Transcriber's Note.
Apparent typographical errors have been corrected.
Combining characters have been used to add tildes and macrons to someletters. They may not work properly in some applications.
The Errata that follow the List of Illustrations have beenincorporated in the text. Corrected words are linked back to the Erratasection.
There are many Greek words in the text. Transliterations into Latincan be found, in the browser version, by hovering over them.Rough-breathing marks have been added to the first words of Footnotes 2and 3.
The Camden Library.
EDITED BY
G. LAURENCE GOMME, F.S.A.,
AND
T. FAIRMAN ORDISH, F.S.A.
Brass of Simon de Wenslagh (circ. 1360), Wensley,Yorkshire (showing the Eucharistic vestments of a priest of theWestern Church).
THE CAMDEN LIBRARY
ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS:
Their Development and History
BY
R. A. S. MACALISTER, M.A.
Member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland
LONDON:
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW
1896
Withincomparatively recent years thediscovery has been made that it ispossible to treat the Bible, for criticalpurposes, as though it were an ordinary item ofnational literature, while maintaining a fittingreverence for it as the inspired Word; and thatby so doing a flood of sidelight is cast upon itwhich illuminates the obscurity of some of its mostdifficult passages.
So, to compare lesser things with greater, it ispossible and advisable to discard all feeling ofecclesiasticism (so to term it) when speaking ofecclesiastical antiquities. The science of ecclesiologyis of comparatively recent growth, andit has hitherto suffered much at the hands ofthose who have approached it not so much tolearn the plain lessons it teaches, as to force it todeclare the existence or non-existence in early or{viii}mediaeval times of certain rites and observances.While we should treat ancient churches and theirfurniture with respect—a respect which shouldnot be denied to the despised, though often quaintand interesting, high pews and west galleries—asbeing edifices or instruments formed for theuse of the worshippers of God, yet for antiquarianpurposes they should be examined and dissected inexactly the same spirit as that in which we investigatethe temples of ancient Greece, or the stoneweapons of prehistoric man. In this spirit theauthor of the present book has worked.
Ecclesiology, besides its sentimental connectionwith ecclesiasticism, possesses many features whichrender it the most popular branch of the grea