Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister

“ The chasuble surmounts and safeguards all the other vestments; hence the chasuble signifies love, which surmounts all the other virtues, and safeguards and illumines their beauty with its protection; so says Rabanus Maurus, prettily enough. Amalarius disagrees; he holds that as the chasuble is common to all clerics, so it ought to set forth the works which are common to all: fasting, thirsting, watching, poverty, reading, singing, praying, and the rest. The pseudo-Alcuin and Ivo of Chartres agree with Rabanus, though for different reasons. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ VI. The Ephod, which was at once the most elaborate and the most important of the Jewish vestments, is more fully described than any of the rest. The superiority of this vestment over the others is due to the part which it, and the breastplate intimately connected with it, played in the mysterious revelations by which the children of Israel were guided during the period of the {7} Theocracy. For us, however, it would be as irrelevant as it would be futile to speculate on the nature of the revelation, or the instrumentality of the ephod in indicating the Divine will to the priest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The dress of monks usually consists of the vestis, tunic or closed gown; the scapular, roughly speaking, a narrow, chasuble-like dress, with the front and back portions rectangular and of uniform width throughout; one or more open gowns (pallium or cappa) ; and the caputium or hood, fastened at the back and capable of being drawn over the head. 'Discalced' is not always to be taken in its fullest significance, or as signifying more than simply 'sandaled.' Different vestments are worn by individual orders or houses ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ The evolution here supposed is, however, most unnatural; there is not time for it to have taken place between the institution of Christianity and the date of the Ravenna mosaics—much less between the time when ecclesiastical vestments and their development began to receive special attention and the latter date; the toga, as we have already seen, was itself practically obsolete when Christianity began to make itself felt, and still further removed from the current fashion of the time at which archbishops began to require distinguishing insignia ”

“ While we should treat ancient churches and their furniture with respect—a respect which should not be denied to the despised, though often quaint and interesting, high pews and west galleries—as being edifices or instruments formed for the use of the worshippers of God, yet for antiquarian purposes they should be examined and dissected in exactly the same spirit as that in which we investigate the temples of ancient Greece, or the stone weapons of prehistoric man. ”

“ 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. ”