Using evidence from both papal and cardinal inventories, as well as from cardinal wills, this essay argues that the papal curia developed a distinctive language for describing liturgical vestments in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries that emphasised the peoples and places that made the materials and ornaments of these garments. Examples from inventories of local dioceses and religious houses are offered to illustrate the peculiarity of the curial descriptions, and comparisons are also made to royal and mercantile inventories. While the curial emphasis on the places and peoples producing the materials used in ecclesiastical vestments may simply have been the performance of connoisseurship within an elite institutional culture, the author suggests that it may also express the expansive papal claims to dominion articulated by Boniface VIII (1294–1303) and his immediate successors.

This essay argues that Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) used clothing in a highly intentional and performative manner to communicate his status and authority. His audience, however, was quite limited - essentially, the small community of those who aspired to hold or influence the power of the Holy See - and the messages conveyed were not particularly complex. Attempting a reception history of papal attire c.1300, the essay surveys remarks regarding clothing in late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century chronicles and analyses in depth the evidence of two sources: ambassadorial reports to King James II of Aragon (1291-1327) and the De electione et coronatione sanctissimi patris domini Bonifatii pape octavi of Cardinal Jacopo Caetani Stefaneschi (c.1270-1343). A suggestive finding is that performativity, or the highly theatrical use of garments, appears to have been used by Boniface VIII to foster dissemination of simple communications across great distances.

After setting out some of the reasons Catholicism developed a rich array of devotional and liturgical objects, this introduction to the centennial special issue of The Catholic Historical Review on Catholic material culture traces a brief history of the emergence of material culture studies while noting the contributions of Catholic scholars to it. It also defines material culture and describes several of the field's approaches as exemplified by essays in the special issue. Strengths and weaknesses of these approaches are also noted.