Chasuble

The chasuble (mass vestment) is stitched from cardinal red silk brocade. According to a piece of parchment sewn to the inner side of the chasuble, it was made from the cloak of Hasan Pasha, who fell in the Battle of Sisak in 1593: Haec casual est ex paludamento Turcico Hassan Basse, qui anno 1593 die 22. junii ad Sissekhium fusus accubuit. (This chasuble was made from the Turkish cloak of Hasan Pasha, whom death overcame at Sisak on 22 June 1593) It was used for mass for many years, especially on St Achathius Day, in memory of the victory over the Turks. The chasuble was handed over to the safekeeping of the National Museum in Ljubljana in 1931. The silk brocade is woven from silver threads in a pronounced pomegranate pattern. Such patterns were woven in both Italy and the Orient. The single motif includes a series of vegetable forms (bananas, artichokes, pine cones, thistle, even a bunch or vase of flowers). The pomegranate was at one time the leading ornamental motif in textile design throughout almost all centres of silk making, reaching a peak in the fifteenth century. It already had symbolic meaning for the Persians and Hebrews. In classical antiquity it represented love and fertility, but also the resurrection an immortality, to which a series of legends testify. In Christianity it is manly a symbol of the Church. As a fruit, the pomegranate contains many pips within a single skin, just as the Church unites under its protection many different peoples in a single faith. Scarlet, which is a symbol of Christ’s blood and redemption, was reserved for the highest ranking persons in the social hierarchy, government and church.