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In this paper, I posit that the transformation of monastic habits is observed and maintained in East Asian school uniforms. School uniforms at the schools founded by religious orders, mainly by Protestant and Catholic missionaries, could have manifested faith and religious identity. These religious authorities, who acted as managers of civic education, coincided with other public and private schools founded in secular contexts, unlike the religious emblems of those groups in their home countries. Many schools founded by Christian missionaries in East Asia in the early twentieth century eliminated a "sacred versus profane" dichotomy in their school uniforms and school symbols. In the formulation of a nation state in East Asia, homogeneity among inhabitants was more important than a faith-based religious identity by each Christian missionary group. Wearers of school uniforms in East Asia were taught to nurture civic identity along with the faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 will explore the origins of the circumcision dress worn by Jewish male infants during their brit millah (ritual circumcision). With no requirements according to Jewish law on what is to be worn during this ceremony, how does early textual evidence point to our understanding and use of the dress? An examination of visual representations of circumcision ceremonies during the Early Modern period in manuscript and print culture points to the adaptation and use of a jacket worn by the infant during this time. This is then paired with extant examples of the period in museum collections. Lastly, as Jews began to assimilate and adapt practices of their host cultures in the nineteenth century, we see the rise of the practice of a dress worn by the infant, with an examination of infant costume and materials of the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1990s there was a growing and renewed interest on the practice of clothing images of saints after, as Richard Trexler put it, the negligence demonstrated towards it by art historians until then. In 2018, following the publication of new and unprejudiced studies about it, the presence of two dresses belonging to statues of the Virgin Mary in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination" testified to the impact clothed images had on fashion creators and, according to David Morgan, the Church's ritual and performative life. While focusing on the miraculous image of Nossa Senhora da Lapa from Quintela, Portugal, this article aims to acknowledge the many roles played by its clothes and jewels, assessing the complexity of this phenomenon and aiming for a wider understanding of how the faithful engaged with devotional sculpture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1829 Mother Catherine Spalding of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky, allowed her community of Catholic women religious to wear a white collar as a part of their habit. The decision provoked a brief but passionate dispute between Spalding and her local bishop, Benedict Joseph Flaget of nearby Bardstown, Kentucky. Bishop Flaget feared the seemingly anodyne garment revealed Spalding's vanity and unruliness. Spalding insisted on her obedience to proper religious authority, but she nonetheless defended her conduct and the collar's merits. Her spirited defense of the collar shows that a skillful mother superior could marshal the gendered language of authority and propriety to her order's advantage. Moreover, the contest between Spalding and Flaget demonstrates that as Catholics sought to define their presence in the early United States, influential women religious like Spalding emerged as the "public face" of nineteenth-century American Catholicism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1980s, socially active nuns discarded the habit while gay men and kitschy nun dolls wore them. Why?This article explores the symbolism of dress and power. Scholars have examined the relationship between the habit, Catholics’ feelings toward nuns and the Catholic Church. But in the late 1970s and 1980s, I argue, the habit debate gained new salience with John Paul II’s papacy and sisters’ activism regarding female ordination, abortion and US policy in Central America. Nuns contested their place in the church and the nun as symbol grew more contested as gay men wore the habit and new nun dolls appeared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a historical sociological case study of sexual oppression within the early nineteenth‐century foundation period of a French Roman Catholic male religious order, the Marist Brothers, founded in 1817. The different sexualities of two rival founder figures, the priests Jean‐Claude Courveille and Marcellin Champagnat, the former homosexual, the latter heterosexual, found expression in radically divergent conceptions of the religious habit. For Courveille, the costume design for the Brothers was ostentatious and stylish; for Champagnat, it was sober and clericalised. This archive‐based investigation shows how Courveille's sexual orientation led to his fall from grace within the Church and the suppression of his sartorial self‐expression. Champagnat, whose conventional dress rules prevailed, became a canonized saint. In the victory of the orthodox sacred dress code, the ideology of 'clerical masculinism' weaves its hegemonic power over the bodies of 'men of the cloth'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Testament of Job as a literary work within the genre of ancient Jewish novel. It explores the function of clothing changes for the two central characters of Satan and Sitis as providing both entertaining and critical narrative cues for character perception and development. This study is organized into two main sections. The first part examines the figure of Satan and his respective forms and disguises, with appropriate analogues to Apuleius's Metamorphoses. The second part examines Sitis's clothing and its function within the narrative, followed by a brief comparison to Joseph and Aseneth and Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe. This article contends that clothing is an important literary motif for the Testament of Job much like the popular ancient stories of Joseph and Aseneth, Chaereas and Callirhoe, and Metamorphoses. The contention is that a character's exterior clothing often indicates his/her inward character, or depicts a character's transformation within the narrative. In this sense, Sitis's clothing signals both her fall and eventual vindication, and Satan's disguises signal his status as the evil trickster. A character's change of clothing, as one would imagine in a performance or play, offers critical narrative cues to the reader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Testament of Job as a literary work within the genre of ancient Jewish novel. It explores the function of clothing changes for the two central characters of Satan and Sitis as providing both entertaining and critical narrative cues for character perception and development. This study is organized into two main sections. The first part examines the figure of Satan and his respective forms and disguises, with appropriate analogues to Apuleius's Metamorphoses. The second part examines Sitis's clothing and its function within the narrative, followed by a brief comparison to Joseph and Aseneth and Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe. This article contends that clothing is an important literary motif for the Testament of Job much like the popular ancient stories of Joseph and Aseneth, Chaereas and Callirhoe, and Metamorphoses. The contention is that a character's exterior clothing often indicates his/her inward character, or depicts a character's transformation within the narrative. In this sense, Sitis's clothing signals both her fall and eventual vindication, and Satan's disguises signal his status as the evil trickster. A character's change of clothing, as one would imagine in a performance or play, offers critical narrative cues to the reader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The largest cache of medieval liturgical furnishings that survives is in Protestant Germany. This survival has sometimes been attributed to Martin Luther's doctrine of the 'indifference' of objects. Using several examples, one from south Germany (the altar at Rothenburg ob der Tauber) and two from women's convents in the north (especially some devotional statues and their dresses from Kloster Wienhausen), this article argues not only that religious objects are far from indifferent but also that they alter our standard opinions about the Observant Reform of fifteenth-century Germany and the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and suggest new understandings of continuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vestiarian controversies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England have attracted an extensive scholarly literature. This literature has tended to show the ways the Church of England could be condemned as inadequately reformed through attacks against its external trappings. Much less has been written about how the targets of attack -- the clothing that bishops wore -- could in fact be transformed into a means of defending the Church. This paper analyses George Hooper's 1683 tract The Church of England Free from the Imputation of Popery, within the context of disputation concerning episcopal government. Hooper appreciated that attacks on vesture were part of more penetrating attacks against religious hierarchies. By turns mocking and serious, Hooper compared the Church of England to reformed confessions and the Church of Rome, arguing that far from being popish, the dress of bishops stood out distinctively as Protestant trappings and provided positive examples of how English bishops differed from their Roman counterparts. [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]

