Vestments, SACRED. The use by the priesthood of a distinctive costume in public worship formed a part not only of the Jewish, but of almost all the ancient religions. Generally speaking, in the Christian church the sacred vestments represent the original costume of Rome and the East in the first centuries, retained unaltered by the clergy, whereas in the everyday world the costume varied in fashion, in material, in colour from year to year. There seems little room for doubting that from a very early time Christian ministers employed some distinctive dress in public worship; and Catholic writers even find traces in the beginning of the 5th century of the practice of blessing the vestments which were destined for the public services of the church. The vestments used in the celebration of mass by priests of the Roman Catholic Church are the Amice (q.v., originally worn over the head); the Alb (q.v.); the girdle, a linen cord tied round the waist, and confining the folds of the alb; the maniple, a narrow strip of embroidered silk, worn pendent from the arm; the Stole (q.v.); and the Chasuble (q.v.). The three last named are always of the same material and colour; but this colour, which appears primitively to have been in all cases white, now, and for many centuries, varies according to seasons and festivals, five different colours being employed in the cycle of ecclesiastical services—viz. white, red, green, violet, and black. Cloth of gold, however, may be substituted for any of these, except the last. Bishops, in celebrating, wear, besides the vestments of priests, two inner vestments, the dalmatic and tunic (those of the deacon and sub-deacon respectively), as also embroidered gloves and shoes, or buskins, together with the distinctive episcopal ornaments—the pectoral cross, ring, mitre, and pastoral staff, or, if archbishops, the crozier. Archbishops celebrating mass also wear the Pallium (q.v.). Bishops, when they celebrate pontifically, take their vestments from the altar, whereas priests put them on in the sacristy; but this is a late distinction. In other public services priests and bishops wear the Cope (q.v.), with a pendent cape or hood. In the ministration of the other sacraments, and also in administering communion privately, priests wear the Surplice (q.v.) with the stole, or it may even be the stole alone. In the Greek Church the stoicharion, zoné, epitrachelion, epimanikia (a square piece of cloth, stiffened, worn pendent from the girdle, and perhaps originally a napkin), and ample phelonion correspond respectively with the alb, girdle, stole, maniple, and chasuble. Greek bishops wear the omophorion, which corresponds with the later pallium, and also a pectoral cross, and carry a short pastoral staff; but they wear no ring, and, except by the patriarch of Alexandria, the mitre is not worn in the sanctuary.
The natural effect of the religious changes of the 16th century was to put aside the costume at the same time and on the same grounds with the ceremonies of the existing worship. This was done, however, by the different churches of the Reformers in very various degrees. The Calvinistic worship may be said to have dispensed with vestments altogether. The Lutherans generally retained with the cassock the alb, and in some countries the chasuble. In the Swedish Church full vestments are retained. In the English Church a variety of practice has existed. See SURPLICE. As to the rest of the costume, the first Prayer-book retained the Roman vestments with little change; and as the vestments and ornaments of 1549 were again enjoined in 1559, a so-called ritualistic movement in the English Church has since 1851 reintroduced in some places almost every detail of the Roman costume in the communion and other services, a revival which has in many instances been vigorously resisted. See PRAYER-BOOK, p. 380; and Marriott's Vestiarium Christianum (1868).