This article discusses both theological and historical perspectives on the use of vestments in worship, referring both to vestments for worship leaders and for important objects used in worship.
In the movie Back to the Future, a young man is transported in a time machine back to the teenage years of his parents (the 1950s). When he is first discovered, his parents’ peers call him Calvin because so much of his clothing bears Calvin Klein labels. Sporting the names of famous designers on seat pockets, sleeves, and shirt pockets is a mark of status in our time. This has rarely, if ever, been so before. Within recorded history, however, clothing has always been more than a mere extension of the skin for purposes of warmth and protection.
Clothing communicated relationships and meanings within a community. Although all the Maori of New Zealand may wear cloaks made of bird feathers, the pattern of the feathers distinguishes one group from another. The contrasting patterns of Chinese and Japanese clothing reveal that the Chinese were predominantly a hunting society, while the Japanese were largely agricultural.
English kings, earls, dukes, and counts can be identified by the shape of their crowns and the number of ermine tails on their ceremonial robes. Denim jeans and flannel shirts are unacceptable attire at board meetings of Merrill Lynch, and the wearing of three-piece pinstripe suits at a gathering of Hell’s Angels could be dangerous.
Vesting the Ministers
So it is with the presence or absence of ritual vesture in communities of Christians. To proscribe all ritual vesture is to communicate a clear theological position and to raise the problem of what suit or dress is appropriate for the leader of this Sunday’s assembly. To prescribe only academic vesture for the preacher and leader of worship is to say something loud and clear about the community’s understanding of the liturgical act. Churches with “high” sacramental traditions are also taking a theological and ritual stance by continuing to use special liturgical vesture for some or all of their liturgical ministers.
Before we begin to focus on the artistic quality of liturgical vesture, we need to look at the liturgical and pastoral judgments to be made about these elements of our sacramental prayer. Music in Catholic Worship (USCC, 1972) reminds us that no artistic criterion is without its pastoral and liturgical implication. The application of words or shopworn religious signs to a chasuble, for instance, reduces this noble garment to a sandwich board and tends to reduce the liturgy itself to a medium of information rather than formation. Not only is a lightweight polyester confirmation “stole” poor art; it also gives rise to ministerial confusion, since the stole is a vestment specific to the ordained minister.
Vesting the Assembly
The use of fabrics in worship goes far beyond the obvious vesting of the presider, since to vest or not to vest an object, person, group, or action indicates the reverence we have for them. Since the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, official liturgical documents have stressed the assembly as the primary symbol in Christian worship. How is this reflected in the use of the textile arts?
How do we vest the entire space where the assembly gathers? Do we still pile hangings around the altar and the presider’s chair and on the front of the pulpit? Does an assembly have any sense that hangings give an added seasonal dimension to the entire space? Is the particular importance of ritual objects underlined by the coverings they bear? The draped cross on Good Friday, the veiled tabernacle, the lectionary covered in precious fabrics—these objects still speak to us of the glory that shines through them. In the same way, the roles of the various ministers can be more clearly symbolized if the ministers are clothed in gracious vesture.
Devotion to the Chasuble
The textile arts, like the other arts that serve the liturgy, have changed over the centuries. The ample vesture of early presiders gradually became shrunken and stiff panels, worn fore and aft. This shift from the classic conical planeta to the less significant “fiddleback” or “Roman” chasuble charts the development of ministerial roles, especially the presider’s, vis-à-vis the entire assembly’s ownership of its liturgy. The conical chasuble is admittedly a garment that does not allow for a wide range of free arm movement. The celebration of the Eucharist, however, in which each ministerial rank (including deacons, acolytes, and lectors) performed only those actions proper to its own ministry, revolved around a vision of the presider as one who did nothing but preside.
The bishop or priest prayed the orations, preached (from a seated position), and raised his arms only at the end of the entrance, offertory, and Communion processions and during the eucharistic prayer. Taking the gifts, setting the Table, and handling the vessels were all done by less encumbered ministers. When some of those ministers, the deacons, did wear chasubles, they did so in a way that changed the shape of that garment (the planeta plicata or folded chasuble). The dalmatic, a full-sleeved tunic, came to be identified with the diaconal role because the deacon could “work” better in that beautiful garment than in the fuller but more confining planeta.
