During my recent Roman Sojourn I was shown at the parish some beautiful sets of tassels for dalmatics. Traditionally, the deacon(s) and subdeacon wear tassels on their dalmatics that descend from their shoulders and hang down their backs.
Tell you the truth, I had to look up dalmatics. (example the choir robe or the loose coat worn by deacons and by many pastors when they preach. It has sleeves, unlike the chasuble, the poncho like garment worn by priests at Catholic masses.).
Why do priests were fancy garments? That custom dates to antiquity, and is partly to distinguish what you are doing (worship) from everyday tasks.
The Vatican mentions the official vestments warn for church descend from Greco Roman liturgical garments but the reason for the priest to wear them is not just to honor God but so that essentially his personal identity is hidden: because the mass is about worshipping God, not the personality of the one saying the mass.
Which is why a sinful priest's mass is still valid. As a doc, I understand this: I might be a lousy person, but in treating a patient I am first and formost a doctor, an instrument of healing, not a magical shaman healer who uses their personal magic power to heal. So the treatment (e.g.penicillin or surgery) works despite my beauty or lack thereof or personality.
And yes, we have a uniform: A white coat with stethoscope draped around our neck, altough lots of other people use a similar uniform.
When it comes to fancy churches and liturgical garments, I am tempted to say: Sell them and give the money to the poor, said Judas, and Christ admonished Judas when he said this, maybe realizing that much of that money for the poor was being diverted into the pockets of the do gooders, whereas investing in public beauty will inspire people for generations.
if you get rid of beauty, the world becomes impoverished spiritually on many levels, and the poor you always have with you. See Roger Scuton's BBC program about the need for beauty in the public space.
and yes I know: Jesus also corrected those who spent money for decoration and fancy garments to pretnd they were pious.
We need both beauty and altruism. I tend to be palagian, i.e. stressing good deeds, but I live with a bunch of artists, who do nothing "useful" but make the world better by spreading beauty.
and of course the Lord God agrees with Father Z that garnents used in formal liturgies were important. And so he instructed the garments to include tassels.
from Wikipedia:
In the Hebrew Bible, the Lord spoke to Moses instructing him to tell the Israelites to make tassels (Hebrew tzitzit) on the corners of their garments, to help them to remember all the commandments of the Lord and to keep them (Numbers 15:37-40), and as a sign of holiness.
The religious Hebrew tassel, however, bears little resemblance to the decorative one which appeared and eventually became popular in Europe, especially France and Spain.
Wikipedia article on Tzitzit.
Tassels of course are pure decoration. Do they serve a purpose? I suspect like fringes on garments they started as a way to stop ropes from unraveling, and then got fancy.
But tassels for decoration are ancient.
the Warka Vase (3000 BC) from ancient Uruk shows tassles for example.
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| Warka (Uruk) Vase, Uruk, Late Uruk period, c. 3500-3000 B.C.E., 105 cm high (National Museum of Iraq) |
and let's not forget China.
Chinese tassels are often lumped together with Chinese knots.
Some of the earliest evidence of knotting have been preserved on bronze vessels of the Warring States period (481–221 BC), Buddhist carvings of the Northern dynasties period (317–581) and on silk paintings during the Western Han period (206 BC–9 CE).
and photos of PreColombian textiles show similar tassels link2
there are all sorts of videos about tassel lore, both ancient and modern.
tassels on those graduation caps?
.......Tassels in Islamic dress:
................tassels on Chinese swords
.........Tassels on loafers (shoe) (at 4:50)..
...........Norigae......if you watch K dramas, this is often given to the heroine as a gift....
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