Historic dress of the clergy

Front matter

THE HISTORIC DRESS OF THE CLERGY.

The Cross, in Ritual, Architecture, and Art.

By the Rev. GEO. S. TYACK, b.a.

Contents

1. Introduction — Uniforms and class costumes— Interest

in Clerical Dress — Levitical Vestments— Resemblances between Levitical and Christian Vestments— Civil origin of modern clerical Dress— Costume of Rome under the Empire — Principle of Vestments allowed— Colour of Primitive Church robes — Alleged use of Levitical sacerdotal insignia by Apostles— The robe of Macarius and the cloak of S. Paul — Results of primitive evidence as to Vestments

2. Cassocks and Coats— Primitive use of the tunic and cloak

CHAPTER I. 3nf robucf ton

AS the world grows older, and the constitution of human society more intricate, the tendency to use a special kind of dress, a "uniform," to distinguish the various callings of men, seems to become increasingly strong. Amongst the professions, the Law (in its higher branches), the Army, and the Navy, as well as the Church, have long had their distinctive costumes. Medicine alone has assumed no special badge ; and the reason is apparently one that touches the question at many points, namely, that the doctor alone of professional men exercises his art exclusively in private. Outside these professions we cannot fail to notice that almost every department of the public service, and even private undertakings when they arrive at such proportions as to make them of public importance, have in comparatively recent times adopted a uniform for their employees. The postal and telegraph services, the police and the commissionaires, the officers and men of our railway companies and the great shipping lines, these all illustrate the fact stated. We might go on to specify other divisions of modern society —

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as for example, the department of Education, as illustrated by the quaint costume of the scholars of Christ's Hospital, the dress distinctive of Eton and other public schools, and the academic robes of the Universities, — but instances enough have heen given to prove the popularity of what may be dubbed " class costume."

The history of the clerical dress claims a pre-eminence of interest for several reasons. The dignity of the order gives an importance to all that concerns its ministrations ; controversy, theological and antiquarian, has made the subject a battle-ground ; and, apart from these more or less debated points, it is beyond question the oldest illustration of that tendency in human society to which reference has been made. In days when the fashion of warriors' armour depended solely on personal taste and fancy, days ere navies had been formed, and when law and medicine had scarcely any existence apart from the Church, the vestments of ecclesiastics had long been regulated both by custom and by rule. Nay, we can go yet further back ; for we have in the divinely ordered costume of the Levitical priesthood, if not the first instance in the world's history of a special dress for one order of society, at any rate the first detailed record of such a dress.

For this reason, as well as from the fact that efforts have been made in some quarters to trace an historical relation between the vestments of the Aaronic priesthood and those of the Christian Church, it will be fitting first of all to describe very briefly the sacred robes of the Jews.

The lowest order of the sacred ministers amongst the Israelites, the Levites, wore no distinguishing dress until the time of Agrippa; nor, except when engaged in the holy

