Word Finder - vestment

definition

A robe, gown, or other article of clothing worn as an indication of office.

definition

Any of the special articles of clothing worn by members of the clergy etc., especially a garment worn at the celebration of the Eucharist.

definition

(in plural) Clothing.

definition

An article of clothing, especially an outer garment.

In the East as the West the vestment is specially associated with the ritual of the Eucharist.

The word mutzen, to dock, cut off, which first appears in the 14th century, does not help much, though the name of another vestment akin to the almuce - the mozzetta - has been by some traced to it through the Ital.

It is not in the East so specifically a eucharistic vestment as in the West, but is worn at other solemn functions besides the liturgy, e.g.

In the Armenian and Coptic rites the vestment is often elaborately embroidered; in the other rites the only ornament is a cross high in the middle of the back, save in the case of bishops of the Orthodox Church, whose sticharia are ornamented with two vertical red stripes (7rorayof, " rivers").

Lastly, the mitre, though a liturgical vestment, differs from the others in that it is never worn when the bishop addresses the Almighty in prayer - e.g.

By the 16th century the almuce had become definitely established as the distinctive choir vestment of canons; but it had ceased to have any practical use, and was often only carried over the left arm as a symbol of office.

The vestment was a monument of careful and painstaking research, profusely illustrated.

The Winter Dress consists of a single vestment of thick blue serge.

Outside Rome the rochet was, until well into the, 4th century, a vestment common to all the clergy, and especially to those of the lower orders; and so it remained, in general, until the 16th century, and even, here and there, so late as the 19th.

The rochet is worn without the chimere under the cope by those bishops who use this vestment.

Since it is only used at the Mass, or rarely for functions intimately connected with the sacrament of the altar, it may be regarded as the Mass vestment par excellence.

It was not until the 11th century, when the cope (q.v.) had become established as a liturgical vestment, that the chasuble began to be reserved as special to the sacrifice of the Mass.

As illustrating this process Father Braun (p. 170) cites an interesting correspondence between Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury and John of Avranches, archbishop of Rouen, as to the propriety of a bishop wearing a chasuble at the consecration of a church, Lanfranc maintaining as an established principle that the vestment should be reserved for the Mass.

By the 13th century, with the final development of the ritual of the Mass, the chasuble became definitely fixed as the vestment of the celebrating priest; though to this day in the Roman Church relics of the earlier general use of the chasuble survive in the planeta plicata worn by deacons and subdeacons in Lent and Advent, and other penitential seasons.

The object of the change was primarily to leave the hands of the celebrant freer for the careful performance of the manual acts, and to this end a process of cutting away at the sides of the vestment began, which continued until the tent-shaped chasuble of the 12th century had developed in the 16th into the scapular-like vestment at present in use.

This process was, moreover, hastened by the substitution of costly and elaborately embroidered materials for the simple stuffs of which the vestment had originally been composed; for, as it became heavier and stiffer, it necessarily had to be made smaller.

This, however, did not represent any definite rule; and the orphreys of chasubles were decorated with a great variety of pictorial subjects, scriptural or drawn from the stories of the saints, while the rest of the vestment was either left plain or, if embroidered, most usually decorated with arabesque patterns of foliage or animals.

It is a full vestment of the type of the Western bell chasuble; but, instead of being cut away at the sides, it is for convenience' sake either gathered up or cut short in front.

There is some difference of opinion as to the derivation of the vestment in the latter case; the Five Bishops (Report to Convocation, 1908) deriving it, like the cope, from the birrus, while Father Braun considers it, as well as the cope, to be a modification of the paenula.'

At Holy Communion the officiating priest was to wear "a white Albe plain with a vestment or Cope," and the assistant clergy were to wear "Albes with tunicles."

Whenever a bishop was celebrant he was to wear, "beside his rochette, a surplice or albe, and a cope or vestment," and also to carry " his pastoral staff in his hand, or else borne or holden by his chaplain."

In the Eastern churches the only vestment that has any true analogy with the dalmatic or liturgical upper tunic is the sakkos, the tunic worn by deacons and subdeacons over their everyday clothes being the equivalent of the Western alb.

In the Oriental rites there is no surplice, nor any analogous vestment.

