The tunicle did not escape the common fate of all the vestments of the mediaeval church, and it, too, became overlaid with needlework, first in a strip across the breast of the subdeacon, then (as this would not show under the vestments of the bishop) on the rest of the surface. The tunicle on Bishop Goodrick's brass at Ely Cathedral—one of the latest representations of this vestment in England—is as richly embroidered as the dalmatic.
In a few episcopal effigies of the thirteenth century the dalmatic alone appears. The tunicle being worn beneath the dalmatic, and being naturally smaller, was hidden. This difficulty was, however, very soon surmounted by the simple process of shortening the dalmatic.
Properly, the dalmatic only is fringed; the tunicle of the subdeacon seldom, if ever, shows this manner of ornamentation. But in the later episcopal effigies it is by no means uncommon.
XVIII. The Orale, or, as it is now called, the Fanon, is described by Dr Rock as 'an oblong piece of white silk gauze of some length, striped across its width with narrow bars, alternately gold, blue, and red.... It is cast upon the head of the Pope like a hood, and its two ends are wrapped one over the right, the other over the left shoulder, and thus kept until the holy father is clad in the chasuble, when the fanon is thrown back and made to hang smoothly and gracefully above and all around the shoulders of that vestment, like a tippet.'
From the orale being supposed to represent the ephod, as well as from the manner of its being put on, it is probable that it was an evolution from the amice. It is not mentioned by liturgical writers before Innocent III, and does not appear in paintings or monuments of much older date; it therefore seems to have been assumed about the twelfth or thirteenth century.
XIX. The Pectoral Cross.—We must not omit to mention this important episcopal ornament. As an official ornament it is of comparatively late introduction; it first appears in the pages of Innocent III and Durandus, and from the references which these liturgiologists make to it, it was evidently regarded by them as exclusively confined to the Pope's use. Thus, Innocent says: 'Romanus autem pontifex post albam et cingulum assumit orale, quod circa caput involvit et replicat super humeros' for certain symbolic reasons; 'et quia signo crucis auri lamina cessit pro lamina quam pontifex ille [Judaeus] gerebat in fronte, pontifex iste crucem gerit in pectore.' Dr Rock has been unable to find any trace of the pectoral cross appearing on the breast of an ordinary bishop before the sixteenth century. Even by the Popes it appears before this time to have been covered by the chasuble. Probably the cross was originally a reliquary.
On p. 29 we referred to a MS. of uncertain date in the monastery of St Martin at Autun, which details the vestments worn in the Gallican church in (probably) the tenth century. This gives a somewhat different catalogue from the lists of the rest of the Western Church, and displays some Eastern influence. The pallium, casula, alba, and stola are described so that they appear identical with the corresponding vestments elsewhere; the maniple also appears, under the name vestimentum parvolum; and we have in addition the manualia or manicae, which do not appear in any other Western lists; they are said in the MS. to have been regularly worn 'like bracelets,' and to have covered the arms of 'kings and priests.' This points to vestments after the style of the ἐπιμανίκια of the Greeks, which will be noticed in their proper place in Chapter V.
We have now described the vestments worn by the priests of the Western Church at the Eucharistic service, and are thus in a position to give a satisfactory answer to the question, 'Were they adaptations of the Jewish, or natural evolutions of the Roman costume?' We have seen that the jeweller, the goldsmith, and the embroiderer conspired to make the vestments of the middle ages as gorgeous as possible, and that therein, and in some few other particulars, they resembled the Mosaic costume; but as we go back nearer and nearer to the first ages of Christianity all the glitter drops off, vestment after vestment disappears, till we reach the three plain white vestments of the fourth century, from which it is but a step to the ordinary costume of a Roman citizen of good position during the second or third century of our era. We have also seen that all attempts at drawing hidden meanings from the vestments fail; the results, when not far-fetched, are contradictory and unconvincing.
[49] Vest. Christ., p. lxxviii.
[50] Vestes etiam sacerdotales per incrementa ad eum qui nunc habetur auctae sunt ornatum. Nam primis temporibus communi indumento vestiti missas agebant, sicut et hactenus quidam Orientalium facere perhibentur.—Walafrid Strabo De Reb. Eccl., cap. xxiv (Migne cxiv 952).