One post from today, however, has interested me a little. Someone has taken some pictures of some plain gold vesments belonging to Pope Clement II, who reigned over our Church for less than a year before his death in 1047 and, like our present Pontifex Maximus, was a Bavarian bishop.
He loved his home diocese so much (which he retained in his litany of titles upon his election to the Supreme Pontificate), he was buried their after his death in his mid-40s (pretty good going for the eleventh century!).
In the Second World War, they dug him up to protect him from Allied bombing (it's a good job he wasn't buried in Dresden), and decided to restore his outfit, as it was looking a bit worn after all these years. I hope they remembered to dress him up again in something, the poor man, when they solemnly reburied him in 1947, as those vestments are now on display in the cathedral, fully restored, and thus, are the oldest set of papal vesments.
From a glance, one can see the similarity between this and what +Vincent wore recently at his enthronement. The chasuble looks a bit plain in the picture, put there is a fine embroidery picked out of the gold close up, I promise! If you look carefully, in the reflection on the glass, you can also see the lovely gold buskins (socky-slipperettes with fetching tie-backs) and a cope (don't know where that came from, but I can see it).
Likewise with the pontifical dalmatic. They were wearing these in the 11th century.
Finally, we have a selection of paraphanalia also found in the sarcophogus, including pectoral crosses, stoles, fluffy bits, tassels, rings, bracelets (?), cincture, cuffs (he had gloves on). I assume the alb and the mitre were restored to the pope!
They were supposed to be smaller in the olden days, and I don't know about you, but that chasuble (which is basically a golden sheet with a hole cut out in the middle) looks like it would drown any average man of today. It's no wonder they cut the sleeves off and invented fiddlebacks!
It's good to see all these liturgcal things: dalmatics, gauntlets, buskins and what not in regular use a thousand years ago; it's a shame they have been dropped by the wayside. Mediaeval nonsense indeed?! I wonder if Pope Clement II thought they were useless? Needless to say, these very same vestments were being used in the Most Holy Sacrifice way before good old St Thomas Aquinas defined what was happening on top of those ad orientem altars.
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