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A chasuble is an ornate circular garment with a hole in the center for the wearer's head. When worn, it reaches to the wearer's wrists, so that if the wearer holds both arms straight out, the chasuble forms a semi-circle when viewed from the front or the back.
The chasuble originated as a sort of conical poncho, called in Latin a "casula" or "little house," that was the common outer traveling garment in the late Roman Empire. Today it connotes solemnity and formality. It was simply a roughly oval piece of cloth, with a round hole in the middle through which to pass the head, that fell below the knees on all sides. It had to be gathered up on the arms to allow the arms to be used freely.
As the casula became a liturgical garment in the West, it was folded up from the sides. Strings were sometimes used to assist in this task, and the deacon could help the priest in folding up the sides of the vestment. Beginning in the thirteenth century, there was a tendency to shorten the sides a little. In the course of that fifteenth century and the following century, the chasuble took something like the modern form, in which the sides of the vestment no longer reach to the ankle but only, at most, to the wrist, making folding unnecessary.
At the end of sixteenth century the chasuble, though still quite ample and covering a little of the arms, had become less similar to its traditional shape than to that which prevailed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the chasuble was reduced to a broad scapular, leaving the whole of the arms quite free, and was shortened also in front and back. To make it easier for the priest to join his hands when wearing a chasuble of stiff (lined and heavily embroidered) material, the front was cut away further, giving it the distinctive shape often called "fiddleback". Complex decoration schemes were often used on chasubles of scapular form, especially the back, incorporating the image of the Christian cross or of a saint; and rich materials such as silk, cloth of gold or brocade were employed, especially in chasubles reserved for major celebrations.
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