The first hint of the idea of the Mosaic origin of the Christian vestments is given by Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz, in his treatise 'De Institutione Clericorum,'[5] written about the year 850. In the first book of this tract he discusses each Christian vestment in turn, endeavouring to find parallels to some of them among the vestments of the Jewish priesthood, but without much success. The seed thus sown, however, rapidly bore fruit among subsequent writers, who expanded the theory with great elaboration.
Many of the identifications brought forward by some of the late writers are very far-fetched, and mutually contradictory. To these but little weight can be attributed. It is a significant fact that none of the writers who endeavour to find parallels between the two systems can discover an equivalent among the Jewish vestments for the chasuble. Now, if for each of the Christian vestments there existed a corresponding vestment among those of the Jews, it would be singular that the most important of the former should be unrepresented among the latter. The maniple, too, has no equivalent (this, however, is more intelligible, since that ornament was certainly a later introduction); while the amice is the only vestment that even the most ingenious can produce to represent the ephod, though the similarity between the two is of the slightest.
There is another important point which the advocates of a Mosaic origin for Christian vestments overlook. The early Christians certainly did borrow many details of their worship from the Jews who lived around them, and from whose religion many of them had been converted; but these details were taken not from the antiquated ritual of the temple worship, but from the synagogue worship, to which they had been accustomed. Now, the vestments which we have described above were appointed for the tabernacle worship and the temple worship, its direct successor, whereas no vestments were at any time or by any authority appointed for use in the synagogue worship;[6] and hence the Christian vesture cannot be said to 'come directly' from the Jewish.
We have discussed the theory of a Levitical origin on purely a priori grounds, making only the slightest allusion to the vestments themselves as we find them in primitive times. In considering the second view, to which it is now time to turn, we shall adopt a different course. We shall first collect the main facts which can be discovered or deduced respecting vestments in the earliest centuries of Christianity, from the beginning till the rupture of the East and the West, and then discuss in detail the vestments as we find them in the succeeding period, which in all ecclesiastical matters was a period of transition, comparing each in turn with its hypothetical prototype among the civil costume of the Romans. The remainder of the present and the whole of the succeeding chapter will be devoted to this investigation.
The materials available for an inquiry into the vestment usage of the early Church are twofold: the incidental statements of contemporary authors, and the more direct information obtained from a study of contemporary paintings and sculpture. We shall now discuss the results which follow from an examination of these sources.
The references in the earliest writers—even including those which have a very indirect bearing on the subject—are extremely few in number; and all passages which can possibly throw any light on the question have been eagerly sought out and called into evidence to support one theory or another. The two best-known passages are the statement of St Jerome: 'Holy worship hath one habit in the ministry, another in general use and common life';[7] and the yet more famous passage in the liturgy of St Clement, in which a rubric directs the priest to begin the service 'girded with a shining vesture.'[8] The phrase λαμπρὰν ἐσθῆτα μετενδὺς has been translated 'being girded with his "splendid" vestment,' a translation which the Greek cannot possibly bear; and this passage, coupled with the excerpt from Jerome just quoted, have been brought forward to testify that gorgeous vestments were in use even at the early times when those documents from which they have been extracted were written.
Mr. Marriott has carefully examined and commented on these and the other passages cited as authorities. He proves that the first passage given above is used in a context which shows that Jerome, though possibly he may have had Christian usage in his mind, was thinking primarily of Jewish usage; the second (which not improbably is an interpolation) does not specify a 'splendid' vesture, but a 'white' or 'shining' garment.
Mr. Marriott's inference from these and similar passages is 'that white was the colour appropriated in primitive times [i.e., in the first four centuries] to the dress of the Christian ministry.' Though this view is preferable to the theory that the primitive vestments were of the same elaborate description as their mediaeval successors, yet it does not altogether commend itself as following naturally from the authorities cited. It will be necessary to review these passages, for, as we shall endeavour to show, they are quite consistent with the third alternative: that no distinctive vestments were set apart for the exclusive use of the Christian minister during the first four centuries of the Christian era.
The third passage is also from Jerome. In another part of the same commentary as the last he writes: 'From all these things we learn that we ought not enter the Holy of Holies clad in our everyday garments and in whatever clothes we will, defiled as they are by the usage of common life; but with pure conscience and in pure garments we ought to hold the sacraments of the Lord.'[9]
The fourth passage is from Jerome's letter against the Pelagians, in which occur these remarkable words: 'You say, further, that gorgeousness of apparel or ornament is offensive to God. But, I ask, suppose I should wear a comelier tunic, wherein would it offend God? or if bishop, priest, deacon, and the rest of the church officers were to come forward dressed in white?'[10]