Chasuble

CHASUBLE, a liturgical vestment of the Catholic Church, being the outermost garment worn by bishops and priests when celebrating the Mass. The word is derived, through the French, from the Latin casula, a little house or hut. Since the chasuble (or planeta, as it is also called in the Roman Missal) is only used at the Mass, or rarely for functions intimately connected with the sacrament of the altar, it may be regarded as the Mass vestment par excellence. According to the prevailing model in the Roman Catholic Church it is a scapular-like cloak, with a hole in the middle for the head, falling down over breast and back, and leav ing the arms uncovered at the sides. Its shape and size, however, differ considerably in various countries (see fig.), while some churches—e.g., those of certain monastic orders—have retained or reverted to the earlier "Gothic" forms to be described later. According to the decisions of the Congregation of Rites, chasubles must not be of linen, cotton or woollen stuffs, but of silk; though a mixture of wool (or linen and cotton) and silk is allowed if the silk completely cover the other material on the outer side.

The chasuble, like the kindred vestments in the Eastern Churches, is derived from the Roman paenula or planeta, a cloak worn by all classes and both sexes in the Graeco-Roman world (see VESTMENTS).

At the Reformation the chasuble was rejected with the other vestments by the more extreme Protestants. Tts use, however, survived in the Lutheran churches; and though in those of Ger many it is no longer worn, it still forms part of the liturgical cos tume of the Scandinavian Evangelical churches. In the Church of England, though it was prescribed alternatively with the cope in the first prayer-Book of Edward VI., it was ultimately discarded with the other "Mass vestments." (See VESTMENTS.) Form.—The chasuble was originally a tent-like robe which fell in loose folds below the knee of the wearer. Its inconvenience, however, was obvious, and a process of cutting away at the sides began, which con tinued until the tent-shaped chasuble of the 12th century had developed in the i6th into the present scapular–like vestment.

This process was, moreover, hastened by the substitution of costly and elabo rately embroidered materials for the sim ple stuffs of which the vestment had originally been composed: for, as it be came heavier and stiffer, it had to be made smaller.

Decoration.

Chasubles were until the loth century generally quite plain, and even at the close of this century, when the cus tom of decorating the chasuble with or phreys (q.v.) had become common, there was no definite rule as to their disposition.

From this time onward, the embroidery be came ever more and more elaborate, and the orphreys were broadened to allow of their being decorated with figures. About the middle of the 13th century, the cross with horizontal arms begins to appear on the back of the vestment, and by the 15th this had become the most usual form. Sometimes the back of the chasuble has no cross, but only a vertical orphrey, and in this case the front, besides the vertical stripe, has a horizontal orphrey just below the neck open ing. This latter is the type used in the local Roman Church, which has been adopted in certain dioceses in South Germany and Swit zerland, and of late years in the Roman Catholic churches in England, e.g., Westminster cathedral.

The earlier decoration of the forked cross, i.e., a vertical orphrey with two arms turned upwards over the shoulders, was commonly retained in England and has thus been largely adopted by the "Anglo-Catholic" clergy in modern times. Father Braun gives proof that this decoration was not even originally conceived as a cross at all, citing early instances of its having been worn by laymen and even by non-Christians. It was not until the 13th century that the symbolical meaning of the cross began to be elaborated, and this was accentuated from the 14th century on ward by the custom of adding to it the figure of the crucified Christ and other symbols of the Passion. This, however, did not represent any definite rule; and the orphreys of chasubles were decorated with a great variety of pictorial subjects. The local Roman Church, true to its ancient traditions, adhered to the simpler forms. The modern Roman chasuble, besides the conven tional arabesque pattern, is decorated, according to rule, with the arms of the archbishop and his see.

The Eastern Church.

The original equivalent of the chasu ble is the phelonion, from the Lat. paenula. It is a vestment of the type of the Western bell chasuble; but, instead of being cut away at the sides, it is either gathered up or cut short in front. In the Armenian, Syrian, Chaldaean and Coptic rites it is cope shaped. The phelonion is not in the East so specifically a euchar istic vestment as in the West, but is worn at other solemn func tions besides the liturgy, e.g., marriages, processions. The Greek and Greek Melchite metropolitans now wear the sakkos instead of the phelonion; and in the Russian, Ruthenian, Bulgarian and Italo-Greek churches this vestment has superseded the phelonion in the case of all bishops (see DALMATIC and VESTMENTS).

See J. BRAUN, S. J., Die liturgische Gewandung (19o7), pp. Dom H. Leclerq, in Cabrol, Dict. d'Archeol. Chret. et de Liturgie, and the bibliography to the article VESTMENTS.