Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister

“ The great mass of the Gilead range is formed of Jura limestone, the base slopes being sandstone partly covered by white marls. The eastern slopes are comparatively bare of trees; but the western are well supplied with oak, terebinth and pine. The pastures are everywhere luxuriant, and the wooded heights and winding glens, in which the tangled shrubbery is here and there broken up by open glades and flat meadows of green turf, exhibit a beauty of vegetation such as is hardly to be seen in any other district of Palestine. ”

“ We should be distinguished from the common people, or from all others, by our learning, not by our dress; by our habit of life, not by our clothing; by the purity of our minds, not by the cut of our garments. For if we begin to introduce novelties, we shall trample under foot the usage which our fathers have handed down to us, and give place to vain superstitions.'
The fullest information on the subject of vestments during this period comes from Spain, in the oft-quoted acts of the fourth council of Toledo, which sat under the presidency of St Isidore of Seville in the year 633. ”

“ For in the background of all is the vast peninsula of Arabia, which at long intervals fills with its wild, untamable humanity to a point beyond which it cannot support them. This has been the origin of the long succession of Semitic waves—Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite, Hebrew, Nabataean, Moslem—that have flowed over Mesopotamia and Palestine; there is every reason to suppose that they will be followed by others, and that the Arab will remain master at the end, as he was in the beginning. ”

“ THE FINAL FORM OF VESTMENTS IN THE WESTERN CHURCH. Hitherto, to a great extent, we have been groping in the dark, guided only by the dim light yielded by obscure passages in early writers or by half-defaced frescoes and shattered sculptures. Much is conjectural, much uncertain; and often the shreds of information obtained from different sources appear contradictory, requiring patient thought and investigation to unravel the entanglement and reconcile the inconsistencies. ”

“ The influence of a superior power upon the culture of a people cannot of course be denied; but history proves that it depends upon the resemblance between the two peoples and their respective levels of thought, and that it is not necessarily either deep or lasting. A better case might be made for Egypt; yet notwithstanding the presence of its colonies, the cult of its gods, the erection of temples or shrines, and the numerous traces of intercourse exposed by excavation, Palestine was Asiatic rather than Egyptian. ”

“ The graceful curve of the volute certainly compares favourably with the somewhat stiff outline of the Irish crozier; but the feebleness of even the best mediaeval attempts at representing the human figure in miniature considerably detracts from the artistic value of the volute crozier when a human figure is introduced; while, on the other hand, the incomparable excellence of the Irish metal-workers transformed the U-shaped crozier into an object of great beauty. The lines of the knots are always faultlessly executed, and the ornamentation is invariably in good taste. ”

“ The Holy Places.—To the vast majority of civilized humanity, Jewish, Christian and Moslem, the religious interest of the associations of Palestine predominates over every other, and at all ages has attracted pilgrims to its shrines. We need not here do more than allude to the centralization of Jewish ideas and aspirations in Jerusalem, especially in the holy rock on which tradition (and probably textual corruption) have placed the scene of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, and over which the Most Holy Place of the Temple stood. ”

“ Fashion in dress or ornament is subject to constant changes which, though perhaps individually trifling, in time amount to complete revolutions; but the devotees of any religion, true or false, are by nature conservative of its doctrines or observances. Combined with the conclusions at which we have just arrived, these two universally recognised statements yield us presumptive evidence of the truth of the theory which views the Roman civil dress as the true progenitor of mediaeval ecclesiastical costume. ”

“ No site, no legend, is too impossible for the unquestioning faith of these simple-minded men and women. And by comparing one record with another, we can follow the multiplication of “holy places,” and sometimes can even see them being shifted from one spot to another, as the centuries pass. Not one of these devout souls had any shadow of suspicion that, except natural features (such as the Mount of Olives, the Jordan, Ebal, Gerizim, &c.) ”

“ The word 'vestment,' of course, means the chasuble, the vestment par excellence, and therefore often spoken of in that apparently general way. The 'alb and vestment' being specified did not necessarily exclude all the other vestments which were worn between these two. Hence those clergy who preferred the old rites and ceremonies might read the rubric into permitting, or even enjoining, the maintenance of the old vestments, [91] while those who subscribed to the principles of the reforming party might set at defiance all old usages by wearing the cope while celebrating the Communion. ”

