The Quest

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been wanting to create drawings of saints for holy cards. But "because I can do it better than those other guys" is not an adequate reason. In fact it's probably a sign that I shouldn't. Besides, I'm not convinced that I can really do it better.

My real desire is, as always, to glorify God through the gifts he has given me. This means doing things the best that I can...putting a lot of thought, research, and effort into my work. My real frustration is with the obstacles that prevent me from doing those things, not really with the artists of the standard holy cards. And as much fun as it is to giggle at St. Valentine's maniple and lacy surplice, I realized that at least someone got it partially right while I knew virtually nothing about proper vestments, let alone what a priest would have really worn in the first few centuries of Church history.

My one real aesthetic critique is that I think overly saccharine art denies the suffering involved in life and faith. But these images persist because, lets face it, they are wildly popular with ordinary folks. They represent a genuinely Catholic culture and sentiment that they can hold onto in a world where the Church's aesthetic sense has gone crazy, leading to soulless, modernist, spaceship-churches.
But for those Thomas Merton types who get the creeps from fuzzy lambs, and for those Flannery O'Connor types who understand that sometimes grace transforms via the cold slap of reality...I'd like to do things a little differently.

So, I set out on a quest to research and understand what real church vestments were like at different times in history to be able to understand how to better draw some of the saints. I started asking around on Catholic Answers Forums and there people suggested that I contact Shawn Tribe, the editor of New Liturgical Movement. He very helpfully recommended several good resources, some of which are available through Google Books and Archive.org, including:

Vestments and Vesture by Dom E. Roulin
Church Vestments: Their Origin and Development by Herbert Norris
Church Ornaments and their Civil Antecedents by J. Wickham Legg
The Vestments of the Roman Rite by Adrian Fortescue
Vestiarium Christianum: The Origin and Gradual Development of the Dress of Holy Ministry in the Church by Wharton Marriott

I've been combing through the ones I've been able to find, and will report on them here. Though I got distracted by something shiny which I will post about next...