Since concelebration is now allowed, this event might even be called common, although it does raise a number of questions, not the least of which is "how are we supposed to find loads of chasubles that all match for these priests?"

Anywho, the chasuble's form developed over time as well. Its use by priests necessitated a trimming back of the fabric involved in the vestment for very practical reasons- it was simply too big. By the thirteenth century, significant departures from the original form of the chasuble began to appear and severe alterations sometime took place. As with the rest of things in the middle ages, ornamentation of vestments, including the chasuble, reached a glorious apex. To allow for more freedom of mobility, the fabric around the arms began to get trimmed back heavily. The picture to the right is a photo of a fiddleback chasuble, which is more or less the logical conclusion of these vestment trimmings. The picture at the top of this post is more similar to the original chasubles form and I think you can see the very large difference between them.

The practice of putting a cross on the back grew out of a Baroque practice of ornamentation, when the orphery that I mentioned above was turned into a decorative strip of fabric. The next, natural thing to do was make it into a cross and in the Baroque period they added the corpus to it as well. After that, the decoration varied considerably and you can find many old vestments in this style with no Christological ornamentation at all, but lots of things like flowers and the like (I do not like vestments that look like that, personally- it must be manly ornamentation, darn it! manly! this means no flowers!).

The fiddleback fell into disfavor following Vatican II and more "authentic" chasuble styles were adopted. This included a simplification of ornamentation, as well as a return to fuller form. This has had good consequences (personally, I don't much care for fiddlebacks), as well as disastrous ones:
The chasuble pictured above is what AI fondly refers to as a "liturgical abortion." I pray that all abortions may, one day, cease. (On a side note, whenever you see pictures of vestments made for women, they are always, always absolutely hideous. Have these women no taste? Honestly.)

The chasuble itself, as the most visible vestment, is of paramount importance in the expression of the liturgical colors. The dominant color of the chasuble must be the color of the day, which is dictated by several factors- sometimes there is a choice of colors.

For example, the color for Ordinary Time (what we're in now) is green. Advent is purple, Easter is white, etc. Black was the traditional color for funeral Masses before Vatican II, although black vestments are extremely uncommon now and white, symbolic of the resurrection, is now widely used. Red is used for days like Pentecost and for daily Masses when the saint of the day was a martyr. Blue is NOT an allowed liturgical color, except for certain Marian shrines and a few dioceses in Spain, but even then only on Marian feastdays. This is an important point, because many liberal parishes have, bizarrely, taken it upon themselves to use blue in their vestments for use on Marian days. Wrong, sorry, this is strictly not allowed unless you have express permission to do so. Blue is also sometimes used in Lent, but this, again, is not allowed. (Many poeple will say that the use of blue originates in the Sarum liturgical Rite, but this is utter rubbish. In Lent, the Sarum Rite used black, so anyone who says that's where blue came from has no idea what they're talking about. Blue was a liturgical "color" invented by the mainline vestment companies to sell more [overpriced] vestments.)

Well, I think that's it for now. I hope this has been helpful and interesting. Next: copes!

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Saint Peter Damian, pray for us!

Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, pray for us!

Our Lady of the South, pray for us!