Page:EB1911 - Volume 27.djvu/1085

 Thus in the 37th of the so-called “Canons of Hippolytus” we read: “As often as the bishops would partake of the Mysteries, the presbyters and deacons shall gather round him clad in white, quite particularly clean clothes, more beautiful than those of the rest of the people.” Thus, too, St Jerome, in his commentary on Ezek. xliv. 19, says that “We, too, ought not to enter the Holy of Holies in our everyday garments when they have become defiled from the use of ordinary life, but with a clean conscience, and in clean garments, hold in our hands the Sacrament of the Lord.”

When, in the year 289, St Cyprian was led to martyrdom, he wore, according to Eusebius (Hist. eccles. iv. cap. 11), an under tunic (linea), an upper tunic (dalmatica, tunica) and mantle (lacerna, byrrus). This was the ordinary type of the civil costume of the time. The tunica, a loose sack-like tunic with a hole for the head, was the innermost garment worn by all classes of Roman citizens under the republic and empire. It was either sleeveless (colobium) or sleeved (tunica manicata or manuleata), and originally fell about to the knee, but later on reached to the ankles (tunica talaris). St Augustine (De doctr. christ. iii. cap. 10, n. 20) says that to wear talares et tunicas manicatas was a disgrace among the ancient Romans, but that in his own day it was no longer so considered in the case of persons of good birth. The tunica was originally of white wool, but in the 3rd century it began to be made of linen, and from the 4th century was always of linen. About the 6th century the long tunica alba went out of fashion in civil life, but it was retained in the services of the Church and developed into the various forms of the liturgical (q.v.) and  (q.v.). The tunica dalmatica was a long, sleeved upper tunic, originating, as its name implies, in Dalmatia, and first becoming fashionable at Rome in the 2nd century; it is the origin of the liturgical dalmatic and tunicle (see ). Another over-dress of the Romans was the paenula, a cloak akin to the poncho of the modern Spaniards and Spanish Americans, i.e. a large piece of stuff with a hole for the head to go through, hanging in ample folds round the body. This was originally worn only by slaves, soldiers and other people of low degree; in the 3rd century, however, it was adopted by fashionable people as a convenient riding or travelling cloak; and finally, by the sumptuary law of 382 (Cod. Theod. xiv. 10, 1, de habitu intra urbem) it was prescribed as the proper everyday dress of senators, instead of the military chlamys, the toga being reserved for state occasions. This was the origin of the principal liturgical vestment, the (q.v.).

As late as the 6th century these garments were common both to the clergy and laity, and, so far as their character was concerned, were used both in the liturgy and in everyday life. Meanwhile, however, a certain development had taken place. By the 4th century the garments worn at liturgical functions had been separated from those in ordinary use, though still identical in form. It is in the 4th century, too, that the first distinctive vestment makes its appearance, the  worn by all bishops in the East; in the 5th century we find this in use at Rome under the name of (q.v.), as the distinctive ornament of the pope (see fig. 1). About the same time the orarium, or (q.v.), becomes fixed in liturgical use. The main development and definition of the ecclesiastical vestments, however, took place between the 6th and the 9th centuries. The secular fashions altered with changes of taste; but the Church retained the dress with the other traditions of the Roman Empire. At Rome, especially, where the popes had succeeded to a share of the power and pretensions of the Caesars of the West, the accumulation of ecclesiastical vestments symbolized a very special dignity: in the second quarter of the 9th century the pope, when fully vested, wore a camisia girdled, an alb (linea) girdled, an amice (anagolaium), a tunicle (dalmatica minor), a dalmatic (dalmatica major), stole (orarium), chasuble (planeta) and pallium. With the exception of the pallium, this was also the costume of the Roman deacons. By this time, moreover, the liturgical character of the vestments was so completely established that they were no longer worn instead of, but over, the ordinary dress.

Hitherto the example of the Roman Church had exercised no exclusive determining influence on ritual development even in the West. The popes had, from time to time, sent the pallium or the dalmatic—specifically Roman vestments—as gifts of honour to various distinguished prelates; Britain, converted by a Roman mission, had adopted the Roman use, and English missionaries had carried this into the newly Christianized parts of Germany; but the great Churches of Spain and Gaul preserved their own traditions in vestments as in other matters. From the 9th century onwards, however, this was changed; everywhere in the West the Roman use ousted the regional uses.