Continuing on with our consideration of the traditional prelatial dress of the religious orders, we turn our attention today to the Sylvestrine Congregation of the Benedictines. To refresh our readers memories, traditionally prelates belonging to religious orders had a form of prelatial dress which was based upon the habit of their particular order -- frequently also made from much simpler materials, consonant with their religious vocation. While for most Benedictines this entails a black prelatial garb in the case of the Sylvestrines, founded in the thirteenth century by St. Sylvester Gozzolini, their habit is of dark blue and so their own prelatial garb follows a similar pattern.
The following photo is colourized, and it is not clear to me whether this really is a Sylvestrine prelate (I am not convinced), but it would seem to give a sense of what their cappa magna may have looked like.
The following photographs do, however, show Sylvestrine prelates, though unfortunately none of them are colour photographs, but even from these you might get a sense of the sky blue that formed a key part of their prelatial choir dress.
Should any of our readership come across any proper colour photos or even paintings of Sylvestrine prelates showing these aspects of their dress, please email them to us -- though it seems that Sylvestrine prelates were reasonably rare, mainly manifest in places such as Sri Lanka.
