Parish Priests and Their People in the Middle Ages in England

by Edward Lewes Cutts

This is the formal catalogue of the minimum which the law required the parson and the parishioners to provide and maintain. But people were not satisfied with doing only what they were obliged to do. A considerable number of inventories exist of the treasures which had gradually accumulated as the gifts of pious benefactors to the cathedrals and churches: shrines, reliquaries, statues, crosses, mitres, pastoral staves, lamps and candlesticks, chalices, patens, pyxes, paxes, censers, processional crosses of gold and silver, often set with precious stones; altar cloths, hangings, palls,[188] vestments of the costliest fabrics, many of them embroidered, and often ornamented with precious stones. When we add the paintings of stained and sculptured marble, and carved woodwork of the fabric, and the monuments with their recumbent statues, and call to mind that the best art of the period was devoted to these works, we recognize that the churches of the country were treasures of art. Even the humblest village churches often possessed noble tombs of the local lords, and their gifts of ornaments of costly material and fine workmanship.

PROCESSION OF BISHOPS WITH CROSS BEARER, THURIFER,
HOLY WATER BEARER, PRIESTS, CANONS AND BISHOPS.
FROM THE XV. CENT. MS., TIBERIUS, B VIII., f. 43.

If we wish to see our priests as they ministered in church, it will be necessary to describe the vestments which were worn by them in those days.[189]

It is a little doubtful what they wore at the very beginning of our English Church history. The British bishops, no doubt, from early times down to the sixth century, wore the white tunic with long sleeves, which from its general colour was called the albe. The bishops and priests of the Celtic school who clung to the old usages were probably still wearing the pallium when Augustine came to Kent. But about that time the pallium was being superseded by a newer vestment called the planeta or chasuble, a circle of linen or other material with a hole in the middle through which the head was passed, so that the garment fell in folds all round the person. Very likely Augustine and the Continental school of clergy wore this new garment, and it would be adopted by the Celtic school when they accepted the Continental usages. The chasuble continued to be worn at the altar down to the end of the Middle Ages with a slight modification in shape; the voluminous folds in which it was gathered over the arms, when the hands were in use, were practically inconvenient, and so the circle came to be contracted into an oval, and then the ends of the oval were shaped to a point.

The orarium, which afterwards came to be called the stole, was originally a prayer-veil worn over the head by the priests and people of heathen Rome when they attended a sacrifice. It had an embroidered border which fell round the neck and shoulders. In course of time the veil was narrowed to its embroidered border, and was lengthened into a kind of scarf, worn over the shoulders and hanging down in front. A deacon wore the stole over one shoulder.

In early times the priest and deacon bore a napkin, called the fanon or maniple, over the left arm, with which to wipe the edge of the chalice; but this also was in time reduced to a strip of embroidered material.

The amice was a linen hood worn with the chasuble, placed over the head while the chasuble was put on, and then thrown back; so that it was seen only like a loose fold of linen round the neck.

The dalmatic was another upper garment, in form like a wide short tunic slit up at the sides, with short wide sleeves; and about the tenth century it became the distinctive upper vestment of the deacon. A little later the sub-deacon wore a tunicle, which was a scantier dalmatic.

We often find “a suit of vestments” mentioned in inventories and wills, and in several places it is defined in detail as a chasuble, two tunicles, three albes, and three amices, the vestments needed by the celebrant, his deacon, and sub-deacon; the chasuble and tunicles would be of the same material, colour, and style of ornamentation.