INTRODUCTION. 3

offices, were the higher orders differently clad from the rest of the people. The priests, however, wore during their ministrations four special garments, the linen breeches, the coat or tunic, the girdle, and the bonnet. The tunic was, like the sacred robe worn by our Saviour, woven throughout in one piece, and fitted closely to the body of the wearer. The girdle was the distinctive priestly vestment, and in its use is very suggestive of the Christian stole ; it was worn round the back of the neck, crossed upon the breast, and then twisted round the body, with the ends hanging to the ground. The Rabbis, who seem to delight in exaggerating the size of the vestments of their priests, speak of it as being three fingers broad and sixteen yards long ; it was, however, probably long enough for the ends to be gathered up and thrown over the shoulder, so as not to incommode the wearer, at the time of sacrifice. It was worn only during the actual ministration of the priestly office. The bonnet was a tall, peaked cap, " like the inverted calyx of a flower." These garments were all of linen, or, more strictly, of the snowwhite " byssus," or cotton of Egypt. To these four vestments the high priest added four more, which were known as "golden vestments," from the fact that golden threads, together with the four colours consecrated to the use of the sanctuary, white, purple, blue, and scarlet, were woven into them. The Me'tl, or robe, was of dark blue, and fell as far as the knees, the edge being adorned with pomegranates, worked in purple, blue, and scarlet, alternating with golden bells. The breast-plate was originally, according to the Rabbis, a kind of burse, or flat receptacle, stiffened in front with gold and jewels, in which were carried the mysterious Urim and Thummim ; it was some ten inches square, and on the twelve gems set in the front were engraved the names of the tribes of Israel In the later days of Jewish history, although the Urim and Thummim were not only lost, but the real import of their names was forgotten, the jewelled breast-plate was still worn by the high priest, attached by golden links to his shoulders, and by woven bands about his waist. The mitre was more splendid than the bonnet of the priest, and of greater height, attaining, according to the above-named absurd rabbinical exaggeration, the monstrous altitude of eight yards ! Suspended from the mitre by a web of blue lace was the Ziz, or frontlet, a golden plate two fingers wide and the length of the forehead, on which was engraved " Holiness to the Lord."

Any office performed by high-priest, or priest, without all the vestments of his order was deemed to be invalid ; and when the vestments were soiled, they were not washed, but used for making wicks for the lamps of the sanctuary. The high priest had a complete new set for the Great Day of Atonement in each year.

It will at once be recognised that a certain similarity in appearance may be traced between most of these vestments and those now worn by the clergy throughout the greater part of Christendom. The Jewish priest in his linen tunic girded about him as just described, would bear some resemblance to him of to-day in alb and girdle and crossed stole ; while any one of the more ornate vestments of the Christian Church, the cope, the chasuble, or (still more clearly) the dalmatic, might be suggested by the splendid robe of the high priest, whose tall bonnet and breast-plate might also seem to foreshadow the episcopal mitre and the pectoral cross.

Introduction

Mere resemblance of form, however, may be as delusive a guide to the derivation of things as mere likeness in sound has often proved in tracing the origin of words ; and therefore, to prevent misapprehension, it will be well before going further to state clearly that no ecclesiologist of note now contends for the derivation of the Christian vestments from Jewish originals. A few points of similarity between the two may be found on comparison ; but it is agreed that these are either accidental, or possibly, in one or two cases, have arisen from an attempt made in mediaeval times to render vestments already in use somewhat analogous to those of the earlier dispensation.

In fact it is now generally admitted by all ecclesiastical antiquaries that the dress of the clergy of the primitive Church did not differ in shape or in material from that worn by the laity, except that in their ministrations they assumed garments such as it was usual for Roman gentlemen to wear on solemn or festive occasions.

The situation in which the Church was placed during the first three centuries rendered such a custom unavoidable. For the bishops and priests of the Church to have gone abroad in a garb that at once marked them out as leaders of the Christians would have been an act of folly in days when bitter persecution was cdnstantly threatening, even when not actually rife. For the origin of the dress of the clergy, then, we must examine that worn by persons of position in the first century.

The most commonly used garment of those times was the chiton, or tunic, a dress which fitted fairly closely to the body, and had short sleeves. It varied in length, sometimes reaching to the ankles, sometimes barely covering the

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knees, and in ordinary cases was probably of some serviceably dark tint. It was frequently ornamented with two stripes running down the front from either side of the neck, — stripes which differed in breadth and perhaps in colour, according to the dignity of the wearer, a senator for instance, using a broad clavus (as it was called) a knight a narrower one. In early frescoes this striped tunic is often seen, suggesting a striking resemblance to the surplice and black stole of a modern Anglican clergyman. The resemblance, however, as we shall see, is in no sense historical. Such a garment is seen in the illustration representing a fresco in one of the catacombs of Rome ; an aged man is seated on a chair, while before him stand two youths clad in tunics adorned with clavi. This has sometimes been described as a representation of an early confirmation, but there is good reason for doubting if this be correct. All that concerns our present purpose is to mark the dresses of the three persons, two of whom, at any rate, are intended for laymen.

