Textile Fabrics: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Church-vestments, Dresses, Silk Stuffs, Needlework and Tapestries, forming that Section of the MuseumRock, Daniel
History
Textile Fabrics: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Church-vestments, Dresses, Silk Stuffs, Needlework and Tapestries, forming that Section of the Museum
Rock, Daniel
Art objects -- England -- London -- Catalogs; Textile fabrics
Such liturgical boxes as those two--No. 5958, p. 112, and No. 8327, p.
193--are of the kind known of old as the “capsella cum serico decenter
ornata”--a little box beseemingly fitted up with silk--of the mediæval
writers; or the “capsula corporalium”--the box in which are kept the
corporals or square pieces of fine linen, a fine mediæval specimen of
which is here, No. 8329, p. 195, of the rubrics which, to this day,
require its employment for a particular service, during holy week. Like
its use the name of this appliance is very old, and both are spoken
of in those ancient “Ordines Romani,” in the first of which, drawn up
now more than a thousand years ago, it is directed: “tunc duo acolythi
tenentes capsas cum Sanctis apertas, &c.;”[381] and again, in another
“Ordo,” written out some little time before A.D. 1143, a part of the
rubric for Good Friday requires the Pope to go barefoot during the
procession in which a cardinal carries the Host consecrated the day
before, and preserved in the corporals’ chest or box: “discalceatus
(papa) pergit cum processione.... Quidam cardinalis honorifice portat
corpus Domini præteriti diei conservatum, in capsula corporalium.”[382]
About the mass of the presanctified, before the beginning of which this
procession took as it yet takes place, we have said a few words at pp.
112, 113. What is meant by the word “corporal,” we have explained, p.
194. Here in England, such small wooden boxes covered with silks and
velvets richly embroidered, were once employed for the same liturgical
uses. The Exeter inventories specify them thus: “unum repositorium
ligneum pro corporalibus co-opertum cum saccis de serico;”[383] “tria
corporalia in casa lignea co-operta cum panno serico, operata cum
diversis armis.”[384]
[381] Ed. Mabillon, Museum Italicum, t. ii. p. 8.
[382] Ib. p. 137.
[383] Oliver’s Exeter Cathedral, p. 314.
[384] Ib. p. 327.
Good Friday brings to mind a religious practice followed wherever the
Greek ritual is observed, and the appliance for which, No. 8278, p.
170, we have there spoken of at such length as to save us here any
further notice of this interesting kind of frontal, upon which is shown
our dead Lord lying stretched out upon the sindon or winding-sheet.
Of the Cyrillian character in which the Greek sentences upon it are
written, we shall have a more fitting opportunity for speaking a
little further on. At Rome, in the Pope’s chapel, the frontal set
before the altar for the function of Maundy Thursday, is of gold cloth
figured, amid other subjects suitable to the time, with our Lord lying
dead between two angels who are upholding His head, as we learn from
the industrious Cancellieri’s description, in his “Settimana Santa
nella cappella pontificia.”[385]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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