The Cardinal's Wardrobe

Chapter 32 The Cardinal’s Wardrobe

Carol M. Richardson

By the end of the 17th century, the papal master of ceremonies, Francesco Sestini da Bibbiena, could report that cardinals’ dress consisted of the sou- tane (a long, sleeved cassock, buttoned down the front), rochet (a linen over- garment or surplice), manteletta (short shoulder cape worn only in Rome), mozzetta (short cape usually buttoned in front) and cappa magna (voluminous cloak with a hood). The hat was always red, whereas the cassock and cloak could be in one of three qualities of the colour: pavonazzo (peacock-coloured), rosso (red) or rose secche (old rose), depending on the occasion.1 Although red is the colour worn by cardinals, it is not the cardinals’ colour but the popes’. The colour is significant precisely because it binds the pope and his cardinals, as head and members of the papal body: “in capite et in mem- bris” (see also Barbara Bombi’s chapter in this volume).2 William Durandus explained in his Rationale of 1286:

the Sovereign Pontiff always appears dressed with a red cape on the outside while underneath it he is dressed with white vestments; for within, he ought to shine through innocence and charity; and on the outside, he ought to be red through compassion, so that he might show himself to be always ready to lay down his life for his sheep; for he stands in the place of Him who made red His garments for all the sheep in the world.3

Papal garb seems to have been established relatively early on, though its first formal record is in the late 13th-century ordo, or ceremonial book, of Gregory x.4 How the cardinals’ costume evolved was a long, often contentious process, that

1 Francesco Sestini, Il moderno maestro di camera (Rome: 1697), 9–10. 2 Marc Dykmans, Le cérémonial papal: De la fin du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance, vol. 2: De Rome en Avignon ou le Cérémonial de Jacques Stefaneschi (Brussels: 1981), 472. 3 Guillaume Durand, William Durand on the Clergy and their Vestments: A New Translation of Books 2 and 3 of The Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, trans. and ed. Timothy Thibodeau (Scranton: 2010), 236; idem, Rationale divinorum officiorum (Venice: 1568), § 1286, 3:19.18. See also Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, The Pope’s Body, trans. David S. Peterson (Chicago: 2000), 89. 4 Paravicini Bagliani, The Pope’s Body, 83–85.

536 Richardson began in the middle of the 13th century.5 It is only from the 16th century that the portrayal of cardinals in portraits is more or less consistent, as Clare Rob- ertson demonstrates in her chapter. In the middle of the 15th century, the canon lawyer Martino Garati da Lodi could give no clear answer to the question of what cardinals wore in his short treatise De cardinalibus (1453; see also David S. Chambers’s chapter in this volume): they were permitted to wear the white and red vestments and gold spurs reserved to the pope but only with express permission.6 Here I will deal with the form and significance of the most distinctive aspects of cardinals’ dress, namely the hat and the colour which set them apart on formal occasions. There were other signals of their status: cardinal bishops are distinguished on tomb monuments, for example, by the cope (pluviale, from the Latin for a rain cloak) and mitre, cardinal priests by the chasuble, and deacons by the dalmat- ic. These vestments, however, were worn during the liturgy, as Philipp Zitzls- perger discusses in his chapter, and refer to their order as clergy rather than to their dignity as cardinals.7 Moreover, as well as the colour and the form of what they wore, the material quality of cardinals’ dress was also codified so that, in fact, texture was more important than tailoring. The very fact that what the cardinals wore was puzzled over and regulated demonstrated an awareness that their costume had a history. That history embodied cardinals’ political and legal status as integral to the longevity and continuity of the papacy.

1 Cloaks and Hats

In his treatise De cardinalatu (1510), Paolo Cortesi discusses cardinals’ dress in the chapter on their authority (potestate). They have a uniform because they are individuals fulfilling a role that derives from their “collective authority.” That status is also signified by the colour and physical presence of their weighty cloaks:

5 Bernard Berthod, “From Papal Red to Cardinal Purple: Evolution and Change of Robes at the Papal Court from Innocent iii to Leo x 1216–1521,” in Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of Investiture, ed. Stewart Gordon (New York: 2001), 315–31. 6 Martino Garati, De cardinalibus (1453), in Per la storia del Cardinalato nel secolo xv, ed. Gigli- ola Soldi Rondinini (Milan: 1973), 85: question 98. Johann Baptist Sägmüller, Die Thätigkeit und Stellung der Cardinäle bis Papst Bonifaz viii. historisch-canonistisch untersucht und dar gestellt (Freiburg i.Br.: 1896), 165. 7 Carol M. Richardson, Reclaiming Rome: Cardinals in the Fifteenth Century (Leiden: 2009), 98–100.