“ Antiochus had spent his youth at Rome as a hostage, and the death of Seleucus found him filling the office of war minister at Athens. The Hellenistic Jews were, therefore, his natural allies, and allies were very necessary to him if he was to establish himself in Syria. Onias had proceeded to Antioch to explain the disorder and bloodshed due to Jason’s followers, and so Jason, high priest of the Jews by grace of Antiochus, had his way. The existing privileges, which the Jews owed to their ambassador to Rome, were thrust aside. ”

“ The symbols of Divine or beatified persons are of more interest. These are usually found on the centre orphreys of the chasuble, on the edges and hood of the cope, on mitres, and on rationals or morses, the orphreys of the other vestments being usually conventional, floral, or animal devices. The hood of the cope almost invariably bore some emblematic or sacred device, or else some scene in sacred or traditional history; the edge of the cope and the centre of the chasuble often bore figures of saints in niches, one above another, or else connected scenes from the life of a saint ”

“ Trading intercommunication in the Levant and the constant passage to and fro of merchants brought Egypt to the front, and, in an age of archaic revival, the effort was made to re-establish the ancient supremacy over Palestine and Syria. ”

“ Being then come within the altar [after the procession up the church] they [the priest and deacon] make three bows before the holy table, and kiss the holy gospel and the holy table: then each, taking his στοιχάριον in his hand, makes three bows and saith softly to himself:
O God, purify me, a sinner, and have mercy upon me.
The Deacon comes to the priest, holds his στοιχάριον and ὠράριον in his right hand, and bowing down his head to him, saith:
Bless, sir, the στοιχάριον and the ὠράριον.
The priest. Blessed be our God always, now and for ever, even unto ages of ages. ”

“ Investigation must concern itself not with what was possibly or probably known, but with what is actually presented. The fact remains that when accepted tradition conflicts with more reliable evidence it stands upon a level by itself; [75] and it is certain that a compilation based upon the knowledge which modern research—whether in the exact sciences or in history—has gained would have neither meaning for nor influence upon the people whom it was desired to instruct. ”

“ Each strives to attain full knowledge of the subject, and the means employed by both schools are the same—the evidence drawn from a patient comparison of the works of authors and artists of successive periods. But while those of the purely antiquarian school regard the knowledge thus gained as in itself the chief end of their researches, those of the other consider it rather as a stepping-stone, leading to proofs of the Divine appointment of the use of vestments, and indicating regulations to govern the usage of vestments in the modern Church. ”

“ Indeed, since the Samaritans subsequently accepted the Pentateuch, and claimed to inherit the ancestral traditions of the Israelite tribes, it is of no little value in the study of Palestinian history to observe the manner in which this people of singularly mixed origin so thoroughly assimilated itself to the land and at first was virtually a Jewish sect. But Samaria was not the only land to suffer. Judah, towards the close of the 8th century, was obviously very closely bound up with Philistia, Edom and Egypt ”

“ During the 7th century new movements were coming from Arabia, and tribes growing ever more restless made an invasion east of the Jordan through Edom, Moab and Ammon. Although they were repulsed, this awakening of a land which has so often fed Palestine and Syria, when viewed with the increasing weakness of Assyria, and subsequent vicissitudes in the history of the Edomites, Nabataeans and East Jordan tribes, forbids us to treat the invasion as an isolated raid. ”

“ A pastoral staff remains a pastoral staff, and nothing more, whether it is on the right side of the bearer or on the left, and whether its crook is turned inwards or outwards.
Synonymous with 'pastoral staff' is the word crozier or crosier; but it is frequently ignorantly applied to a totally different object—the cross-staff borne before an archbishop. ”

“ Biblical history itself recognizes in the times of Artaxerxes, Nehemiah and Ezra the commencement of a new era, and although only too much remains obscure we have in these centuries a series of vicissitudes which separate the old Palestine of Egyptian, Hittite, Babylonian and Assyrian supremacy from the land which was about to enter the circle of Greek and Roman civilization. ”

“ Before parting with the ancient vestments of the Western Church, let us spend a few moments on another, and to the antiquary a melancholy, subject, namely, the fate which has befallen them.
The number of actual vestments which survive to our own day is comparatively small. ”

