ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS.

CHAPTER I.
THE GENESIS OF ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS.

The study of ecclesiastical history or antiquities can be pursued from either of two standpoints. We may take into account those essentially religious or theological elements which distinguish this subject from all other branches of antiquarian science, and keep them prominently before us during our investigations; or else, disregarding those elements more or less completely, we may consider the subject wholly from the point of view of the antiquary.

As a general rule, those investigators who lay stress on the ecclesiastical rather than on the antiquarian side of ecclesiology and its various subdivisions have been attracted to the study not so much by the intrinsic interest which, in some degree, every branch of archæology possesses, as by the wish to settle controversial questions relating to Church doctrine, usage, or discipline. This is especially true of the important section of ecclesiology with which these pages are concerned. There are two schools into which the students of Church vestments may be divided—the ritualistic and the antiquarian. 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.

It is not surprising that the results of the investigations of two schools, having aims so diverse in view, should be mutually incompatible. According to the views of some members of the ritualistic school, the vestments of the Christian Church were modelled directly upon the vestments of the Jewish priesthood; and as minute instructions for the shapes and usage of the latter were laid down in the divinely-revealed laws of Moses, they thus claim an at least indirect Divine appointment for the Christian vestments. The antiquarian party, on the other hand, are unanimous in holding that the vestments of the Christian Church were evolved, by a natural process, from the ordinary costume of a Roman citizen of the first or second century of our era.

The consideration of these two theories must first occupy our attention. Neither is absolutely correct; for, although the balance of probability is enormously in favour of the second view, yet this theory, in the form in which it is often stated, does not cover certain changes which were made in the textures, outlines, and number of the vestments while the Church was yet comparatively young. These changes were all introduced to assimilate, as far as possible, the Jewish and Christian systems; and thus it may be said that both views contain an element of truth.

The theory of a Levitical origin is the older of the two; in fact, it was the first, and for many years the only, solution proposed. We shall therefore at the outset devote a page or two to considering its merits. Very few, even among the students of the ritualistic school, now hold it absolutely. The weight of argument which can be brought to bear against it is so great that it is almost universally abandoned as untenable.