IT had been a long road home for three damaged, gold-threaded vestments picked up by a British medical assistant attached to the 11th Hussar Regiment in a Catholic church somewhere in Flanders in 1914-15.
The three Catholic vestments had been sitting in storage in Gold Coast resident Dale Paynting’s home for many years – heirlooms passed down by her grandfather, Arthur – and were on their way to be put up for sale at the local op-shop.
When Dale’s friend Joan Croft, an Anglican who also lived on the Gold Coast, saw the vestments, she recognised they were special and started a series of phone calls that brought the vestments under the eyes of retired Anglican Bishop Len Eacott.
Bishop Eacott had served much of his life and ministry in the Australian Defence Force and at one point had served as director general of chaplaincy for the Australian Army.
He understood the historical significance of the vestments and drafted up a statement of provenance – a document that details the objects and their ownership history.
The vestments are an embroidered stole with vineyard imagery made from cloth of gold; a cloth of gold hood of a cope with a mysterious bird image emblazoned on it; and a silk, rose-coloured round vestment, whose liturgical purpose and style was unclear.
From his research into the war records and family stories of Arthur Paynting, Bishop Eacott said he could not find any other forward attachments on the western front except for Arthur’s time with the 11th Hussar Regiment.
Bishop Eacott identified St Martin’s Cathedral in Ypres or St Nicholas’ Church in Messines as the most likely places Arthur could have found the vestments on that deployment.
There were two limitations to Bishop Eacott’s investigations – the destruction and later reorganisation of churches in Belgium across the First and Second World Wars and post-war period; and the destruction of British First World War records during The Blitz in the Second World War.
An unlikely help came from Arthur’s own book of unpublished poems, Songs of a Seedy Soldier, in which he wrote extensively of his experience in the war and often noted the date and location of his writing.
These dates and locations lent more weight to Bishop Eacott’s timeline.
Returning the vestments home
A party of four – Dale, Joan, Bishop Eacott and his wife Sandy – were moved to repatriate the vestments to the Catholic Church and drove up to Brisbane archdiocese’s archives to return them after more than 100 years.
Archivist Kate Ashton received the vestments on behalf of the Church and said she was happy to see their safe return.
There were still many questions left unanswered, she said.
Foremost was the exact identity of the church where Arthur had found the vestments and the relation, if any, the vestments had to each other in a liturgical setting.
About 40 minutes into the meeting with Ms Ashton to return the vestments, long-time Brisbane archdiocesan archivist Fr Chris Hanlon walked through the door of the archives with three theories, which he had earmarked in an email ahead of time.
The first theory regarded the bird image on the hood of the cope.
“It’s the pious pelican,” Fr Hanlon said.
The working theory of the image of a “dying swan” was, ironically, dead in the water as Fr Hanlon explained a somewhat esoteric image derived from an ancient legend about pelicans.
It was once believed, Fr Hanlon said, that during times of famine, the pelican would pierce its own breast and feed its blood to its chicks – some theories went so far as to say the pelican could resurrect its dead chicks with the blood.
While modern research shows neither of these beliefs hold truth, medieval Christians attached the imagery of this self-sacrificial act to Jesus Christ’s sacrifice in His Most Precious Blood for the salvation of humanity.
Fr Hanlon’s second theory then fit more neatly together – that the stole, which had vineyard imagery, and the cope hood, which had the pious pelican image, were part of a set.
Not only were the stole and cope hood both cloth of gold with similar red bordering, the Eucharistic imagery they bore suggested they belonged to a set for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi – the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.
In addition, the area of Belgium Bishop Eacott had suggested for Arthur’s find was known for its Corpus Christi devotion because St Thomas Aquinas and Pope Urban IV had met there — Pope Urban IV later asked St Thomas Aquinas to compose the Mass for Corpus Christi.
Fr Hanlon’s third theory was that the silk, rose-coloured vestment was a Roman Chasuble, colloquially dubbed the fiddle’s back for its resemblance to the instrument’s shape.
He said rose-coloured vestments were rare because the Church’s liturgical calendar only had two days with the rose colour – the third Sunday of Advent and the fourth Sunday of Lent.
Many places through history did not have the rose vestments, he said, including where he grew up in Central Queensland.
To see rose-coloured Roman Chasuble suggests they were a “luxury” item, which supports the idea the church was well resourced.
Fr Hanlon placed the manufacture of all the vestments most likely at a convent in Flanders.
Ecumenism through faith-filled eyes
The story of the vestments is only beginning to be unearthed as Ms Ashton and Fr Hanlon study them more closely and work out the logistics of possibly returning them to the Diocese of Brugge.
Fr Hanlon said the fact that four people from another tradition found these vestments and were moved to repatriate them to the Catholic Church was beautiful.
“We talk a lot these days about repatriating heritage objects and how wonderful it is that after all these years, there are people who are out there – I mean the ladies – who were so concerned with doing the right thing by these Catholic objects repatriating and returning them to their place of origin in the Catholic Church,” he said.
He said there was also a strong ecumenical feeling to the day.
“I’m fairly proud of that because let’s face it, out there in the wider society, there are a lot of people who would say ‘well what’s the point of it’, ‘they’ll never be used again’, and ‘we don’t even know precisely where they came from’,” he said.
“But the important thing is that in the minds and hearts of (Dale Paynting and Joan Croft) and of the man himself (Arthur Paynting) who obviously told the story, it was important that the vestments come back home.”