“ Different views as regards history (e.g. invasions, tribal movements, rival kingdoms) and religion (e.g. the Yahweh of Kadesh, Sinai, Jerusalem, &c.) , and different priestly, prophetical and popular ideas are only to be expected, considering the character of Palestinian population. Hence to weave the data into a single historical outline or into an orderly evolution of thought is to overlook the probability of bona fide divergences of tradition and to assume that more rudimentary or primitive thought was excluded by the admitted development of religious-social ideals. ”

“ The destruction of churches and church property in France at the hands of the atheistical mobs of the Revolution was incalculable. Monuments, glass and fabrics were broken and ruined, if not utterly destroyed, and the vestments and Processional crosses were torn from the treasuries and heaped up in the streets to be burnt in bonfires. ”

“ His Jewish friends, first Jason and then Menelaus, had been enlightened enough to throw off their prejudices, and, so far as he could know, they represented the majority of the Jews. Zeus was for him the supreme god of the Greek pantheon, and the syncretism, which he suggested for the sake of uniformity in his empire, assuredly involved no indignity to the only God of the Jews. At Athens Antiochus began to build a vast temple of Zeus Olympius, in place of one begun by Peisistratus ”

“ The number of conventional patterns which meet us embroidered on ecclesiastical vestments is endless, and to attempt to catalogue even the most striking would be an undertaking the magnitude of which would only be equalled by its uselessness. ”

“ Thus Palestine lay at the gate of Arabia and Egypt, and at the tail end of a number of small states stretching up into Asia Minor; it was encircled by the famous ancient civilizations of Babylonia, Assyria, South Arabia and Egypt, of the Hittites of Asia Minor, and of the Aegean peoples. Consequently its history cannot be isolated from that of the surrounding lands. Recent research in bringing to light considerable portions of long-forgotten ages is revolutionizing those impressions which were based upon the Old Testament—the sacred writings of a small fraction of this great area ”

“ THE RITUAL USES OF VESTMENTS. We have now described the form and ornamentation of the different vestments worn by the clergy of the principal sections of Christendom; but we have only incidentally touched upon another and equally important matter, namely, when and how these vestments were worn, and the liturgical practices connected with them. A more extended account of these matters will be the subject of the present chapter.
The non-reformed Western and Eastern Churches alone need occupy our attention. ”

“ It is the criticism of sources which have both a literary and an historical compositeness. Not only are the standpoints of local interest (Samaria, Benjamin, Judah and the half-Edomite Judah being involved) , but there are remarkable developments in the ecclesiastical bodies (Zadokites of Jerusalem, country and half-Edomite priests, Aaronites) which have influenced both the writing and the revision of the sources (see Levites) . Yet it is noteworthy that the traditions are usually reshaped, readjusted or reinterpreted, and are not replaced by entirely new ones. ”

“ We shall first collect the main facts which can be discovered or deduced respecting vestments in the earliest centuries of Christianity, from the beginning till the rupture of the East and the West, and then discuss in detail the vestments as we find them in the succeeding period, which in all ecclesiastical matters was a period of transition, comparing each in turn with its hypothetical prototype among the civil costume of the Romans. ”

“ Menelaus persuaded the deputy of Antiochus, who was dealing with a revolt at Tarsus, to put Onias to death. Antiochus, on his return, had his deputy executed and wept for the dead Onias. But Menelaus managed to retain his position, and his accusers were put to death. Antiochus could pity Onias, who had been tempted from the sanctuary at Daphne, but he needed an ally in Jerusalem—and money. Then, during the first or second invasion of Egypt, Jason, hearing that Antiochus was dead, returned suddenly and massacred all the followers of Menelaus who did not take refuge in the citadel. ”

“ There were kings of Syria in the train of Alexander who thought he was mad when he bowed before the high priest. We may draw the inference that they formed an insignificant item in the population of a small province of the Persian Empire, and yet doubt whether they did actually refuse—alone of all the inhabitants of Palestine—to submit to the conqueror of the whole. At any rate they came into line with the rest of Syria and were included in the province of Coele-Syria, which extended from the Taurus and Lebanon range to Egypt. ”

“ These centuries represent an age which the Jewish historians have partly ignored (as regards Samaria) and partly obscured (as regards the return from exile and the reconstruction of Judah) ; but since this age stands at the head of an historical development which leads on to Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism, it is necessary to turn from Palestine as a land in order to notice more particularly certain features of the Old Testament upon which the foregoing evidence directly bears. ”

