Feb 5, 2018

Vintage Clothing

There’s vintage and then there’s vintage. There’s poking around the Goodwill Store in search of the perfect wide-collared, 1970’s brown polyester shirt for your Les Nesman from WKRP in Cincinnati Halloween costume. And then there’s Martha Washington’s silk taffeta gown she wore as First Lady in the 1780’s that is displayed at the Museum of Natural History. 

Last Sunday I had my first brush with actual vintage clothing. Think Martha’s dress but 200 years older. It was a curious series of events that found me standing at the altar at St. John’s wearing sacred vestments dating to the mid-1500s. But there I was, celebrating the Eucharist in a fiddleback-style chasuble with cloth-of-gold stitching and embroidery reminiscent of the most gifted Renaissance-era European nuns. 

The vestment had been in the family of a parishioner named Betsy Bishop for many years. The story goes that she had an uncle who traveled the world collecting art and artifacts. His collection became so valuable that he could never afford the import duties to have them shipped back home so he stayed in Europe — with his treasures — until his death. Sort of an art collector’s variation on Charlie and the MTA. 

After her uncle died, the vestment was given as a wedding present to Betsy and her late husband Jack, a fitting gift as he was an Episcopal priest. Last year, Betsy donated the chasuble to St. John’s rather than a museum, saying she wanted to see it worn occasionally rather than having it hermetically sealed behind a glass case. After working with a renowned textile conservationist, and promising only to wear it very rarely, we dedicated the vestment in Jack’s memory. 

Several people have asked me what was going through my head as I wore this ancient and sacred vestment, one that had been worn by so many faithful priests over the generations. Honestly, my first thought was “Do. Not. Drop. The. Chalice.” Now, after 17 years in the priesthood, I have yet to knock over a chalice full of wine. But all I could think was, “Well, there’s no time like the present.” 

Once I relaxed and remembered it wasn’t about me — it’s never about the priest up at the altar — I was able to appreciate the once-in-a-lifetime experience. I was able to let the Church’s ancient liturgy, ritual action that has become part of my vocational identity, take over. In that sense, it was no different from any other Sunday and any other celebration of communion that has taken place over the past 2,000 years. There is bread, there is wine, there is a representative of the Church, there is a gathered community, and there is the divine presence. 

At one point my mind wandered to who else might have worn this chasuble — and where. A mystery in the midst of the wonderful and sacred mystery that is Eucharist celebration. 

Serving at the altar, whether the altar is a makeshift table in a hospital room or carved from Italian marble, always brings perspective. The perspective that others have come before and others will come after; the perspective that we are all connected to something greater, something that transcends time and space; the perspective that despite our limitations and failures, we are destined for glory. 

So, this unique vestment made all the difference and no difference at all. I was glad to wear it and I was proud to be able to honor the Rev. Jack Bishop, a Civil Rights activist who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in both Selma and Boston. Yet it was also — as it was originally intended to be — all about our Lord’s sacrifice. I’m thankful to Betsy who recognized this all along. 16th century vestments do belong in museums but they also, ultimately, belong at the altar. 

4 comments:

caralulu said...

Nothing to say but “Bright Blessings”. You got the message art in the service of the Divine conveys over time. Cool.

Relling said...

Thanks for sharing, especially the photos. What a fabulous gift. You are blessed.

Brian Coleman said...

Reminds me of something I recently read by Ernest Hermitage Day of the Warham Guild circa 1928:

"The eucharistic vestments were not derived from the vestments of the Jewish priesthood. They were not the invention of the Christian priesthood. They are not ‘sacrificial’ in a sense other than that in which any coat would become sacrificial if by dire necessity a priest found himself obliged to celebrate the Lord’s Supper in it. But they are an inheritance from the dim past, a link with the Church of the catacombs and of the Fathers which we do well to value; they constitute a vesture which is both beautiful in itself and hallowed for us by age-long tradition.

This tradition of use was not broken in England by the Reformation, but by slovenly neglect and unintelligent prejudice during the years of Puritan ascendancy which followed the Reformation. Nor was it even then wholly broken; isolated examples of fidelity to tradition and to the prescription of the Prayer Book may still be found. It is unnecessary here to recall the controversies which followed upon the restoration of the vestments as a logical result of the Tractarian Movement. It will be sufficient to say that it is now generally admitted that the Ornaments Rubric should be read as it stands, without the interpolation of a ‘not.’ Although the use of the vestments was declared illegal by the Privy Council in the Ridsdale case of 1877, the judgement was of such a kind, and was so keenly questioned, that those opposed to vestments have ever since been reluctant to raise the question again in the Courts, and the use of vestments has since that time steadily increased. In 1908 a sub-committee of five learned [6/7] bishops presented to Convocation a Report in which they stated their conclusion that the Ornaments Rubric cannot rightly be interpreted as excluding the use of the eucharistic vestments; and there the matter may be allowed to rest.

All the vestments were at first ample, and therefore beautiful. They have suffered more from parsimony and from the shears of the tailor in the last three centuries than in the sixteen centuries which preceded them. But even in the Roman Church to-day there is a strong reaction against meanness and ugliness. There are many Roman Catholic sacristies in which no ‘fiddle-back’ chasuble is to be found, and no English ecclesiologist has written more strongly against such things than Dr. Adrian Fortescue. ‘Skimped chasubles, gold braid and lace,’ he says, ‘are not Roman, they are eighteenth-century bad taste.’"

Karen said...

When we lived in the Dominican Republic, I felt inspired to make a chasuble for my priest. He had an "Advent" chasuble inherited from another priest in the USA that had an advent wreath appliquéd on the front. He also wore this during Lent. I wanted to give him a chasuble more appropriate for that season. Research gave a lot of helpful information. The fiddleback chasubles would have been much easier to wear in the heat and humidity of the Dominican Republic but was significantly beyond my sewing skills. A woman from New England guided me into making a chasuble shorter both on length and width, following the general "poncho" style that seems popular these days. I really believe it is the current heating and cooling systems of our churches that allow for the longer lined chasubles.