Religious vestments
The history of religious vestments in its totality is enormously complicated, and an overview must suffice, but it sheds much light upon the changing understanding of the priesthood through the ages.
For the first three centuries of Christianity, until when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, there was no such thing as clerical dress. To celebrate the Eucharist, normal dress was worn, albeit one’s best dress – rather as people did, and in some cases still do, wear ‘Sunday best’ to church. At this time, fashion dictated that dress was worn long: a tunic or toga which reached to the ankles, and an outer cloak or cape, cappa, likewise.
Towards the end of this first period, there is evidence that clergy were beginning to wear something distinctive for the Eucharist. We are only talking about the deacon and the bishop at this stage; as we have seen, the idea of the ‘priest’ was still in an embryonic stage. In both cases, the distinctive object was worn round the neck: for the deacon, the stole (a kind of scarf), for the bishop the pallium – which is still used today, made of wool, but given only to archbishops. These practices derived in the East and spread to the West; the Eastern names for the main vestments are different, but essentially the vestments are the same (this will be covered later).
The second period dates from the 6th to the 9th century. This is the most important time for the development of separate liturgical dress. In part this resulted from a refusal to go with secular fashion, which moved from a preference for long to a preference for shorter dress. The Church stayed with the older style. So we have, in essence, the alb (the long white ‘tunic’ reaching the ankles), the stole round the neck, and the chasuble, the outer, coloured ‘cloak’. The chasuble, it is true, no longer reaches to the ankles, but there is still the cope, or long cloak, secured at the centre by a clasp, which is used for solemn occasions outside Mass, and is a throwback to the earliest times.
Evidence shows that all these vestments were of simple design without great adornment. This is because they were voluminous in nature and so, when worn, hung with many folds. The folds were enough to supply the contrast; any other patterning would have been lost in the folds.
The third stage of development lasts from the 9th. to the 13th. century. It sees the elaboration of the full range of vestments, the understanding, either by custom or reinforced by church law, of ‘who wears what’, and the formulation of a symbolic meaning for each vestment. This period also saw the expansion of the actual degrees of ministry, including not only bishop, priest and deacon, but sub-deacon and the ‘minor orders’ such as lector and acolyte etc. [these all set aside in the West in 1972]. To this period we will turn in the second part.