Red, the colour of flame, was associated with ideas of warm, burning love. Our Lord is sometimes represented in red when performing works of mercy.

Green, the colour of plants, was regarded as typifying life, and sacred or beatified persons are sometimes depicted as clothed in this colour in reference to their everlasting life. Lastly,

Violet, which is formed by a mixture of red and black, was said to symbolize 'the union of love and pain in repentance.' It also typifies sorrow, without any reference to sin as its cause; thus the Mater Dolorosa is occasionally represented in a violet robe.[100]

Further than this we cannot go, and perhaps we have said too much. It is quite possible that these theories may have been put forward to account for phenomena which depended entirely on the taste and whim of the painters. It is well known that in the early ages of Christianity ideas of colour were vague, and yellow and green, dark blue and black, light blue and violet, were all regarded as being the same colour. Previous to the tenth century, it is quite true that coloured vestments are to be seen in mosaics and fresco-paintings; but the combinations of colours are such as to leave no doubt that they were simply adopted by the painter as convenient aids to distinguishing the various vestments from the surrounding background and from each other.

Coming now to Innocent III, we find that he prescribes four liturgical colours, white, red, black and green. These were the principal or primary liturgical colours; but there are others, secondary to these, which were modifications in tint of the primaries. Thus, properly, red is the colour of martyrs, white the colour of virgins; but there is a secondary colour, saffron, for confessors, and the secondaries, rose and lily, are considered interchangeable with red and white.

Hopelessly at variance are the practices throughout the Western Church, and we will not attempt to give more than a brief outline of the general principles. For those who desire fuller information reference is made to a paper by Dr Wickham Legg in the first volume of the Transactions of the St Paul's Ecclesiological Society, in which no less than sixty-three different 'uses' are analyzed and tabulated, or compared.

The rules to which we have just referred are almost the only regulations respecting which uniform use prevails. For obvious reasons, white is appropriated to feasts of St Mary and of the other virgin saints; black is appropriated to the office of the dead; and red to the feasts of martyrs. Usually white is used for Christmas and Easter, and red for Whitsuntide and Feasts of Apostles. As a general rule, however, the same sentimental associations are to be seen with colours in the middle ages as may possibly be traced in earlier times: violet being essentially penitential in its character, red being indicative of fire, blood or love, white of purity and joy, black of mourning, and green of life. Hence violet is the usual colour for Advent and Lent, red for feasts of martyrs, apostles and evangelists, and in some uses for Passion-tide and Easter; white for Christmas, feasts of virgins, Easter, and sometimes Michaelmas and All Saints; black for Good Friday and offices of the dead; green from the Octave of Epiphany to Candlemas, and from Trinity to Advent. The use of the last colour is, however, very arbitrary; it only occurs at one or two seasons in the year in each diocese, and these are very diverse.

The following is the Roman sequence of colours for the year, and it may be taken as an example of all:

One or two miscellaneous points may be worth a passing notice before we bring our account of the vestments of the Western Church to a close.