u/theplotthinnens

Photos:

1. (L to R) Executioner Set; Tomb Prospector Set; Black Church Set; Gascoigne Set; White Church Set; Choir Set
2. The two main Holy Shawl designs (Executioner version; Healing Church version)
3. Executioner Set; Tomb Prospector Set; Logarius bling
4. Ludwig
5. Black Church Set; Gascoigne Set; White Church Set; Choir Set
6. Ludwig's Holy Blade; Holy Moonlight Sword; Church Cannon; Laurence's Skull; Hunter Chief Emblem
7. Church Giant; Vicar of the Cosmos
8. Spines (Celestial Emissary; Living Failure; Amygdala; Winter Lantern)
9. Spines (Beast Patient; Blood-Starved Beast; Bloodletting Beast; Abhorrent Beast)
10. Spines (Undead Giant; Giant Lost Child; Bloodlicker; Gravekeeper Scorpion)
11. Great Chain of Being, 1579, from the Didacus Valades

Far from a throwaway detail, turns out there's quite a bit of diversity when it comes to the Holy Shawl! We don't get much explicit information about it from attire descriptions, and it's not even mentioned in most of these sets:

Executioner Garb:

>Attire worn by the band of executioners commanded by the
martyr Logarius. > >Later became that basis for all Church attire, with its heavy
draping of Holy Shawl. > >As the great Logarius once said, "Acts of goodness are not
always wise, and acts of evil are not always foolish, but
regardless, we shall always strive to be good."

Tomb Prospector Garb:

>Attire of tomb prospectors who explore the old labyrinth on behalf of the Healing Church. The Healing Church traces its roots to Byrgenwerth, and is therefore aware of the ruins' true importance. They contain much more than mere hunter trinkets, indeed, they hide the very secrets of the old Great Ones, sought after by those with the insight to imagine greatness.

Gascoigne's Garb:

>Hunter attire worn by Father Gascoigne. > >The Dingy scarf is a Holy Shawl and symbol of the Healing
Church, from which Gascoigne would eventually part ways. > >"Father" is a title used for clerics in a foreign land, and there
is no such rank in the Healing Church.

Black Church Garb: > >Attire of Healing Church hunters. The Holy Shawl, symbol of
the Healing Church, flutters proudly on their backs. > >Most Healing Church hunters are elementary doctors who
understand the importance of early prevention of the
scourge, achieved by disposing of victims, and even potential
victims, before signs of sickness manifest themselves. > >Their black attire is synonymous with fear, and that peculiar
Yharnam madness.

White Church Garb:

>Attire of special Church doctors. These doctors are superiors to the black preventative hunters, and specialists in experimentally-backed blood ministration and the scourge of the beast. They believe that medicine is not a means of treatment but rather a method for research, and that some knowledge can only be obtained by exposing oneself to sickness.

Choir Garb:

>Attire of the Choir, high-ranking members of the Healing Church. Members of the Choir are both the highest-ranking clerics of the Healing Church, and scholars who continue the work that began at Byrgenwerth. Together with the left behind Great One, they look to the skies, in search of astral signs, that may lead them to the rediscovery of true greatness.

So really, all we can tell from descriptions is that it originated with Logarius and the Executioners, and later became incorporated into Healing Church attire. Interesting, if unexciting. As usual though, the devil is in the details.

Broadly we can separate the Holy Shawls into two designs: the early version from the Executioners and the later one from the Healing Church which further adds some elaborate patterns. There are however small deviations within these two groups; what they tell us I'm not entirely sure, but taken together they provide a kind of evolutionary tree for these different factions, reinforcing our understanding of how the different groups of Hunters/clerics/doctors are related.

We'll start with the Executioners. The origin of these guys and their founder is murky; they apparently predate the Church, but have a large Hunter Rune on their chest and somehow were influential enough in the early days of the Church for it to base its garb on their fashion. Does this suggest Vileblood also predates the Church's formation? Logarius himself is a perplexing figure, not least of all because he doesn't seem to actually wear or use any of the items associated with him and his crusaders. However, we may find the original inspiration for the Shawl in the ornamental jewelry he wears.