The article discusses cultural acceptance and controversy surrounding the wearing of the Catholic habit by Catholic nuns in the U.S. It examines 19th century U.S. mores concerning the habit and perceptions of nuns as cloistered and relegated to secondary status via their apparel. It also discusses various U.S. state legislatures that debated clothing laws near the beginning of the 20th century. The article also discusses religious clothing in U.S. public schools and the concept of the separation of church and state. The article reviews several significant U.S. court cases concerning the issue and compares social concerns over the Catholic habit to religious dress worn by Muslim women in the 21st century.

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 discusses a study which assesses the interpretation of nakedness and heavenly clothing based on the Second Corinthians Chapter 5 Verses 1-10. The study examined the background of the metaphor of nakedness in the Hebrew Bible and Greek thought. Results show that the interpretation contours with the anthropology and eschatology's idea of Saint Paul which characterizes one's self with continued solidarity with the old age particularly the body of sin. The article also discusses Pauline theology, interpretation of images in light of Christian baptism, and the ethical connotations of nakedness.

In recent years, concern for "modesty" has become more prominent in American religious circles. Recent advocates of modest clothing for women voice important concerns, but also perpetuate problematic attitudes toward women, especially poor women and women of color. Thomas Aquinas' description of modesty corrects this error, because it includes modesty of the mind. Contemporary developments in moral theology then enable us to relate both mental and physical modesty to the cardinal virtue of justice, where modesty decenters the self and makes room for other people to flourish. Findings from social psychologists illuminate the dynamics of social power, and clarify specific ways that mental and physical modesty work under the rubric of justice. These findings suggest that men and women may face different challenges in the practice of modesty, and so Christians must attend to all types of modesty in order to adequately address the question of appropriate clothing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 presents a study on clothing discovered in a search of 15th century Roman Catholic Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga's estate after his death in 1483. Descriptions are given of clothing used for religious purposes as well as for secular occasions, and note is taken of the variety of colors and materials represented in the Cardinal's collection of clothing. A discussion is provided on the functions of clothes and textiles in the late Middle Ages. Further comments are offered concerning the relations between clothing and the liturgical calender of the Roman Catholic Church.

The article presents a discussion on the political and communicative aspects of Holy Roman Emperors' public displays of piety and humility. Reflections are given on the differences in church and state relations in England, France, and Germany during the Middle Ages. Special attention is paid to the rule of 14th century Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, with a focus on his religious activities during travels to Italy. Further comments are included regarding the Emperor's expression of piety through his choice of clothing.

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.

This article establishes the framework for a (Christian) theology of fashion, the development of which comes under a research project set up between Luxembourg (Luxembourg School of Religion & Society) and Paris (Collège des Bernardins). The text is structured around three areas: the first reveals how theology can accommodate in its field of thought both the idea of dress (also viewed in terms of its materiality) and the way in which modern society experiments with it: fashion. For as much as theological discourse, particularly Christian, might have shown itself to be critical regarding modern day fashion, it has nevertheless failed to come up with any real theological reflection on the subject. The second area aims to explore responsible ethics for fashion. Often moralising, the attitude of Christian theology needs to give way to an ethical and—vitally—ecological analysis of the effects of fashion in today's world. Clothing might still cover people's bodies, but the issue is not restricted to an individual moral point of view, and extends to the social rules of an ethic that is also one of environmental responsibility. Finally, the totally new perspective that I adopt for outlining these areas requires the aesthetics of dress and fashion to be addressed from a theological point of view. For all its rich history, theological aesthetics has hardly ever concerned itself with developing an aesthetic discourse for dress and fashion, other than for liturgical and religious attire. Once these three new research perspectives have been discussed, I want to outline another field of study, in itself extremely fertile: a treasure trove of metaphors and analogies that would be very useful in theological thinking, adding to its inventory terms originating in the uncovering and stripping away of old ways of thinking that no longer convey in contemporary language the mystery that it is meant to clothe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]