generally worn 1 both by clergy and laity, in-doors and 3 But in both cases the fur coat within was the usual dress, of which the overfur was, as it were, merely the mask. Charlemagne in winter wore an otter-skin breastplate and hunted in sheepskin. The butcher of Rouen, who was saved alone out of the crew of the Blanche Nef, wore a sheepskin. St. Martin, Apostle of the Gauls, and the first Bishop of Tours, when he officiated wore also a sheepskin a fur coat (as it would seem with no surplice over it, and with no sleeves), and consecrated the Eucharistic elements with his bare arms, which came through the sheepskin, like those of the sturdy deacons who had brandished their sinewy arms out of the holes of their colobium. 2. The second part of the dress was a shawl or blanket, wrapt round the shoulders over the shirt, in Greek himation, in Latin toga, or pallium. This also was The shawl. usually white as the common color of the ancient dress, which is still perpetuated in the white flannel robe of the Pope, but marked with a broad purple stripe. This is what appears, in the early portion of the fourth century, as the dress equally of ecclesiastics and laity. After the fourth century the Christians affected the use 1 Thomassin, ii. 2, 48. of black shawls (like the Geneva divines of the sixteenth century), in order to imitate the philosophers and ascetics. Of the general adoption of the black dress, an interesting illustration is given in the case of the Bishop Sisinnius, who chose to wear white, and when he was asked what command in Scripture he found for his white surplice, replied, "What command is there for wearing black?" 1 For reasons which will appear immediately, there are fewer traces of this part of the ancient dress than of any other in the vestments of the clergy. The only relic of the Roman toga or pallium remains in the pall of an Archbishop, which is only the string which held it together, or the broad stripe which marked its surface. The overcoat. 3. The third part of the ancient dress, and that from which the larger part of the ecclesiastical vestments are derived, was the overcoat, in Latin lacerna or pænula, in Greek phaloné. It ought perhaps to have been worn over the toga, but was sometimes for convenience worn instead of it, and at last, after the discontinuance of the toga,2- which for practical purposes came to be much like our evening dress coat, and was thus, after the Empire, only worn on official occasions, the overcoat came to be the usual dress, as frock coats, shooting coats, and the like are worn in general morning society in England. What had once been regarded only as a rough soldier's garb, unsuitable within the city, came to be worn everywhere. It was for the most part like a poncho, or cape, or burnous, but it consisted of several varieties. 3 There was the birrhus, or scarlet cloak, worn by Athanasius, as a wealthy person, when he visited the mys 1 Bingham, vi. 4, 19; Socrates, vi. 20; Thomassin, i. 2–24. 2 Marriott, Vestiarium, p. xii. 8 So it is translated in the Coptic Liturgy. terious lady in Alexandria, but not thought by Augustine suitable to his poverty. There was the caracalla, a long overall, brought by Antoninus Bassianus from France, whence he derived his name and it was this which was corrupted into casacalla, casaca, and finally cassock. It had a hood, and was called in Greek amphibalus, and as such appears in the account of the persecution of St. Alban, 2 where, by a strange confusion, the name of Amphibalus has been supposed to represent the name of a saint. The word cassock, although highly esteemed, has never reached so high a pitch of reverence. a The same form of dress was also called casula, a slang name used by the Italian laborers 3 for the capote, which they called “their little house," as "tile" is- or was a short time 66 used for ago hat," and as "coat" is the same word as 66 cote," or "cottage." It is this which took the name of chasuble, and was afterwards especially known as the out-door garment of the clergy, as the sagum was of the laity, and was not adopted as a vestment for sacred services before the ninth century. Another name by which it was called was planeta, "the wanderer," because it wandered loosely over the body, as one of these overcoats in our day has been called "zephyr.” This was the common overcoat of the wealthier, as the casula of the humbler classes. "the Another form of overcoat was the capa, or copa, hood"- also called the pluviale, or "waterproof," to be worn in rainy weather out-of-doors. It was this cape, or cope, that St. Martin divided with the beggar at the gates of Amiens, and hence (according to one derivation of the word) the capella, or chapel, where the fragment of his cape was preserved. It is the vestment of which the sec1 Marriott, pp. lvi., 16. 2 Bede, H. E. i. 6. 8 Columella, Isidore, Augustine; see Marriott, pp. 228, 202. ♦ Marriott, p. 229. ular use has longest retained its hold, having been worn by Bishops in Parliament, by Canons at coronations, and by lay vicars, almsmen and the like, on other similar occasions, till quite recently. Another form of the same garb, though of a lighter texture, and chiefly used by ladies in riding, was the cymar, or chimere,1 of which the trace still lingers in the bishop's satin robe, which so vexed the soul of Bishop Hooper, and which had to be forced on him almost at the point of the sword- but which now apparently is cast aside by advocates of the modern use of clerical vestments. The mitre, as worn in the Eastern Church, may still be seen in the museums of Russia, as the caps or turbans, worn on festive occasions in ancient days by princes and nobles, and even to this day by the peasant women. The division into two points, which appears in Western mitres, is only the mark of the crease which is the consequence of its having been, like an opera hat, folded and carried under the arm. The stole (which, in Greek, is simply another word for the overcoat, or panula) in the ninth century came to be used for the "orarium." This was a simple handkerchief for blowing the nose, or wiping off the sweat from the face. These handkerchiefs, on state occasions, were used as ribbons, streamers, or scarfs; and hence their adoption by the deacons, who had little else to distinguish them. When Sir James Brooke first returned from Borneo, where the only sign of royalty was to hold a kerchief in the hand, he retained the practice in England. 1 Archæologia, xxx. 27. 2 See the recent account of the installation of the Bishop of Capetown. 3 Thomassin, 8, 245. He is perplexed, and justly, by the difficulty of understanding how the "stola," which was the word for the whole dress, should have been appropriated to such a small matter as the handkerchief. An explanation is attempted in Marriott, pp. 75, 84, 90, 112, 115, lxiii. III. Before we pass to any practical application, it may be remarked that this historical inquiry has a twofold interest. First, the condition of the early Their secuChurch, which is indicated in this matter of lar origin. dress, is but one of a hundred similar examples of the secular and social origin of many usages which are now regarded as purely ecclesiastical, and yet more, of the close connection, or rather identity, of common and religious, of lay and clerical life, which it has been the effort of fifteen centuries to rend asunder. One of the treasures1 which King Edward III. presented to Westminster Abbey, were "the vestments in which St. Peter was wont to celebrate mass." What those mediæval relics were we know not, but what the actual vestment of It St. Peter was we know perfectly well it was a "fisher's coat 2 cast about his naked body." In like manner, the Church of Rome itself is not so far wrong when it exhibits in St. John Lateran, the altar at which St. Peter fufilled if he ever did fulfil the same functions. is not a stone or marble monument, but a rough wooden table, such as would have been used at any common meal. And the churches in which, we do not say St. Peter, for there were no churches in his time, but in which the Bishops of the third and fourth centuries officiated, are not copies of Jewish or Pagan temples, but of town-halls and courts of justice. And the posture in which they officiated was not that of the modern Roman priest, with his back to the people, but that of the ancient Roman prætor, facing the people for whose sake he was there. And the Latin language, now regarded as consecrated to religious purposes, was but the vulgar dia 1 Adam de Murimuth, Harl. MS. 565, vol. 206. 2 In like manner the only mention of St. Paul's vestments is the allusion to his cloak - the phæloné — described in p. 168. The casual notice of itself procludes the notion of a sacred vestment. 2 Tim. iv. 13. 8 See the chapters on the Basilica and on the Pope. |