Chasuble

A sleeveless outer vestment worn by the celebrant at Mass or Eucharist. Originally shaped like a tent or poncho with a hole for the head, and in the course of time reduced in size, it is said to be derived from the paenula or planeta, the outdoor cloak of Greek and Roman times. At the English Reformation the chasuble was retained by the first Prayer Book of 1549 as an alternative to the cope,* which was, however, regarded as having no doctrinal significance, but was abolished in 1552. It does not seem to have been used again in the Church of England until the nineteenth-century Oxford Movement,* despite one widely publicized interpretation of the Ornaments Rubric.