Lenten veil

[1] While the medieval tradition faded away, it has made an unexpected come-back in Germany since the German charity Misereor [de] revamped it in 1976 as a tool to fight against world hunger, connecting prayer and almsgiving in the spirit of Lent.

[4] The origin of the Lenten veil can be linked back to the story of the Peregrinatio Aetheriae,[5] in which the author, Egeria, narrates her journey to the Holy Land in the 4th century.

Although only a few examples have come down to us, the practice of decorating churches with painted canvases, especially during Lent, spread to many European countries starting from the fifteenth century.

Until the 12th century, this remained a purely symbolic object made of plain fabric - often linen, also silk - which was only decorated in individual cases with ornamental embroidery.

A description from 1493 shows that a Lenten cloth with artistic depictions (no longer preserved) was created between 1126 and 1149 in the monastery of St. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg.

Appreciated for the ease of installation and the scenographic effect, the function of these canvases was to hide the altar from the beginning of Lent or Passion Sunday until Holy Wednesday or Saturday.

An artistic highlight is the Lenten cloth in the Romanesque cathedral in Gurk dating back to 1458, which shows 99 individual motifs in horizontally arranged stripes.

[10] In 2007, the Catholic parish of Herz Jesu in Bernau near Berlin worked with young people to create the largest hunger cloth in the world to date in a 48-hour campaign with a “Fastentuch XXL” (over 220 m2).

That same year, a Lenten cloth was hung in Bonn Cathedral for the first time, created by the Worms photographer and graphic artist Norbert Bach.

"Â calata 'a tila" is a rite performed in Sicily which involves the sudden unveiling of the presbytery during the Easter night vigil at the pronouncement of the Gloria in excelsis Deo, to figuratively represent and show the risen Christ.

[11] In Sicily, this custom was highly developed from the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th, especially in the Amastratino-Madonita area (Mistretta, Gratteri, Petralia); the canvases are here called taledda or tuluni and the rite reaches its peak on Holy Saturday when the altar is revealed during the Gloria in excelsis Deo.

The Lenten cloth in the church of Villoslada de Cameros in the Autonomous Region of La Rioja, created around 1560, is clearly of Flemish origin.