Tomb Prospectors are a tricky bunch to parse because of their longevity and the looseness of criteria for being referred to as such, and because they bridge multiple factions. We do encounter a few of their kind in the Chalice Dungeons, as allies and enemies, but due to the timey-wimey dream nature of the way we experience the Dungeons it's difficult to place them at various stages in history. It's unclear exactly what the relationship is between them and the Executioners, whether one begat the other or whether they were functionally the same group; but the Prospectors keep the Holy Shawl, with only minor changes. We know that Byrgenwerth sent people into the Labyrinth, but not whether they were formerly Executioners, or if they were normal folks who became Tomb Prospectors once they went on an expedition. Several of these people likely ended up leaving Byrgenwerth to follow Laurence to Yharnam. It's implied that Ludwig's Holy Blades eventually emerged or evolved from this group, serving as both explorers of the Labyrinth and beast control in Yharnam when the Scourge grew worse later on.

Speaking of Ludwig, he still wears his Shawl even in his nightmarish state; notably, it's the version worn by the Executioners. We'll come back to Ludwig in a bit.

Moving on to the Church Attire, we have the Black and White Church Doctor Sets. These are more or less identical to each other, with some small coloration differences, but add some curious details compared to the earlier versions: the center keeps many of the elements of the original, but adds other iconography, including what looks almost like architectural motifs. The border decorations are also fleshed out from the relatively simple design of the Executioner Shawl. One thing to note is that there's some difference between the male and female versions of the attire, with the female version bifurcating the Shawl - I don't currently have a good shot of this, besides the concept art for the female White Church Doctor, but it's a curious change. It's not clear how these two groups may have evolved from the Executioners or the Tomb Prospectors, though we can recognize a shared down-'n-dirty bloodlust between the Black Church Doctors and the Executioners, and a shared intellectual interest in medicine between the White Church Doctors and Byrgenwerth.

Gascoigne meanwhile is a bit of an odd man out. His Shawl departs from the black-and-white coloration (maybe just faded dye?), and is worn in a different style, but it looks like the actual iconography is more or less the same. He was likely considered a Black Church Doctor when he was a part of the Church. The other unique elements of his garb may just be a quirk of his outsider origins, or his previous role as a different kind of cleric.

The Choir design elongates the Shawl and adds even more extravagant elements, though the upper-most part is covered by a hood (mimicking how Choir members also cover their upper-most part with the Blindfold Cap). The larger Shawl probably reflects their more academic/theological role, since they wouldn't have to worry as much about fighting and and getting tripped up over the longer fabric.

Even non- or formerly-human members of the Church also wear the Shawl. Both Church Giants and Vicars of the Cosmos wear what looks like a version of the design that is unique to them, somewhere in-between the Executioner and Church Shawls. Curious considering their relative places in the timeline.

We can also find the iconography of the Shawl on a few items. Both the Holy Moonlight Sword and Ludwig's Holy Blade share a pattern that closely resembles the Church Shawl, but not identical. This is interesting considering Ludwig, as we discussed, wears the earlier Executioner Shawl. Does this suggest that Ludwig the Executioner (or Tomb Prospector) found the Holy Moonlight Sword in the Labyrinth (probably in Isz?), bringing it back to the surface, which somehow came to inspire the later Church design? Ludwig's Holy Blade is a silver replica of the HMS which explains why it would also have the Shawl imagery; but curiously we can also find this more elaborate pattern not only on the Church Cannon, but as the bed for Laurence's Skull too - which we find together, under the Surgery Altar. We don't see it on Ludwig's Rifle, but we do see an echo of the pattern on the Hunter Chief Emblem.

This last bit I'm less sure of, but it's curious enough that I wanted to bring it up. Spines are doing weird things in this game. That's probably a given with all the different metamorphoses going down, but I was particularly struck by the similarity between the Shawl and the backs of the Celestial Emissaries and Living Failures - especially if we can trace the Shawl pattern to Isz via the HMS. The Church Shawl design especially is evocative of a spinal cord. It might be nothing, but I wanted to highlight some different instances of 'weird spinal conditions' just in case someone else could see something I can't.

And finally, what does the Holy Shawl actually depict? Is it a fun easter egg, a costume design detail that parallels the evolution of different iconography through real-world institutions in history? An instance of biomimicry, using attire to evoke eldritch transformations of the body by the enlightened ones below? Or is it some kind of cosmological map, showing us the hierarchy of the world as we know it?

I'm keen to hear what y'all think!