“ The latter half of the 19th century is mainly occupied with the record of a very remarkable process of colonization and settlement—French and Russian monastic and other establishments, some of them semi-religious and semi-political; German colonies; fanatical American communities; Jewish agricultural settlements—all, so to speak, “nibbling” at the country, and each so intent upon gaining a step on its rivals as to be forgetful of the gathering storm. ”

“ Unfortunately, there is very little evidence in the biblical history for the subsequent career of Samaria, but it is clear that the old Israel of the dynasties of Omri and Jehu received crushing blows. The fact that among the new settlers were desert tribes, suggests the introduction, not merely of a simpler culture, but also of simpler groups of ideas. In the nature of the case, as time elapsed the new population must have taken root as securely as—one must conclude—the invading Israelites had done some centuries earlier. ”

“ The biblical history is a “canonical” history which looks back to the patriarchs, the exodus from Egypt, the law-giving and the covenant with Yahweh at Sinai, the conquest of Palestine by the Israelite tribes, the monarchy, the rival kingdoms, the fall and exile of the northern tribes, and, later, of the southern (Judah) , and the reconstructions of Judah in the times of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes. ”

“ The names are radically identical; but the hill is merely a salt-ridge 600 ft. high and 7 m. long, and cannot possibly represent an ancient city. The most that can be said the names have lingered in the Jordan valley in a vague tradition—very likely helped by, if not entirely due to, literary accounts of the catastrophe—just as has the name of Lot himself in the Arab name of the Dead Sea. The catastrophe has been explained as a volcanic eruption, or an explosive outburst of gas and oil stored and accumulating at high pressure. ”

“ It is a matter of dispute whether Hauran should be included within Palestine proper, accepting its definition as the “ancient Hebrew territory.” It is a large volcanic region, entirely covered with lava and other igneous rocks. Two remarkable rows of these run in lines from north to south, through the region of the Jaulan parallel to the Ghor, and from a long distance are conspicuous features in the landscape. The soil is fertile, and there are many remains of ancient wealth and civilization scattered over its surface. ”

“ A considerable amount of earlier history and literature has been lost, and it is probable that the traditions of the origins of the composite Israelites, as they are now preserved, embody evidence belonging to the nearer events of the 8th–6th centuries. The history of these centuries is of fundamental importance in any attempt to “reconstruct” biblical history. [76] The fall of Samaria and Judah was a literary as well as a political catastrophe, and precisely how much earlier material has been preserved is a problem in itself. ”

“ The same associations are those of the Moslem, whose religion has so strangely absorbed the prophets and traditions of the older faiths. Other shrines, such as the alleged tomb of Moses, and the mosque of Hebron over the cave of Machpelah, are the centres of Moslem pilgrimage. Christianity is however responsible for the greatest development of the cult of holy places, and it is to the sacred shrines of Christendom that we propose to confine our attention. ”

“ Its position gives the key to its history. Along the west coast ran the great road for traders and for the campaigns which have made the land famous. The seaports (more especially in Syria, including Phoenicia) , were well known to the pirates, traders and sea-powers of the Levant. The southernmost, Gaza, was joined by a road to the mixed peoples of the Egyptian Delta, and was also the port of the Arabian caravans. Arabia, in its turn, opens out into both Babylonia and Palestine, and a familiar route skirted the desert east of the Jordan into Syria to Damascus and Hamath. ”

“ The bordering regions, moreover, are as varied in character as is the country itself—sea to the west, a mountainous and sandy desert to the south, a lofty steppe plateau to the east, and the great masses of Lebanon to the north. In describing the general physical features of the country, the most significant point to notice is that (though it falls westward to the sea and rises eastward to an elevated plain) the rise from west to east is not continuous, but is sharply interrupted by the deep fissure of the Ghor or Jordan valley ”

“ The close of Old Testament history (the book of Nehemiah) in the Persian age forms a convenient division between ancient Palestine and the career of the land under non-oriental influence during the Greek and Roman ages. It also marks the culmination of a lengthy historical and religious development in the establishment of Judaism and its inveterate rival Samaritanism. The most important data bearing upon the first great period are given elsewhere in this work, and it is proposed to offer here a more general survey. ”