CHAPTER III.
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 progress of Christian literature and art had been retarded first by persecution, then by war and tumult. This partly accounts for the comparative scantiness of the material extant for a history of the Christian antiquities of the first eight centuries. But with the ninth century a new era began, which lasted unchecked all through the Middle Ages. The military genius of Charles the Great effected a general peace in the year 812; and under his enthusiastic patronage a true renaissance took place in learning and in art. Architecture and manuscript illumination were carried to a high degree of perfection, and for the first time active and systematic researches were made into the details of the doctrine and ritual of the church in the preceding centuries.
As a natural consequence of the inquiring spirit which thus made itself felt, the number of books and tracts on ecclesiastical matters multiplied enormously. Among the many branches of study which were and are open to the inquiry of the ecclesiologist, few occupied the attention of these ninth-century writers more than the vestments worn by the priests when ministering in Divine service.
It has been reserved for the antiquaries of our own day to formulate the true principles of scientific archaeology. We smile at the childish fancies which are gravely put forward in works not more than fifty years old; small wonder is it, then, that we find these early treatises on vestments disappointing. All are firmly impressed with the Levitical origin of the usage and shape of Christian vesture; and the majority are occupied with vague speculations concerning the symbolic meaning of the individual items in an ecclesiastical outfit.
Mr. Marriott assigns a reason for the then universal belief in the Levitical origin of ecclesiastical vestments which is highly ingenious, and probably correct. I cannot do better than cite his words on the subject:
'Churchmen who had travelled widely, as then some did, in East as well as West, could hardly fail to notice the remarkable fact, that at Constantinople as at Rome, at Canterbury as at Arles, Vienna or Lyons, one general type of ministering dress was maintained, varying only in some minor details; and that this dress everywhere presented a most marked contrast to what was in their time the prevailing dress of the laity. And as all knowledge of classical antiquity had for three centuries or more been well-nigh extinct in the church, it was not less natural that they should have sought a solution of the phenomenon thus presented to them in a theory of Levitical origin, which from that time forward was generally accepted.'[49]
Rabanus Maurus, as we have already stated (supra, p. 12), was the first who endeavoured to draw the parallel between the Christian and the Jewish vestments. The older writers saw the difficulties in the way of establishing a complete correspondence. Thus [Walafrid] Strabo (circa 840), in chapter xxiv of his 'De Rebus Ecclesiasticis,' merely says: 'Numero autem suo antiquis respondent' (In their number they correspond to the ancient vestments); and he further admits that mass was formerly celebrated by a priest robed in everyday dress.[50] But, as the desire to prove the correspondence grew more widespread, changes and additions were rapidly made in the vestments themselves, with a view to assimilating the two systems. In the interval between the ninth and eleventh centuries the number of recognised vestments was doubled by the accretions thus made to the original set.