On occasions of state a Roman gentleman wore over this tunic a long and ample robe, the toga. This, at one time the characteristic dress of every adult Roman citizen, must from its nature have been almost always laid aside when any exertion was required, as in toil or travel ; but more than this, it had in the first century of our era been dropped altogether by the lower orders. It held its place, however, as the recognized form of court dress, to be worn by all who were received by the Emperor, and as the appropriate habit for civil or religious ceremonial. The advocate wore it when pleading in the forum, it was seen at public sacrifices, in a white toga the dead were

INTRODUCTION.

carried to their "long home," and the mourners followed in togas of black. In the eyes of the world, therefore, there was one form of dress, which, though not confined to the use of the priests, was considered specially suitable for solemn occasions ; and it was by the use of this that the early Church was able to express her sense of the dignity of her sacred rites without exciting the notice or theattacksof the heathen populace.

There is reason to suppose, moreover, that the principle underlying the use of sacred vestments— the setting aside of certain garments for exclusive employment in the holy mysteries — was from the first evident.

The toga and tunic used at the altar became sacred things, to be worn henceforth for no other purposes. To this intent S. Jerome, writing in the fourth century, but evidently expressing the feeling prevalent throughout the Church, speaks, "We ought not to go into the sanctuary just as we please, and in our ordinary clothes, defiled with the visage of common life, but with clear conscience and clean garments handle the sacraments of the Lord."

FROM THE CATACOMBS.

HISTORIC DRESS OF THE CLERGY.

A further point of distinction in the garments worn in sacred ministrations, and perhaps also in the secular robes of the Christian clergy, was the restriction of the colour to white, the stripes upon the tunic being probably black. In this the Church was influenced by the ideas of purity and gladness, so naturally suggested by that colour, and also probably by a prevalent impression, with which, as we have seen, the vestments of the old dispensation coincide, that white was peculiarly appropriate to the service of the Deity. In proof of this we may once more quote S. Jerome who in his work against the Pelagians, demands " What is there., I ask, offensive to God, if I wear a tunic more than ordinarily handsome, or if Bishop, Priest, and Deacon, and other ministers of the Church, in the administration, of the sacrifices come forth in white clothing?" Hegesippus, a Jew, who about the year 180, became a convert to Christianity, tells us that S. James the Just, the first bishop of Jerusalem, when he was about " to offer supplication for the people," was accustomed to "use garments, not of wool, but of linen."

Two ancient writers seem to imply that at any rate some of the Apostles adopted part of the distinctive vestments of the Jewish high-priest, to mark the analogous position to which they had been called in the new dispensation. Polycrates of Ephesus, writing as early as the close of the second century, speaks of S. John " becoming a priest, wearing the golden plate." As all tradition avers that S. John the Divine became the first bishop of Ephesus, and died there early in the second century, the evidence of Polycrates, also an Ephesian, and almost a contemporary, is especially valuable. Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia, or Salamis, in

INTRODUCTION.

Crete from the year 367 to 403, gives similar testimony concerning S. James. " It was permitted him," so he says, " to wear the golden plate upon his head ; " and he refers to Eusebius and to S. Clement as supporting the statement. It is, perhaps, well to note that Epiphanius was by birth a Jew of Palestine, so that he may be supposed to have been familiar with the local tradition on the subject.

A passage in Theodoret, who was born about 393, and became bishop of Cyrus in Syria in 420, has often been quoted to prove the early use of distinctive ecclesiastical vestments, but too much stress should not be placed on it. It is to the effect that the Emperor Constantine gave to Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem, a sacred robe, woven of gold thread, for him to wear when administering holy baptism. The passage does not, however, necessarily imply that the robe was specially suitable for its sacred purpose in any other respect than in its splendour; and when Theodoret goes on to inform us that S. Cyril of Jerusalem was charged with having sold the robe, and that a stage dancer had bought and used it, it seems probable that it did not differ in fashion from secular clothing.

