Lenten shrouds

Lenten shrouds are veils used to cover crucifixes, icons and some statues during Passiontide[1][2] with some exceptions of those showing the suffering Christ, such as the stations of the Via Crucis or the Man of Sorrows, with purple or black cloths begins on the Saturday before the Passion Sunday.

[7] The French liturgist Prosper Guéranger explained that "the ceremony of veiling the Crucifix, during Passiontide, expresses the humiliation, to which our Saviour subjected himself, of hiding himself when the Jews threatened to stone him, as is related in the Gospel of Passion Sunday".

Gulielmus Durandus's Rationale divinorum officiorum, one of the most important religious writings of the Middle Ages, stipulates that all images, crucifixes, relics and tabernacles in the house of God be veiled during the period of Lent.

Thus Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, had gray and dark sheets (the color of ashes), attached across the sanctuary during Passiontide.

[18] Some, like Episcopalian liturgist Leonel Mitchell, insisted that “there is no reason to continue the medieval Roman tradition of veiling crosses for Passiontide”.

[22] The practise has therefore often been restored and encouraged, by clerics such as Peter J. Elliott for whom “the custom of veiling crosses and images has much to commend it in terms of religious psychology, because it helps us to concentrate on the great essentials of Christ's work of Redemption”.