Historians of liturgical vesture are accustomed to presenting charts that show a gradual process of cutting away the long sides of the chasuble in order to free the arms of the presider. As the presider assumed more of the various ministerial roles during the Eucharist, the presider’s distinctive garment, the chasuble, became smaller and smaller. The more the Eucharist was dominated by the priestly office, the smaller, stiffer, and less beautiful the chasubles became. In a sense, one could teach the history of eucharistic development—and therefore, the history of the church—by tracing the evolution of the chasuble.
Fabric Coverings
We can follow a similar route for the vesting of objects. Icons, engravings, and book illuminations abound with illustrations of pious Christians covering their hands with plain linen cloths as they handle the altar vessels. The same simple yet ample cloths often cover these same vessels. Gospel books, pastoral staffs, and vessels for holy oils are covered and carried in the same way. As these objects became minimalized, their coverings became stiff little flaps on which insignificant images were painted or embroidered. Because the objects were reduced as effective signs, and because the actions in which they were employed were no longer open and full, their coverings no longer spoke to the community. Chalices, grapes, and wheat came to be applied to the coverings of bread plates and wine cups to signal that something significant was being covered.
Enter the Banner
The vesting of the great assembly space has evolved more in our own day than in previous centuries. Though we know that magnificent tapestries have occasionally covered the walls of some churches, we have little historical information on significant vesting of worship spaces prior to the modern era.
A banner is of its nature temporary—it identifies particular groups in the entire assembly or procession, or it gives a special but temporary highlight to some person, group, object, or action during a liturgical celebration. A wall hanging, though not permanent, usually has a special place throughout a liturgical season. Banners move into a liturgy and move out; wall hangings are in place before the assembly gathers and remain in place for weeks, months, or even years.
Banners and wall hangings are used more frequently today than at any previous time. Because so many of our first efforts in liturgical renewal treated worship as a communicator of information, banners and wall hangings made their entrance in the great American tradition of the billboard. More and more, however, our assembly spaces are being graced by simple but bold statements of color and abstract design that give greater allowance for the eye’s ability to be caught more powerfully by the imagination than by theological aphorisms or slogans.
Promise for the Future
These remarks may sound like a psalm of lament. They were intended, however, to point out how truly significant vesture is as one of the elements in the ensemble of arts that makes up liturgical prayer. Now, more than ever, visual, graphics, and handicraft artists are being called on to design and execute altar coverings, banners, wall hangings, vesture, and lectionary covers worthy of our growing awareness of the power of the liturgy in which these objects are used. We have moved from the felt-and-burlap stage to hand-woven textiles, finely crafted tapestries, and freeform fiber works. Now we know that the kind of chasuble that sells in gross lots (often to bereaved families who then donate them to the parish) is not fit for any liturgical assembly (and especially not for foreign missions). For the first time, pastors and parish liturgical committees are willing to commission vesture and hangings designed for a particular space with its own unique play of light, wall finishes, and floor textures. The freeing of the Christian imagination in public prayer has opened the door to a significant revival of the textile arts in worship.
No element of life and no art is insignificant to a particular liturgical celebration. In the past two decades, we have learned to recognize music as a central element of worship and not simply as decoration. At first, we spoke of liturgy and music, then of liturgical music, and finally of musical liturgy. In the past decade, we have also taken a particularly critical look at the shape of our assembly spaces, the quality of light and acoustics, and the worthiness of liturgical furnishings. From the beginning of our liturgical reform, we have criticized the quality of translations and new texts. As we become more aware of the crucial role of language, we are beginning to enjoy freshly composed texts that voice our common prayer in a language both evocative and challenging.
We are just beginning to look at vesture and the textile arts. Perhaps we Americans are reluctant to give too much attention to something so clearly decorative as fabric, its shape, color, cut, and flow. But in fact, the nonverbal world—the colors we behold, the textures we feel and touch—beckons us across the threshold of the spirit.