dalmatic

On top of that, for the crowning moment itself—the presentation as she sat on the “seat” made for King Edward I in 1300, to receive golden orb, scepters, and armbands signifying wisdom and sincerity—were placed a dalmatic of gold cloth, then yet another massive robe of purple velvet and ermine.

Louis le Jeune, on the crowning of his son Philip Augustus, ordered that the young prince should be clad in a blue dalmatic and blue shoes, sewn with golden fleurs-de-lys, a flower whose name, as “Fleur de Loys,” played upon that of his own, and possibly upon his epithet name of Florus.

In England at the Reformation the dalmatic ultimately shared the fate of the chasuble and other mass vestments.

However this may be, the dalmatic remained for centuries the vestment distinctive of the pope and his deacons, and—according at least to the view held at Rome—could be worn by other clergy only by special concession of the pope.

The dalmatic was in general use at the beginning of the 9th century, partly as a result of the Carolingian reforms, which established the Roman model in western Europe; but it continued to be granted by the popes to distinguished ecclesiastics not otherwise entitled to wear it, e.g. to abbots or to the cardinal priests of important cathedrals.