Liturgical footwear, supposedly from the 15th century
Liturgical footwear is mentioned in documents from the end of the sixth century, but in the V there are representations of it in some mosaics. It consists of two parts:
Towards century VIII they were in use also for the inferior clergymen but from century XI they were like private ornaments of the Pope, the bishops and some dignitaries to whom it is granted by privilege. The sandals had until the 11th century a shape similar to our open espadrilles and were tied with thin straps. Since then, they were closing and rising more and more on the foot remaining completely closed and high in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Afterwards, casualties and something open have been used. His material of manufacture has been almost always the leather for the sole (sometimes, of table covered with leather) and until century XII also for the other parts of the footwear. But in this century the upper part was covered with silk with embroidery, and from the thirteenth the silk was left alone with some simple embroidery. As for the caligas, the name they took definitively from the eleventh century consists of monuments that were white and were generally made of canvas until that century. And since the thirteenth century, colored silk has been used, already knitted, and of pieces of wood conveniently cut and sewn. They are conserved in several museums and treasures of curious churches exemplary of said ornaments that go back to the XIII century and some until the XI.
In its final form, both sandals and caligas are adapted to the liturgical color of the pontifical celebrated. Although abolished in the liturgical reform after the Second Vatican Council, they are still in use for those celebrations under the traditional ritual.
The content of this article incorporates material from Archeology and Fine Arts, from 1922, by Francisco Naval and Ayerbe, which is in the public domain.
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