Original scientific paper

Liturgical Vestments and Vessels: an Implication for the Formation of an Ecclesiastical Visual Conscience

Ivan Šaško ; Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

This presentation contains theoretical expressions, the historical development and an encounter with real examples, derived particularly from Croatian heritage and present circumstances. The article begins with reflections on the possible relation of the arts and liturgy, and in a wider context the relation of theology and the arts. Art (especially visual) having acquired sacred and liturgical attributes has experienced during history various difficulties. Due to the fact that the arts are the most evident indicator not only of the fact that the relationship between the Church (the hierarchy and the community of believers as a whole), the arts and the artist is not in an enviable position, and the way in which the faithful live out their association with the Church, the question of visuality relating to liturgical vestments and vessels becomes a challenge.
Vessels, in many ways possibly interpreted as secondary for Christian liturgy, represents an internal attitude towards Christian truths concerning the incarnation and redemption through Jesus Christ and ecclesiology. If artists of the various arts begin with the liturgical celebration, the results for 'great' liturgical themes shall be soon evident, especially when the question of the liturgical place arises. Starting from the altar and the liturgical act, the very first stage in planning the construction of the liturgical place, the question of integral liturgical visuality is posed. Indeed, the type of liturgical vessels (here special emphasis on the chalice) or the vestments (with an emphasis on the chasuble), become very important because they are the micro-architecture of celebration.
The liturgical vernacular is always a special language, and therefore a meta-language, taken from an area of every day life, subjective intentions and forms of cooperation. Whatever subjectivity would possibly carry the liturgical celebration into mimeses (imitation), it would deny its anamnesis (memorial) and objectivity. Distanced far from high fashion, liturgical vestments and vessels reveal a distancing of the values promoted in the fashion world.
It is not advisable to start from the presumption that the arts and liturgy can easily become agreeable, because their harmony is in itself not understandable. The relationship between artistic freedom and liturgical demands for rituality are particularly interesting. For the artist the 'sign' is the most common ownership that communicates itself. In liturgy, the sign is chiefly God's ownership that serves in communicating Christ. It is in this contrast, it seems, that lies today's crisis in the relation of the arts and liturgy. There where art seeks absoluteness, faith has something to offer, while liturgy realizes a 'Christological' criteria of the absolute, preventing art in reducing absoluteness to a personal conception of the world.
It is possible to speak of four criteria (silence, faithfulness to God's word, community of the faithful and internal harmony of liturgical entirety) that bring an understanding to liturgical particularity, a level in liturgy where art is itself transformed. This is not an art allowed to concede to isolation and auto-emancipation. Liturgy delivers art from the absoluteness of art, that is, it obliges art to redefine itself. Alongside these difficulties, it is investigative that today art reveals itself as a "substitutive place for that which is not completely mentionable and comprehensible ". The arts are a place of disquiet and awakening of desires leading to integrity in answering the threat to the lose of reality; a place of sentencing protest, resistance, and desires for something altogether different so as to realize life. Today, art occupies a metaphysical and theological place, and for theology, it becomes significant, even as a loci alieni.
Having before ourselves this entire complex problem, the second part — using real examples — is divided into: a) informative b) demonstrative c) decorative d) and mista-gogical subjects. It attempts to sustain the assertions and point out the guidelines for an applicable approach to today's new quest, so that with its theological and esthetical distastefulness we would not deny the revealed Truth which has been entrusted to us in fragile vessels (nonetheless vessels) and we should not forget that we have clothed ourselves with Christ.

Keywords

liturgy; art; liturgical vestments; liturgical vessels; chasuble; chalice; religion and esthetics; criteria for »liturgical art«; visual form; mistagogy

Hrčak ID:

25390

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/25390

Publication date:

8.4.2005.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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