One of the materials that we frequently see used in vestments coming especially from the later middle ages through the renaissance was velvet -- thought it obviously can also be found in other periods as well. Velvet, traditionally speaking, was made from silk and was time-consuming to produce and as such it was considered a precious, noble, much sought after textile. In its origins velvet came originally from the Middle East and it was by way of the port of Venice that it would then mainly come to be introduced to Europe. Because of its beauty and nobility it was inevitably introduced into the sacred liturgy -- for here it must be remembered that the axiom of the ancients was that nothing but the very best should be offered to God, and while 'modern man' tends to looks at 'value' solely in terms of monetary value, the ancients tended to look at value also in terms of a thing's spiritual and artistic value.
Here then is a sampling of different velvet vestments ranging from the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries.
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| 15th century |
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| 15th century |
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| 15th century |
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| 15th-16th century. |
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15th-16th century
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| 16th century. |
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| 16th century |
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| 17th century |
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| 17th century |
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| 17th century |
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| 17th century |
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| 17th century |
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| 18th century |
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| 18th century |
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| 19th century - within this period the French in particular would often utilize plain velvets that then had embroideries added |
