Chasuble

The chasuble originated as a sort of conical poncho, called in Latin a paenula or casula or "little house", that was the common outer traveling garment in the late Roman Empire.

It was simply a roughly oval piece of cloth, with a round hole in the middle through which to pass the head, that fell below the knees on all sides.

In the course of the 15th and 16th centuries, the chasuble took something like its modern form, in which the sides of the vestment no longer reach to the ankle but only, at most, to the wrist, making folding unnecessary.

Additionally, to make it easier for the priest to join his hands when wearing a chasuble of stiff (lined and heavily embroidered) material, in these later centuries the front was often cut away further, giving it the distinctive shape often called fiddleback.

There exists a photograph of Pope Pius XI wearing the more ample chasuble while celebrating Mass in Saint Peter's Basilica as early as 19 March 1930.

[8] In the Slavic tradition, though not in the Greek, the phelonion, the Byzantine Rite vestment that corresponds to the chasuble, is cut away from the front and not from the sides, making it look somewhat like the western cope.

Nearly all ecclesiologists are now agreed that liturgical costume was simply an adaptation of the secular attire commonly worn throughout the Roman Empire in the early Christian centuries.

The priest in discharging his sacred functions at the altar was dressed as in civil life, but the custom probably grew up of reserving for this purpose garments that were newer and cleaner than those used in his daily ministry, and out of this gradually developed the conception of a special liturgical attire.