IN the past few years, the look of vestments used in Christian ritual has changed. Chief reason is the democratization of the Catholic Church. Vestments once had a hierarchic purpose: the presence of the priest at a raised altar, draped in a chasuble thick with gold and silver embroidery, stiff and heavy as oxhide, glittering in the taper light, symbolized the spiritual distance between God's minister and his people. Costume is a basic way of preserving differences. Moreover, since the priest stood between the faithful and the altar, mostly with his back to the congregation, his full height was in view; this gave traditional vestment makers a large canvas over which to deploy their designs. In the new Catholic liturgy, celebrants face their congregations across table-like altars. And with the emphasis on the vernacular and the essential unity of priest and people at worship, ecclesiastical garments have become plainer: chasubles tend to be simple ponchos, their ornamentation light.
Dazzling. Many mourn the passing of the grander style of vestments, since, like stained glass, it added an element of visual beauty to the ritual of worship. At the peak of the craft, medieval artisans in particular produced designs of extraordinary richness and delicacy. One of the richest collections in the Western Hemisphere is that of Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art from which TIME herewith offers a sampling.
The chasuble used in liturgical celebration developed out of everyday Greco-Roman clothing; an enveloping cloak (Latin name: casula, or little house), worn over the tunic, was adopted by the church some time after the 4th century A.D. Made of wool at first, the chasuble—with the increasing availability of silk around the 10th and 11th centuries—gradually acquired a dazzling sumptuousness. The epitome of this was opus Anglicanum, or "English work," a taxingly intricate method of embroidery that flourished in London guild shops during the 13th and 14th centuries. The Met possesses one rare example, the so-called Chichester-Constable chasuble, whose scenes (like the Adoration of the Magi, opposite) are embroidered with dense, flat expanses of metal-covered thread. Tin, mined in Cornwall, was drawn to a fine ribbon, coated with gold, wound around the silk and then worked into the red velvet ground with a gold or silver needle; steel needles, as known today, were not used until the 15th century.