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 COSTER

419

COSTUME

Coster, Francis, theologian, b. atMechUn, 16 June, J2 (1531); d. at Brussels, 16 December, 1619. He s received into the Society of Jesus by St. Ignatius, voveraber, 1552. While still a young man he was it to Cologne to lecture on Sacred Scripture and ronomy. His reputation as a professor was estab- led within a very short time, and on the 10th of Cember, lolU, the university of Cologne conferred him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and The- gy. He was ever ready to defend the teaching of ! Catholic Church, which at thi.s period was engaged the struggle with heresy, and by word and by iting he brought many back to the true fold. He s for two terms provincial of the province of Bel- im, for one term provincial of that of the Rhine, and isted at three general congregations of his order, e catalogue of his writings (De Backer, I, 218) men- ns forty-two titles. They include works on ascet- 1 subjects, meditations on the Blessed Virgin, and mons on the Gospel for each Sunday of tlie year, jbably the most famous was his " Enchiridion con- versianun praecipuarum nostri temporis de Re- one" f Cologne, 1585, 1587, 1589, 1593). This was erwards revised and enlarged by its .author in 1596, 15, 1608; and was translated into various languages, each of the attacks made upon it by Protestant iters, such as Philip Marbach, Franciseus Gommar, cas Osiander, Coster gave an able reply. His works ected against these opponents are entitled: "Liber Ecclesia contra Franciscura Gommarum" (Cologne, •4); "Apologia adversus Lucae Osiandri ha?retici herani refutationum octo propositionum catho- irum" (Cologne, 1606); " .\nnotationesinN.T.et in ?cipua loca, quae rapi possent in controversiam" atwerp, 1014).

[rRTF.R. Nomm. Lit.. I, 299; De B.^cker, BM. des £m- w de la c. de J.; Sommervogel, Bibl. de la c. de J., II, 1510; JE, .S(. Ignatius Loyola and Early Jesuits, 342, 343.

G. E. Kelly.

Jostume, Cleric.\l. — To discuss the question of Icsiastical costume in any detail would be impossi-

in an article like the present. No topic has med the subject of so many synodal enactments, 1 in almost every country and every order of the rgy we find distinctive features which might call for cial treatment. Only the broad outlines can there- B be dealt with here. It may be noted, however, that more prominent items of clerical attire, e. g. ietta; Manteletta; etc., have separate articles igned to them.

iisiory. — It seems that in the early centuries of ristianity no distinctive dress was adopted by ec- iiastics. Many indications point to this conclu- 1, e. g. the hicernn, or birrus, and (civil) dalmatic, ociated with the martyrdom of St. Cyprian. The st explicit testimony is that afforded by a letter of pe Celcstine in 428 to certain bishops of Gaul, in ich he rebukes them for wearing attire which made m conspicuous, and lays down the rule tliat "we B bishops and clergy] should be distinguished from

common people [plehe] by our learning, not by our thes; by our conduct, not by our dress; by clean- s of mind, not by the care wo sjiend upon our i)er- i" (Man.si, "Concilia", IV, 465). In the Ea.st it uld seem to have been the custom for ascetics and losophers, whether Christian or not, to affect a cial habit, but the Christian clergy generally did, profess asceticism in this distinctive way, and pe content to wear the birrus (Pvpoi) like the laity )ut tliem. Tliis usage a canon of the Council of ngra (340), especially wlien it is taken in conjunc- tj with other facts (cf. Sozomen, III, 14), distinctly )roves. " If anj' man", says the council, " uses the lium [cloak] uiion account of an ascetic life, and, a.s here be some lioliness in that, condemns those who h reverence usio the birnis and other garments that

commonly worn, let him be anathema" (Hefele-

Leclercq, " Hist, des Cone. ", 1, 1037). Attheotherex- tremity of Christendom the documents that survive concerning St. Patrick and other early Celtic bishops present them to us as habitually dressed in the casula (chasuble), which was at that time not a distinctively liturgical attire, but simply an outer garment com- monly worn by the humbler classes. In the sixth and following centuries we find that in Rome and in coun- tries near Rome the civil dress of the clergy began markedly to differ from that of the laity, the reason probably being that the fonner adhered to the old Roman type of costume with its long tunic and vol- uminous cloak, representing the toga, whereas the laity were increasingly inclined to adopt the short tunic, with breeches and mantle, of the gens braccata, i. e. the Northern barbarians, who were now the mas- ters of Italy. Probably this Roman influence made itself felt to some extent throughout Western Christen- dom.

The canons of the Council of Braga in Portugal (572) required the clergy to w-ear a vcstis talaris, or tunic, reaching to the feet, and even in far-off Britain we find indications, both among the Celts and Anglo- Saxons, that undraped lower limbs were not regarded as seemly in the clergj-, at any rate during their service at the altar. During the same period synodal decrees became gradually more frequent, restraining in vari- ous ways the tendency of the clergj- to adopt the cur- rent fashion of worldly attire. By a German council of 742, priests and deacons are bidden to wear habitu- ally not the sagiim, or short military cloak, but the casula (chasuble), which even then had not become an exclusively liturgical dress. Perhaps the most inter- esting and significant enactment of this period is a let- ter of Pope John VIII (c. 875) admonishing the Arch- bishops of Canterbury and York to see that their clergy wore due ecclesiastical attire, and quoting the example of the English clergy in Rome who, on the eve of St. Gregory^ feast, had given up their short cloaks and adopted the long Roman tunic reaching to the feet: "Apostolicae sententia usque adeo Sedis praevaluit, ut voluntarie omnes Anglorum clerici, sub ipsis vigiliis S. Gregorii, laicalem et sinuosum, sed et curtum, habitum deponentes, talares tunicas Ro- manas induerent" (Jaff(5-Wattenbach, Reg. RR. PP. 2995). In the East the distinction between lay and clerical costume was somewhat slower in developing than in the West, probably because the influence of the Teutonic invaders was less acutely felt. In Jus- tinian's legislation it seems clear that a distinctive dress was recognized as belonging to monks, but there is nothing to show that any similar distinction applied to the clergy at largo. The Trullan council, however, in 691 prescribed that all who wore enrolled among the clergy should \me at all times the robes (trroXars) ap- pointed for those of their profession, under pain of ex- communication for a week. Furthermore from the eighth century onwards we find almost universally munerous canons passed to restrain clerics from wear- ing rich dresses, bright colours, and extravagant orna- ments. In Germany, at Aachen, in 816 the cuculla was forbidden them, as being distinctive of monks. On the other h.and, at Metz, in 888, the laity were for- bidden to wear the copes (cappas) belonging to the clergy, while in another synod presbyters were en- joined to wear their stoles always, as an indication of their priesthood. Such a bishop as St. Hugh of Lin- coln still complied with this rule in the twelfth century but at ihe present day the practice is peculiar to the Holy Father .alone.

In the later Middle Ages the dress of the clergy was regulated by the canon law, the jus commune of the Church at large, but with many supplementary enact- ments pa.ssed by local synods. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) laid down the principle that clerics must wear garments closed in front and free from ex- travagance as to length (Clausa deferant desuper in-