Joseph Braun and Walter Alison Phillips

“ It is a tunic of white linen or cotton material, with wide or moderately wide sleeves, reaching—according to the Roman use—barely to the hips and elsewhere in the churches of the Roman communion to the knee It is usually decorated with lace, but in modern times—in Germany at least—also with embroidered bordures. The surplice originally reached to the feet, but as early as the 13th century it began to be shortened, though as late as the 15th century it still fell to the middle of the shin, and it was not till the 17th and 18th centuries that it was considerably shortened. ”

“ Copt, orarion and patrashil) makes its appearance very early. The stole of the deacons is mentioned so early as the 4th and 5th centuries, the first instance being in the 22nd canon of the council of Laodicea, where it is mentioned specifically as the insignia of a deacon. Of a priestly stole we hear for the first time in the Theoria mystica (8th century) . In the Maronite, Syrian, and Nestorian Churches subdeacons also wear the stole, and among the Maronites the lectors as well. There is very little evidence as to the character of the stole in the ancient Church of the East. ”

“ Originally only a choir vestment and peculiar to lower clergy, it gradually—certainly no later than the 13th century—replaced the alb as the vestment proper to the administering of the sacraments and other sacerdotal functions. ”

“ Fringes, tassels, little bells and the like were used as decorations of the ends of stoles at least as early as the 9th century; but crosses in the middle md at the ends were rarely added during the middle ages. The usual material of medieval stoles was silk, and the better ones were embroidered with silk, gold thread, pearls, &c. ”

“ The ribbon by which the wrist is confined is black, except when convocation robes are worn, when it is scarlet. The rochet is worn without the chimere under the cope by those bishops who use this vestment. At his consecration the bishop-elect is, according to the rubric, presented to the consecrating bishops vested in a rochet only; after the “laying on of hands” he retires and puts on “the rest of the episcopal habit,” i.e. ”