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In medieval Christendom, liturgical vestments were not just attributes for priestly identity. In direct contact with the celebrant's body, they were charged with numerous allegorical significations that this article is aimed at studying. The first one associated the priest's clothing with a moral "rite of passage." Each vestment symbolized a virtue, thanks to which the priest was supposed to get ready for the Mass. A new allegorical system emerged in the thirteenth century: as symbols of arma Christi , the vestments invited the priest to follow Christ in his Passion. These liturgical garments were even considered as metaphors for Christ's flesh. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, the celebrant's clothing was a kind of new embodiment. By putting the liturgical vestments on, the priest was able to transform into the ultimate priest with a new emphasis on his quasi-demiurgic power; as such the priest became one of the most sacred components of the ritual of the Eucharist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of a new progressivism ushered into existence in the Roman Catholic Church by the Vatican II Council initiated by Pope John XXIII in 1962 and concluded by Pope Paul VI in 1965, this essay examines nuns' resistance to and eventual adoption of new professional garb as a site of sometimes contentious debates about the changing roles of women ecclesiastics. Within the context of passionate and, at times, violent fights for civil and women's rights and of protests against U.S. involvement in Vietnam, two popular films from this decade— The Trouble with Angels (1966) and its sequel, Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows (1968)—stage a competition between tradition and innovation in both theological and sartorial arenas. Ultimately, the nuns in these films follow a calling to become public advocates for a more humane and charitable world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the gendered implications of defiling a churchman’s ceremonial cope by tearing or ‘dagging’ it, or by cutting off the tip of the garment’s voluminous hood; ‘dagging’ entailed slashing the cloth to imitate knights returning frayed from battle. Analysing a number of distinctive instances of this remarkable act of violence from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries suggests that both clerics and laymen forcibly rent a cleric’s cope or hood to ridicule, emasculate, and ‘frock’ the churchman during conflicts over power and authority. Disfiguring a cleric’s vestments was apparently understandable–to the victim, aggressor and audience alike–as an act of public defamation, figurative impotency and symbolic illegitimacy. This menacing-yet-comical form of mastery and disparagement was remarkable enough to find its way into contemporary literature. An examination of contemporary chronicles, sermons and episcopal registers suggests that clerics and their supporters symbolically de-legitimised clerical adversaries during conflicts within the church by targeting their ceremonial garments and ‘dagging’ them to mimic lay fashion. Laymen, on the other hand, tore the vestments worn by clerics who endeavoured to excommunicate them in order to thwart episcopal authority and to demonstrate their own physical mastery over, and effrontery towards, the ecclesiastical body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the medieval vestments that were found in the Saint Alban parish church in Cologne, Germany. Several topics are discussed, including how people started focusing on historical textiles and liturgical vestments in the middle of the 19th century in Germany, how the construction on the Saint Alban church started in the 10th century, which makes it one of the oldest churches in Cologne, as well as how researchers have found tapestries, altar cloths, and vestments featuring intricate stitching and embroidery in the church that date back to the 1400s. Also discussed is the cathedral historian Franz Bock's publications about the medieval textiles.

The article presents an examination into the 13th century liturgical treatise "Rationale Divinorum Officiorum," by William Durandus, and its description of Christian symbolism, particularly that of clerical vestments. Discussion is given highlighting the ways in which Durandus identifies and confronts social trends of the late Medieval era regarding the conflict between contemporary fashion trends and older clerical clothing traditions. Durandus' criticism of fashion changes in vestments is addressed and its implications on late medieval philosophy of material culture is analyzed.

The article discusses the cloth of the vestments from Whalley Abbey in Lancashire, England in relation to developments in early fifteenth-century velvet weaving in Italy. The set of vestments are made from two early Italian figured velvets, with orphreys of English embroidery showing scenes from the Life of the Virgin and from the Infancy of Christ. The set of vestments are important, due in part to that fact that they are a rare, documented set of English Pre-Reformation vestments. The silk fabrics give evidence that by the early fifteenth century, figured velvet weaving had reached a high level of sophistication.

The article describes the first full conservation and reconstruction of a medieval cope to have been undertaken in the Victoria & Albert museum for twenty-five years. It examines how the cope was cleaned, remounted and reconstructed based on evidence taken from the object and from academic study. An introduction to the Jesse Cope is presented, which includes its design and structure. The article also discusses the technical examination conducted on the cope as well as the tools used in the examination.

This article reports on the modern textile designs for liturgical robes and vestments that are being created in Germany and in Austria in the 21st century. Several topics are discussed, including the author's opinion that a good church liturgy needs appropriately religious priestly robes, but also contemporary vestments to be worn; how the vestments in many of the church supply catalogs lack good aesthetic quality, modernity, and form; and how textile artists and painters such as Christof Cremer, Wally Schulz, and Clemens Kaletsch are designing and creating high quality liturgical robes for pastors and priests.