The amice, whatever its origin or symbolism, became specifically a vestment associated with the sacrifice of the Mass, and as such it was rejected with the other "Mass vestments" in England at the Reformation.

The ground-work of the vestment is green silk embroidery, that of the medallions red.

The cassock, though part of the canonical costume of the clergy, is not a liturgical vestment.

In both words the etymology reveals the origin of the vestment, which is no more than a glorified survival of an article of clothing worn by all and sundry in ordinary life, the type of which survives, e.g.

Before this the so-called cappa choralis, a black, bell-shaped, hooded vestment with no liturgical significance, had been worn by the secular and regular clergy at choir services, processions, &c. This was in its origin identical with the chasuble, and if, as Father Braun seems to prove, the cope developed out of this, cope and chasuble have a common source.'

It was at this time, however, par excellence the vestment proper to the cantors, choirmaster and singers, whose duty it was to sing the invitatorium, responses, &c., at office, and the introitus, graduate, &c., at Mass.

The substitution of the cope for the chasuble in many of the functions for which the latter had been formerly used was primarily due to the comparative convenience of a vestment opened at the front, and so leaving the arms free.

A natural conservatism preserved the chasuble, which by the 9th century had acquired a symbolical significance, as the vestment proper to the celebration of Mass; but the cope took its place in lesser functions, i.e.

It is clear from this that the cope, though a liturgical, was never a sacerdotal vestment.

The disuse implied no doctrinal change; the main motive was that the stiff vestment, high in the neck, was incompatible with a full-bottomed wig.

At what date the cappa choralis developed into the cappa magna, a non-liturgical vestment peculiar to the pope, cardinals, bishops and certain privileged prelates, is not known; but mention of it is found as early as the 15th century.

It is practically the same vestment as the dalmatic.

As an ecclesiastical vestment the cap can be traced, under the name of pileus, to the 12th century; under that of infula, to the end of the ioth.

Excruciating detail of priestly vestment, description of temple architecture, chapters on ritual - forget it.

But any kind of church vestment had become anathema to him.

St Gregory is in gold vestment lined with dark green.

The growth of the lace industry in the 17th century hastened the process by leading to the substitution of broad bands of lace as decoration; occasionally, as in a magnificent specimen preserved at South Kensington, nearly half the vestment is thus Apparelled Alb in the South Kensington Museum.

It is sometimes also worn by clerics in minor orders, whose proper vestment is, however, the surplice - itself a modification of the alb (see Surplice).

Mitra, even as late as the 15th century, retained its simple meaning of cap (see Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v.); to Isidore of Seville it is specifically a woman's cap. Infula, which in late ecclesiastical usage was to be confined to mitre (and its dependent bands) and chasuble, meant originally a piece of cloth, or the sacred fillets used in pagan worship, and later on came to be used of any ecclesiastical vestment, and there is no evidence for its specific application to the liturgical head-dress earlier than the 12th century.

The biretta, too, though not in its origin or in some of its uses a liturgical vestment, has developed a distinctly liturgical character (see Biretta).

Thus the alternative use of cope or chasuble (vestment) is allowed at the celebration of Holy Communion - an obvious compromise; of the amice, girdle (cingulum), maniple and stole there is not a word, 2 and the inference to be drawn is that these were now disused.

The Greeks and Greek Melchite metropolitans now wear the sakkos instead of the phelonion; and in the Russian, Ruthenian, Bulgarian and Italo-Greek churches this vestment has superseded the phelonion in the case of all bishops (see Dalmatic and Vestments).

There Platon Karataev was sitting covered up--head and all--with his greatcoat as if it were a vestment, telling the soldiers in his effective and pleasant though now feeble voice a story Pierre knew.

The colour of the vestment is usually white for bishops and priests (this is the rule in the Coptic Church); for the other orders there is no rule, and all colours,.

This was the origin of the principal liturgical vestment, the chasuble (q.v.).

Hitherto the chasuble had been worn indifferently by all ministers at the eucharist, even by the acolytes; it had been worn also at processions and other non-liturgical functions; it was now exalted into the mass vestment par excellence, worn by the celebrant only, or by his immediate assistants (deacon and subdeacon) only on very special occasions.

These are taken from the various schools of interpretation mentioned above, and are now formulated in the words used by the bishop when, in ordaining to any office, he places the vestment on the ordinand with the appropriate words, e.g.