From all this it will be obvious that there is still less evidence to support the contention of those who would seek proof of a primitive use of sacerdotal vestments in S. Paul's message in his second epistle to S. Timothy; — "The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments." In fact the attempt to make a chasuble out of this cloak is distinctly a modern one. Tertullian, in his treatise on prayer, refers to the passage. He notes a heathen custom of removing the cloak during prayer, a practice

IO HISTORIC DRESS OF THE CLERGY.

which he counts among " empty observances," not to be insisted on as if they were founded on divine precept or apostolical command, of which there is no evidence ; "unless indeed," he sarcastically adds, "any one should think that it was in prayer that Paul threw off his cloak and left it with Carpus." Tertullian here treats the cloak as a garment which might conceivably be put off for divine worship, certainly not as one to be specially put on for the purpose. S. Chrysostom in one of his Homilies, speaks to the same effect, evidently regarding the cloak as an ordinary garment merely.

Two conclusions, then, appear to be obviously deducible from the evidence of the primitive ages concerning the dress of the clergy. First, that in their public ministrations ecclesiastics wore garments not different in shape from those used on certain occasions by the civil society around them ; and in their everyday life, garments differing in material and in colour no more than in form. For this we have seen an obvious reason in the persecution which raged continually about the Church during her earliest years. An exact parallel to such a state of things was supplied in our own country, so far as the ordinary dress is concerned, by the Roman Catholic clergy, who mixed among their scattered flocks during the reigns of the later Stuarts in lay attire, in consequence of the severe penal laws enacted against them. To this reason we may, no doubt, add another, when we recollect the poverty of the primitive Church, which made the provision of any costly accessories to public worship well nigh impossible.

Our second conclusion is, that, in spite of this, the principle underlying the use of a special garb, at least at the

INTRODUCTION.

time of ministration, was both felt and acknowledged, so far as circumstances allowed. The clergy, while officiating, wore the dress which society recognized as appropriate for solemn ceremonial, and in colour that which was esteemed specially befitting divine worship ; and they gave to this garb almost the character of a vestment, by reserving it exclusively for sacred purposes. Due weight must also be given to the evidence proving the use, at least by some of the Apostles, of distinctly sacerdotal insignia.

Prom this dignified costume of imperial Rome, has been evolved throughout the centuries the sacerdotal dress of the clergy of the Church of mediaeval and modern times, and, for the most part, even that fashion of attire which is recognized as distinctive of their order in common life ; an attire, in the use of which, " the ministers of all denominations" have almost universally, in England, imitated the example of the ecclesiastics.

The controlling influence in this development has been that conservatism which naturally arises from the regard which all devout men must feel for the customs of their forefathers in religious matters ; a conservatism intensified in this case by a sense of the impropriety which would be shown by the Church, if she followed the frequent changes of the fickle fashions of the world. Thus, while the world altered and re-altered the cut of its clothes from the mere passion for novelty, the Church, from a reverential regard for antiquity, kept so far as possible to the older forms, and only with great deliberation came to modify the clerical dress, yielding slowly, as if under protest, to the influence of circumstances. At times of violent upheaval and commotion, when the reins of discipline are slack, and individual caprice

HISTORIC DRESS OF THE CLERGY.

can venture to assert itself, changes have sometimes been initiated which have left their mark when peace has been restored ; on the other hand, we find large tracts of time scarcely marked by change of any kind. From this point of view, also, the history of clerical dress has its interest. Comparatively unimportant as the cut of a coat, or the colour of a vestment may be, such things have, from time to time, illustrated the drift of thought on other and more vital matters.

