Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Why Vestments? An Introduction to Liturgical Textiles of the Post-Byzantine World by Warren T. Woodfin, Kallinikeion Assistant Professor of Art History, Queens College, City University of New York The exhibition Liturgical Textiles of the Post-Byzantine World, now on view through November 1, 2015, presents a selection of notable liturgical vestments that communicate the continuing prestige of the Orthodox Church and its clergy in the centuries following the fifteenth-century fall of Byzantine Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks. From a strictly theological viewpoint, vestments are hardly a necessity for Christian worship. Liturgical scholars are largely in agreement…