CAPPA. - Originally it was a wide sleeveless cloak, often provided with a hood, and it covered the whole person; it was used from antiquity through the entire Middle Ages as a garment against bad weather and for travel, by both laypeople and ecclesiastics.
For laypeople, in fact, it became almost a mark of persons of dignity, when young men adopted short garments, particularly in time of war.
When the mendicant Orders arose, they used it open at the front with a wide hood that fell all around the shoulders to the point of forming a kind of small mantle. Laypeople and ecclesiastics wore it trimmed with fur around the head and shoulders. While monks used the cowl as their choir habit, other religious used either the cotta, or the cappa, or simply the habit of their Order.
The popes, before the use of the mozzetta with a hood over the rochet was introduced at Avignon, used in the Middle Ages a cappa of red silk trimmed with ermine, which latterly, until Pius VI, was worn only in the functions of Matins of the triduum of Holy Week and of Good Friday; while on solemn occasions they wore the great mantle, larger and more precious than the simple pluvial.
The cardinals wear the ceremonial cappa entirely equal to that of bishops: it consists of a long mantle with a train, with a wide hood that falls around the shoulders in the form of a small mantle closed at the front; in wintertime another small mantle of white fur is superimposed on the mantle, which also trims the hood.
The mantle is entirely closed with a single longitudinal opening at the front of the chest through which to pass the hands; therefore, in order to use the arms more freely, the cappa is turned back over the forearms. To distinguish cardinals from other prelates, they were granted the use of a cappa of red-purple color; this occurred under Paul II (or, according to others, as far back as the time of Boniface VIII); however, during Advent, Lent, and vigils, the color of the cappa is violet. The fabric is always watered silk (amoerro); of wool, also violet, on Good Friday and on days of strict penance. Cardinals elected from the monastic or mendicant orders wear a wool cappa of the color of their order; those coming from the regular clerics wear purple and violet cappas like their colleagues, but always of wool.
The bishops in their dioceses wear the violet cappa of a form equal, as has been said, to that of the cardinals, of wool or silk, while the upper part, when not covered by fur, is always of crimson silk; in the Curia they wear either the cappa in the manner of prelates or the mantelletta. Religious wear the cappa, like the cassock, the mantelletta and the mozzetta, of the color of their Order; until not long ago they did not use the rochet except by special concession, but now such a concession is widely diffused.
The prelates also wear the cappa over the violet garment and the rochet; but it is never worn spread out, rather gathered in such a way as to pass under the left arm, where it is held close to the person by a ribbon hanging from the shoulders under the small mantle. Thus the prelates of the court and of the curia wear it: vice-chamberlain, auditor and treasurer of the Apostolic Chamber (prelates of the fiocchetto), the protonotaries of number and supernumerary, the clerics of the Chamber, the domestic prelates, the canons of the patriarchal basilicas, the voting and referendary members of the Signatura, and the bishops themselves present in the curia. By papal concession, the canons of certain metropolitan or cathedral churches also wear such a cappa in their diocese, particularly those who are likened to the protonotaries, and the canons of some of the minor Roman basilicas. The chamberlains and secret chaplains, on the other hand, do not have the right to it, for whom the solemn ceremonial garment is the croccia.
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