Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

Before choristers were regularly introduced many churches had psalmists, who constituted a distinct minor order. These psalmists were succeeded by chanting clerks. In the reign of the Emperor Justinian, the metropolitan church of Constantinople possessed twenty-six choristers and a hundred and ten readers. In the fifteenth canon of the Council of Laodicea we read that “none but the canonical choristers are allowed to sing in the church.” The congregation, however, still kept to the custom of joining their voices to those of the choristers.

At first there no doubt existed a special dress worn during the hours of service, but it is supposed that it was only in its colour, which was white, that this dress differed from that worn by the deacons and the priests in everyday life. The maniple (manipulum) and the stole (stola), accessories to the alb, which was the original vestment worn by the priest, were not adopted and consecrated by the liturgy till the third or fourth centuries. The deacons only wore the stole during the sacrament, but the priests wore it continuously, as a mark of their sacerdotal dignity. The use of the chasuble was subsequent to that of the stole, the alb, and the dalmatic. The chasuble is first mentioned in the twenty-seventh canon of the Fourth Council of Toledo (in 527 A.D.).

Prior to the fifth century, the clergy were obliged to wear no distinctive dress in private life. As in the days of the Apostles, the bishops, the priests, the clerks, the deacons, and the choristers wore tunics and sandals, as prescribed by the Saviour in the Gospel of St. Mark (vi. 9). They covered themselves with a square piece of black or brown cloth, which was draped around the figure, and was fastened by neither hook nor tie; beneath it was a plain tunic of a dark colour. In the fifth century Pope Celestinus disapproved of this costume, which caused the followers of Christ to be confounded with the Stoic philosophers. In the sixth century the laity had abandoned the Roman style of costume, and wore short dresses, copied from those of the barbarians who had become the rulers of Gaul; but the Church, careful of the dignity of its ministers, refused to adopt this expensive alteration. Henceforward a broad distinction was established between the dress of the clergy and that of the laity. The Council of Agde (506 A.D.) ordered all clerks to wear clothes and shoes of a peculiar cut, in conformity with their religious profession. Two later councils forbade them the use of the Roman military cloak (sagum) and of purple-coloured stuffs. Gregory the Great forbade his household to wear any dress but the long toga, as the one essentially appropriate to the people of the Church. This costume, with scarcely any modification, was worn by all orthodox ecclesiastics, through all the changes of the Middle Ages, until the seventeenth century.

The priest, when in the exercise of his holy functions, was not expected to make any change in his dress. Still, from the fourth to the ninth century everything seems to show that his proper costume was always white, or at least that it was so during the celebration of the highest ceremonies. St. Chrysostom, feeling the approach of death, and being anxious to partake of the holy sacrament, called for his white vestments, and distributed those he was wearing, even to his shoes, among his assistants. The customs and traditions of the West conformed in this to those of the East. The neophyte was stripped of his worldly garments, he was clad in a white or religious robe (habitus religionis), and was then considered fit to perform his duties. Sometimes, however, the white robes of the sovereign pontiff were adorned with bands of gold or purple. White was not mixed with other tints in the dress of the clergy till towards the ninth century; the five hues admitted by religious symbolism date only from the twelfth century.

Fig. 187.—Romanesque perforated Handbell, representing the symbols of the Four Evangelists (Twelfth Century).—From the Archæological Museum at Rheims.

Charlemagne, who was proud of his thorough acquaintance with the liturgy, who esteemed it an honour to wear, on high occasions, the green chasuble embroidered with gold, and to chant the epistles before the assembled congregations, took the greatest pains with all the ceremonies of the Church; and it is an undoubted fact that the pomp with which they were afterwards celebrated was inaugurated by him.

Charlemagne and his successors, Louis the Affable and Charles the Bald, did not, however, content themselves with merely attending to ceremonial pomp; they did their best to introduce a principle of unity in conformity with the Roman liturgy. At the commencement of the eighth century Pope Adrian I., having sent to Charlemagne an antiphonary scored by St. Gregory himself, the Emperor ordered all the churches in his dominions to adopt the Gregorian chant. Thenceforward the ancient Gallican liturgy almost disappeared, and when Charles the Bald was desirous of comparing together the Greek, Roman, and Gallican liturgies, he was obliged to summon ecclesiastics from Toledo to officiate in his presence according to the Gallican rite. Charles preferred the Roman ritual; but notwithstanding this, each diocesan cathedral, each separate abbey, introduced into the Gallo-Roman liturgy various accessory forms differing more or less from one another.

It is possible to trace back to the sixth century the first use of church bells, but their general introduction into the Western church dates from the eighth century. They were termed seings (in Latin signa); they were not rung, but were simply struck with wooden or metal hammers (Fig. 187), as is still done south of the Pyrenees. From this practice comes the word toc-seing or tocsin, applied to the municipal peals of the Middle Ages and of still later times. The organ (organum) also dates from the eighth century. Imperfect as this instrument originally was, it caused tremendous enthusiasm among its hearers. Indeed, it may be said that organs and church bells had an equal share in raising the prestige of the ceremonial liturgy, which charmed and captivated both the senses and the souls of its hearers, by the display of its numerous officiating clergy, by the solemn gravity of its chants, by the noble simplicity of the vestments, and by the chaste and majestic arrangement of its ritual.