Only one other passage remains. This is the account of the charge preferred against Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, before the Emperor Constantius. It is narrated in Theodoret (Eccl. Hist., ii 27), and, not being worth quoting at length, may be briefly stated thus: Constantine had sent to Macarius, the then bishop, a sacred robe—ἱερὰν στολήν—made of threads of gold, to be worn when administering baptism; Cyril had sold this robe to a stage-dancer, who wore it during a public exhibition. It was further stated that the stage-dancer had fallen while dancing and been fatally injured.
As the reader will see, these passages give but few data for deductions as to the vestment-usage in the early Church. There is no indication, for instance, in the passage from Theodoret of what sort the sacred robe in question was: it may just as well have been a splendid garment originally from some temple or other. The fact that the early Greek ecclesiastical writers do not use the word στολή to denote a sacred vestment further weakens the force of this anecdote as an argument. Only Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople (early seventh century), supplies another instance, where he says: ἡ στολὴ τοῦ ἱερέως . . . κατὰ τὸν ποδήρη Ααρών; and this latter passage can be explained away, as στολὴ refers here to Jewish vesture, in which connection it is also employed by the Septuagint.
On a careful and unbiased reading of these passages, it will be noticed that nothing is said which can be construed into denoting garments of a special prescribed shape, and that their colour is only specified by such indefinite words as λαμπρός and candidus.
It is also important to notice that although in the first and third of the passages cited from Jerome a more special mention is made of the dress of the clergy, yet it is not straining the meaning of either of them to regard them as applying equally well to the dress of the lay worshippers. This, of course, would preclude the supposition that they deal with any special ritual observance. The second of these quotations, if translated into homely nineteenth-century language, resolves itself into a simple but strong injunction to all worshippers (not the minister only) to wear their Sunday clothes. Mr Marriott lays great stress on the passage in the letter against Pelagius; its testimony is one of the strongest arguments which he can bring forward to support his thesis, that it was specially appointed, in the primitive church, that white vestments (something like the modern surplice) should be worn by the minister. But Jerome does not say, 'Is God displeased because the officers of the church dressed candida veste?' but 'would God be displeased if they were so vested?' The entire passage is hypothetical; and nothing is more clear than that Jerome was not contemplating any hard and fast rules.
We may dismiss the passage from the Clementine Liturgy with very few words. Λαμπρός, which the ritualists translate 'splendid,' in classical Greek always means 'bright, brilliant, radiant,'[11] and is applied in Homer to the sun and stars. It is also applied, in the sense of 'bright,' to white clothes; indeed, we find in Polybius[12] (flor. circa 150 B.C.) this very phrase, λαμπρὰ ἐσθής, equivalent to the Roman toga candida. Other meanings are 'limpid' (of water), 'sonorous' (of the voice), 'fresh, vigorous' (of action), 'manifest,' 'illustrious,' 'munificent,' 'joyous,' 'splendid' (generally, in outward appearance, health, dress, language, etc.); but it never wears the definite meaning which we should expect were the word intended to be applied to a definite vesture. The λαμπρὰ ἐσθής of the Clementine Liturgy is, in short, a bright, clean robe, but no more an article of an exclusively ecclesiastical nature than is the 'fair white linen cloth' with which the rubric of the Anglican Communion Service directs the altar to be covered.
Another passage, somewhat later in date, may be cited as a type of a large class of passages very apt to mislead too credulous students. It is the Gaulish description of St Berignus cited by Lipomanus (de Vitis Sanctor., Ed. Surius, Venice, 1581, vol. vi, p. 4), 'Vidi quendam hominem peregrinum, capite tonso, cujus habitus differt ab habitu nostro, vitaque eius nostrae dissimilis est.' The context, however, makes it plain that secular, not religious, dress is intended.
And when we refer to the few early frescoes and mosaics which have come down to us from the primitive epoch, we find ecclesiastics, apostles, and Our Lord Himself, represented as habited in the tunic and toga or pallium of Roman everyday life.
We gather, therefore, from these scattered shreds of evidence that, during the first centuries of the Christian church, no vestments were definitely set apart for the exclusive use of the clergy who officiated at Divine service: that clergy and people wore the same style of vesture both in church and out, subject only to the accidental distinctions of quality and cleanliness.
Fashion in dress or ornament is subject to constant changes which, though perhaps individually trifling, in time amount to complete revolutions; but the devotees of any religion, true or false, are by nature conservative of its doctrines or observances. Combined with the conclusions at which we have just arrived, these two universally recognised statements yield us presumptive evidence of the truth of the theory which views the Roman civil dress as the true progenitor of mediaeval ecclesiastical costume. We have seen that at first the worshippers wore the same costume both at worship and at home. Fashion would slowly change unchecked from year to year, while ecclesiastical conservatism would retard such changes so far as they concerned the dress worn at Divine service: small differences would spring into existence between everyday dress and the dress of the worshipper, and these differences, at first hardly perceptible, would increase as the process went on, till the two styles of costume became sharply distinguished from one another.
Parallel cases are not wanting to show that this is not altogether mere random theorizing. For example, the ministers of the Reformed Church of Holland maintained, till comparatively recently, a picturesque fashion of dress over a century old, which they wore only when conducting Divine service.[13] Perhaps, however, the objection may be urged against this view of the case, that if the process were such as we have described, it should apply as well to the worshippers as to the minister: that they, as well as he, should wear service-robes. It is possible that this would actually have been the case had the church services maintained their most primitive form, as St Paul describes it in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: 'When ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation';[14] that is, had all the worshippers maintained an equally prominent position instead of selecting one of their number to conduct their services. As it was, the outstanding position of the minister rendered his equipment especially liable to such stereotyping as we have imagined.