White is also the colour proper to sacramental processions, and generally to all devotions connected with the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. At baptisms the priest wears a violet stole during the first part of the service, i.e. the exorcization then changes it for a white one. White is worn at the funerals of children.
Red.—Saturday before Whitsunday, Whitsunday and its octave; all festivals in commemoration of the sufferings of Christ, i.e. festival of the instruments of the Passion, of the Precious Blood, of the invention and elevation of the Cross; all festivals of apostles, except those above noted; festivals of martyrs; masses for a papal election; the Feast of the Holy Innocents, when it falls on a Sunday (violet if on a week-day), and its octave (always red). In England red vestments are worn at the mass (of the Holy Spirit) attended by the Roman Catholic judges and barristers at the opening of term, the so-called “Red Mass.”
Green.—Sundays and week-days between Epiphany and Septuagesima, and between Trinity and Advent, except festivals and their octaves and Ember days.
Violet.—Advent; the days between Septuagesima and Maundy Thursday; vigils that fall on fast days, and Ember days, except the vigil before Whitsunday (red) and the Ember days in Whitsun week (red). Violet vestments are also worn on days of intercession, at votive masses of the Passion, at certain other masses of a pronouncedly intercessory and penitential character, at intercessory processions, at the blessing of candles on Candlemas Day, and at the blessing of the baptismal water. A violet stole is worn by the priest when giving absolution after confession, and when administering Extreme Unction.
Black.—Masses for the dead and funeral ceremonies of adults; the mass of the pre-sanctified on Good Friday.[1]
Benediction of Vestments.—In the Roman Catholic Church the amice, alb, girdle, stole, maniple, chasuble must be solemnly blessed by the bishop or his delegate, the prayers and other forms to be observed being set forth in the Pontificale (see Benediction). Other vestments—e.g. dalmatic, tunicle, surplice—are sometimes blessed when used in connexion with the sacrifice of the mass, but there is no definite rule on the subject. The custom is very ancient, Father Braun giving evidence as to its existence at Rome as early as the 6th century (Liturg. Gewandung, p. 760, &c.).
Mystic Meaning of Vestments.—It is clear from what has been said above that the liturgical vestments possessed originally no mystic symbolic meaning whatever; it was equally certain that, as their origins were forgotten, they would develop such a symbolic meaning. The earliest record of any attempt to interpret this symbolism that we possess is, so far as the West is concerned, the short exposition in the Explicatio Missae of Germanus, bishop of Paris (d. 576), the earliest of any elaboration that of Hrabanus Maurus (d. 856). From the latter’s time onward a host of liturgists took up the theme, arguing from the form, the material, the colour and the fashion of wearing the various garments to symbolical interpretations almost as numerous as the interpreters themselves. The Report of the five bishops divides them into three schools: (1) the moralizing school, the oldest, by which—as in the case of St Jerome’s treatment of the Jewish vestments—the vestments are explained as typical of the virtues proper to those who wear them; (2) the Christological school, i.e. that which considered the minister as the representative of Christ and his garments as typical of some aspects of Christ’s person or office—e.g. the stole is his obedience and servitude for our sakes; (3) the allegorical school, which treats the priest as a warrior or champion, who puts on the amice as a helmet, the alb as a breastplate, and so on. We cannot even outline here the process of selection by which the symbolic meanings now stereotyped in the Roman Pontifical were arrived at. 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. “Take the amice, which signifies discipline in speech,” while other interpretations survive in the prayers offered by the priest when vesting, e.g. with the amice, “Place on my head the helmet of salvation,” &c. For the symbolic meanings of the various vestments see the separate articles devoted to them.
A Protestant Churches.—In the Protestant Churches[2] the custom as to vestments differs widely, corresponding to a similar divergence in tradition and teaching. At the Reformation two tendencies became apparent. Luther and his followers regarded vestments as among the adiaphora, and in the Churches which afterwards came to be known as “Lutheran” many of the traditional vestments were retained. Calvin, on the other hand, laid stress on the principle of the utmost simplicity in public worship; at Geneva the traditional vestments were absolutely abolished, and the Genevan model was followed by the Calvinistic or “Reformed” Churches throughout Europe. The Church of England, in which the Lutheran and Calvinistic points of view struggled for the mastery, a struggle which resulted in a compromise, is separately dealt with below. At the present day the Lutheran Churches of Denmark and Scandinavia retain the use of alb and chasuble in the celebration of the Eucharist (stole, amice, girdle and maniple were disused after the Reformation), and for bishops the cope and mitre. The surplice is not used, the ministers conducting the ordinary services and preaching in a black gown, of the 16th-century type, with white bands or ruff. In Germany the Evangelical Church (outcome of a compromise between Lutherans and Reformed) has, in general, now discarded the old vestments. In isolated instances (e.g. at Leipzig) the surplice is still worn; but the pastors now usually wear a barret cap, a black gown of the type worn by Luther himself, and white bands. In Prussia the superintendents now Wear pectoral crosses (instituted by the emperor William II.). In the “Reformed” Churches the minister wears the black “Geneva” gown with bands. It is to be noted, however, that this use has been largely discontinued in the modern “Free” Churches. On the other hand, some of these have in recent times adopted the surplice, and in one at least (the Catholic Apostolic Church) the traditional Catholic vestments have been largely revived.
Anglican Church.—The subject of ecclesiastical vestments has been, ever since the Reformation, hotly debated in the Church of England. For a hundred years after the Elizabethan settlement the battle raged round the compulsory use of the surplice and square cap, both being objected to by the extreme Calvinists or Puritans. This question was settled after 1662 by the secession of the Nonconformist clergy, and no more was heard of the matter until the “Oxford movement” in the 10th century. At the outset the followers of Newman and Pusey were more concerned with doctrine than with ritual; but it was natural that a reassertion of Catholic teaching should be followed by a revival of Catholic practice, and by the middle of the century certain “Ritualists,” pleading the letter of the Ornaments Rubric in the Prayer Book, had revived the use of many of the pre-Reformation vestments. Into the history of the resulting controversies it is impossible to enter. Popular passion confused the issues, and raged as violently against the substitution of the surplice for the Geneva gown in the pulpit as against the revival of the “mass vestments.” The law was invoked, and, confronted for the first time with the intricacies of the Ornaments Rubric, spoke with an uncertain voice. In 1870, however, the “vestments” were definitely pronounced illegal by the Privy Council (Hebbert v. Purchas), and since the “Ritualists” refused to bow to this decision, parliament intervened with the Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874, which set up a disciplinary machinery for enforcing the law, and at the same time reconstituted the Court of Arches (q.v.). The recalcitrant clergy refused to obey an act passed solely by the secular authority (convocation not having been consulted) or to acknowledge the jurisdiction of a court which had been robbed of its “spiritual” character. Prosecutions
- ↑ In the Anglican Church, in the numerous cases when the liturgical colours are used, these generally follow the Roman use, which was in force before the Reformation in the important dioceses of Canterbury, York, London and Exeter. Some Churches, however, have adopted the colours of the use of Salisbury (Sarum). The red hangings of the Holy Table, usual where the liturgical colours are not used, are also—like the cushions to support the service books—supposed to be a survival of the Sarum use.
- ↑ The term “Protestant” is used here in its widest sense of those Churches which reformed their doctrine and discipline as a result of the religious revolution of the 16th century (see Reformation).