One further conclusion follows necessarily from the facts already adduced, facts, it may be well to say here, whose existence is now acknowledged byall competent ecclesiologists, no matter to what part of the Church they may belong. A mystical meaning is now attached to each vestment, especially to those worn at the offering of the Eucharist, and of this the priest is reminded by the appropriate prayer appointed to be said as each is donned. It will be obvious that if these vestments have been historically developed from such originals as have been described, these meanings must be an afterthought. Excellent and edifying as they are, the moral and spiritual lessons which are now suggested to the priest as he prepares himself for the altar, have been drawn by the pious fancy of devout men in past times from robes adopted originally for quite different reasons.

CHAPTER II. HE ordinary dress of a priest, as we have seen, was in

J- the first century a sleeved tunic which might vary in length, reaching either to the knees or to the ankles, according probably to the taste of the wearer. In early frescoes in Rome several examples may be found. In the cemetery of S. Agnes is a representation of our Lord seated amid six of the apostles ; all are clad in the long tunic, with a clavus, or dark stripe, by way of ornament, that on the Saviour's tunic being broader than the others. And in the cemetery of S. Hermes, in a fresco supposed to be as late as the time of Pelagius II., pope from 578 to 590, we have an ideal ordination of a deacon, where the deacon wears a short tunic, and the other figures, probably intended for our Lord seated on a throne, and two of the apostles, wear long ones, together with the toga.

When an upper garment was needed for secular wear, a short cloak, called a birrus, or byrrhus, was used ; and clad in this S. Cyprian went forth to martyrdom in the year 258. A tendency, however, early showed itself to adopt instead of this the more dignified and wider pallium with the long tunic, as worn by the student and the philosopher. It was the dress of the men of thought rather than of the men of action, to whose limbs the shorter and less ample attire gave greater freedom. Heraclas, a priest and afterwards Bishop of Alexandria, having been numbered amongst the i4

HISTORIC DRESS OF THE CLERGY.

philosophers, continued to wear the pallium after taking orders, as Eusebius testifies ; and S. Jerome says the same of his friend Nepotian. Others, however, who had not studied in the schools of philosophy, sought to lay claim to superior devotion, or perhaps to intimate superior wisdom, by donning the philosopher's habit with its cloak of rough wool. To check this the Council of Gangra in 325 passed a canon condemning every one who " used the pallium, or cloak, upon the account of an ascetic life ; and, as if there were some holiness in that, condemned those that wore the birrus and other garments that are commonly employed." In a similar spirit S. Celestine, Pope of Rome from 42310 432, wrote to reprimand some of the clergy of Gaul.

As regards colour, from the first there was a prejudice in favour of the white of the undyed material. " With reason, as it seems to me," exclaims S. Clement of Alexandria, " did they 'act, who held scents and unquents in such disesteem, that they banished the compounders of them from wellregulated states, and in nowise differently dealt with the dyers of wools." And yet more plainly he says : " For men of hearts pure and uncontaminated, a white and simple garb is the most fitting." In imperial Rome, where the nobles flashed and flaunted in scarlet and purple and gold, and the long trains of their clients and slaves were scarcely less gorgeous in their trappings, we may easily imagine that white attire, far from being the conspicuous object which it would be with us, would appear simple and modest. Yet the great practical advantage of a darker hue for everyday use would doubtless have its influence then as now, and white seems not to have been universally adopted by the Christian clergy.

Several councils, as that at Carthage in 348, and another at Agde in 506, warn the clergy to wear only such garments as are suitable to their profession, but give no detailed direction on the matter. S. Jerome, writing to Nepotian, distinctly advises him to wear neither black nor white, the one suggesting an ostentatious seriousness, and the other a fastidious delicacy. Probably custom in such a matter differed in different places. At Constantinople, in the days of S. Chrysostom, the clergy wore black. A white pallium, however, came to be regarded as a proper robe for a bishop, especially if he ruled over an important see. Thus S. Chrysostom himself wore white, as did S. Cyril; while it was his lack of regard for the usual dignity of archiepiscopal dress, as he himself says, that helped to stir up the ill-feeling of Constantinople against S. Gregory Nazianzen.

