viving fabrics dating from the late Medieval period. The larg-
est number of textiles used within religious ceremony have
neither ritual function nor meaning as religious symbols.
Rather, their purpose is self-consciously decorative. Whether
temporary or permanent, these textiles enhance ritual
through splendid display. These decorations often featured
fabrics that had been transformed from secular uses for the
purpose. Many churches encouraged the donation of secular
prestige textiles by the faithful as a meritorious deed, and this
cache of prestige goods was available for recycling. Particular-
ly valuable textiles were often used to wrap relics and other
sacred items before placing them in reliquaries for storage.
In the West many examples of the medieval silks survive only
from these contexts.
Banners and hangings announce the special character of
ritual space. They can be carried in procession or used for
interior display. Most of these objects are showy and made
of lightweight materials; some, such as the banners used in
Buddhist temples, have long streamers that add movement
as well as color to ritual space. Banners bearing images of dei-
ties convey popular iconography and may serve an informal
educative function, but in general they are difficult to distin-
guish from comparable secular decoration.
Textiles that adorn the interior walls of worship halls,
like the wall paintings many of them replaced, are commonly
didactic. The painted cotton temple hangings from northern
India, for example, often depict stories from Hindu mythol-
ogy. Many of the tapestry sets woven for religious institu-
tions in medieval Europe illustrate the lives of the saints or
depict apocalyptic visions. In the West the popularity of such
monumental textiles lapsed with the rise of the Gothic archi-
tectural style. The Graham Sutherland tapestry at Coventry
Cathedral is an outstanding example of the twentieth-
century revival of tapestry weaving that has affected contem-
porary Western Christian Church decoration.
Carpets may cover the floors, cushioning bare feet as in
the mosques of Islam, decorate the space before the altar as
in Christian practice, or wrap the pillars of the worship hall
as in Tibet and China. In most cases these lavish displays are
more apt to result from pious donation of secular goods than
from ritual requirements.
A vast range of covers for lecterns, reading desks, books,
scrolls, cushions, kneelers, and furniture utilize fine textiles.
Textile valances enhance architectural settings. The kapporet
(cover) placed over the Torah curtain transforms the Torah
shrine into the mercy seat of the Ark of the Tabernacle. In
East Asian religious contexts, elaborately embroidered va-
lances were often added to the niches in which image shrines
were placed. Some of these were special commissions donat-
ed to the temples. One popular Chinese Buddhist valance
type was made as a patchwork by members of the congrega-
tion from personal textiles or from temple supplies of donat-
ed textiles.
In the same way that most vestments used by religions
throughout the world were derived from secular clothing,
many of the decorative textiles that have become associated
with ritual also have secular origins. One group of textiles in
particular, however, remains virtually unchanged from its
secular usage. Cloths of state, throne covers, footstool covers,
umbrellas, and baldachins are statements of secular political
power. They designate rank and position within the clergy
(of Western Christian traditions, Judaism and Buddhism)
for purposes of prestige and control rather than ritual.SEE ALSO Clothing; KaEbah.BIBLIOGRAPHY
In the absence of a comprehensive investigation of textiles used
in ritual and ceremony, information is scattered in many
sources, and data are inconsistent from culture to culture.
General references to the roles textiles play in ritual are in
Michael V. Angrosino’s The Culture of the Sacred (Prospect
Heights, Ill., 2004), and Catherine M. Bell’s Ritual Theory,
Ritual Practice (New York and Oxford, 1992). A number of
papers that cover the aspects of ritual textiles are in Lynne
Milgram and Penny Van Esterik, eds., The Transformative
Power of Cloth in Southeast Asia (Toronto, 1994), and Textile
Society of America, Sacred and Ceremonial Textiles, Proceed-
ings of the Fifth Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of
American, Chicago, Illinois, 1996 (Minneapolis, 1997).
For the Christian Church, scholarship has focused largely on vest-
ments. Identification of nonvestment textiles used in Chris-
tian ritual is in J. Wickham Legg’s Notes on the History of the
Liturgical Colours, Transactions of the St. Paul’s Ecclesiologi-
cal Society (London, 1882), and in Legg’s Church Ornaments
and Their Civil Antecedents (Cambridge, U.K., 1917).
Among the best explanations of the origins and uses of tex-
tiles in Jewish ritual is Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s Fab-
ric of Jewish Life (New York, 1977). This exhibition catalog
to the collection of ritual and ceremonial textiles in the Jew-
ish Museum collection is well illustrated and contains a good
bibliography.
Specific aspects of the use of textiles within ancient and historical
Western religious contexts are in Elizabeth Grace Crowfoot,
“The Clothing of a Fourteenth-Century Nubian Bishop,”
pp. 43–51; Veronika Gervers, “An Early Christian Curtain
in the Royal Ontario Museum,” pp. 56–81; and Donald
King, “How Many Apocalypse Tapestries?,” pp. 160–167;
all of which are in Studies in Textile History: In Memory of
Harold B. Burnham, edited by Veronika Gervers (Toronto,
1977). In addition, this Festschrift contains Rita Bolland,
“Weaving the Pinatikan, a Warp-Patterned Kain Bentenan
from North Celebes,” pp. 1–17, and John E. Vollmer, “Ar-
chaeological and Ethnographical Considerations of the Foot-
Braced Body-Tension Loom,” pp. 343–354, both of which
discuss non-Western textiles. R. B. Serjeant’s Islamic Textiles:
Material for a History up to the Mongol Conquest (Beirut,
1972), which was originally published serially in Ars Islamica
9–14 (1942–1951), is the basic reference for Islamic textiles.
A good source for both Islamic and East Asian carpets is M.
S. Dimand’s Oriental Rugs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
(New York, 1973). In addition to the catalog to the Metro-
politan Museum’s considerable collection, this volume in-
cludes a series of essays documenting the use of carpets in
Asia as well as their earliest appearances in the West.9092 TEXTILES