In multiple posts last year we looked at the connections between fashion and religion, analysing not just modern designs, but also items venerated in particular places, including the Sacred Girdle in Prato and the cloak bearing the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe in Mexico City.
Yet there are religious traditions that do not start with a finished garment, but with the actual material to make it. Today the Catholic church celebrates for example the feast of St. Agnes, a virgin martyr born in 291, and usually represented in paintings with a lamb in her arms.
According to a tradition that has continued for over 500 years, two lambs are usually blessed today at the Vatican. Their wool will be used to make the pallium, an ecclesiastical vestment donned by the Pope and by metropolitan bishops. This accessory must be made with a pure white wool prepared according to special traditions.
Usually the day before the feast of St Agnes the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth in Rome wash and blow dry (yes, to remove the humidity from their fur) two lambs (raised by Trappist monks), that are then left to rest on a bed of straw.
On the morning of the Feast of St. Agnes, the legs of the lambs are tied (to avoid them running away), they are put in baskets and covered with white veils with the letters S.A.M. (St. Agnes Martyr) an S.A.V. (St. Agnes Virgin) and red and white flowers (to symbolise the martyrdom of St Agnes and her purity). The two lambs are first blessed in the church of Sant'Agnese fuori Le Mura, and then they are taken to the Vatican, where they are blessed again this time by the Pope. After the ceremony the Benedictine nuns of St. Cecilia in Trastevere take care of the lambs in their convent.
After Easter the lambs are sheared (they aren't killed), the wool is air-dried, carded, combed with hot irons and spun. The yarn is then employed to make woven textiles for the pallia, using with the looms in the nuns' workshop.
The pallia produced with this wool are given by the Pope to the metropolitan bishops on 29th June, the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul (but they are taken to the Vatican on 24th June and left for a few days in the tomb of St. Peter).
This accessory is part of the bishops and the Pope's vestments: some historians say it comes from the attire of the High Priests of Israel or from the scarf the Roman emperor donned when he took part in important public ceremonies.
The pallium is a sort of narrow band with a loop in the centre resting on the shoulders over the chasuble and two dependent lappets, before and behind (once the garment is donned on the chasuble it looks like the letter Y). The pallium is decorated with six black crosses and sometimes garnished with three jeweled gold pins (the "aciculae").
Symbolically speaking the garment is a reference to the lost sheep rescued by the Good Shepherd and to Jesus as "the Lamb of God" (but you can read more about the symbols behind the pallium and the links between this accessory and papal power in the volume Bonds of Wool: The Pallium and Papal Power in the Middle Ages by Steven A. Schoenig).
Somehow this tradition that involves the making of a yarn to make a very special type of textile, fits well with the fashion schedule as Pitti Filati, the international yarn fair, kicks off this week.
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