In the fourth and fifth centuries several events took place which had considerable influence on the dress of the clergy. Monasticism took its rise from the example of S. Anthony the Hermit ; Constantine came to the imperial throne and made Christianity the religion of the state ; and in the first

years of the fifth century the tide of northern barbarism

Goths, Vandals, and Lombards — began to break across the Alps and sweep the plains of Italy and of the whole of Southern Europe.

S. Anthony gathered about him a company of devout souls, who in the remote deserts of the Thebaid set themselves to live a life of discipline, self-denial, and labour. The movement spread with wonderful rapidity. The founder is said to have seen five thousand followers about him before his death ; and his disciples Amatha and Macarius established new communities elsewhere, in

Egypt, and in Syria Eugenius carried the custom to Mesopotamia, and Hilarion to Palestine ; S. Athanasius, driven from Alexandria by Arian persecution in 341, introduced monasticism to the people of Italy, and from thence S. Martin of Tours carried it to France, and S. Augustine of Hippo to the province of North Africa. Thus within a century the Christian world was overspread by the devout and earnest enthusiasm of the early hermits and monks.

These recluses made no claim, as such, to a share of the clerical authority, yet the influence of men, vowed to a religious life, could not but be felt by the appointed teachers of religion. This influence was immeasurably strengthened when the bishops began to ordain monks as priests or deacons. Their ascetic habits of life and dress would unquestionably work like leaven among the secular clergy, as in every movement, those whose convictions are most definite, and whose line of conduct is most clearly marked, are sure to take the lead. In shape there was probably little difference between the clothes worn by the monks in the deserts, and by the clergy and laity in the towns ; but the now universal custom among clergymen, of wearing dark, if not black, clothes, is very likely due to the habits of those ancient anchorites. The monastic tunic was rough, and of a dark colour, sometimes made of hair-cloth, sometimes of a shaggy skin, in imitation of S. John Baptist, the pattern for hermits, who wore a raiment of camel's hair. The ideas of penitence, of devotion, of occupation in holy things — in all of which the primitive recluses were pre-eminent — thus early connected themselves with dark clothing, as a seemly setting for a thoughtful soul; and the connection has remained. Sulpicius Severus assures us that S. Martin wore the monastic dress, and it is reasonable to suppose that he was not alone in thus adopting it.

The conversion of Constantine, and the subsequent recognition of the Church by the State, had an influence affecting almost all departments of the Church's outward life. The last rumble of the thunder of general persecution bad rolled away ; the sky was clear, and hopeful of a bright future. Christian men were able openly to display the emblems of their faith, and the clergy were no longer shepherds carrying their own lives in their hands, while they watched and tended a harried flock. There remained no reason why bishop and priest should not be openly known as such. The opportunity for the clergy to become thus marked off from the world, was provided by an event which seems to have little relation to such things, namely, the barbarian invasion of Italy.

It was in the year 408 that this incursion of the North into the South began, and, by the end of the sixth century, it had created a perfect revolution in the manners and customs of the Roman world. Among other changes, the long and ample robes which dignified the citizens of the imperial city were abandoned, and a tunic and cloak (the cottus and sagum), of even smaller proportions than those formerly worn by the working classes of the metropolis, came into vogue. The bustling, practical North had imposed upon the South a costume fitted for war and the chase, for journeys and all active exercise, but lacking those marks of repose and of almost sovereign dignity, which even the poorest Roman citizen had formerly claimed by virtue of his citizenship.

It is here that we meet with the first instance of that conservatism in the Church, of which mention has been

1 8

HISTORIC DRESS OF THE CLERGY.

made; for now, for the first time, the clergy were to be distinguished from the laity in point of dress, from the mere fact that, while all the world changed its fashion, the Church maintained her ancient usages.