Ornamenta Sacerdotum: Marian Chasubles for Priestly Bodies in Pre-Hussite Prague

Abstract

Late-medieval priests often wore images on their backs as they said Mass. Such images served, but also modified, the priest’s function as a representative of the Church and of Christ. Despite this prominent position, scholars have paid little attention to the iconography of chasubles, the mass vestments on which these images can be found. The following dissertation examines a small number of chasubles, all of which bear images of the Virgin Mary embroidered in the last quarter of the fourteenth century in Bohemia. Produced in a context of liturgical innovation and dispute, these chasubles offer a privileged site in which to study both the relation of the Virgin Mary to priestly identity and, as a consequence, the relation of vestments and their images to priestly bodies. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of disputes which occurred in the early fifteenth century within the Bohemian Hussite movement about the wearing of vestments and their capacity for signification.