One of the main differences between a church unreformed and a church reformed lies in this: that in the former the externals of public worship are magnified in importance even to the minutest detail, while in the latter the weight attached to such matters is diminished in a greater or less degree.
Considerable variety is apparent in the importance attached by different reformed churches to these matters, and, in consequence, considerable variety is apparent in the extent to which they are elaborated. Those churches which at the Reformation retained the episcopate, retained with it, in a more or less modified form, many of the old usages; while those churches which abolished the hierarchical and restored the democratic system of church government, for the most part abolished the customs of their pre-reformation predecessors. {193} Perhaps among no bodies of Christians are the externals of worship so little heeded as among the English dissenting sects; these, being composed of seceders from a reformed church, may be said to have undergone a double reformation, which has had the effect of expunging the last traces of ritual from their services. In the consequent neglect of order, the wearing of robes of office has become entirely optional, not only with the different sects, but even with the individual ministers; and where a gown is worn, as no definite shape of gown is prescribed, the choice of robe remains optional. Hence, these bodies need not concern us further, as the discussion of their vestments would be merely an uninteresting and monotonous account of the practice of isolated modern congregations.
The four churches whose usage must occupy our attention in the present chapter are the Lutheran churches of Germany and Scandinavia, the Episcopal churches of England and of Spain, and the Presbyterian churches, with especial reference to the church of Scotland.
§ I. The Lutheran Churches.
Of all reformations, the least thorough, as far as outward observance was concerned, was the reformation in which Martin Luther played the leading part. In Lübeck is the brass of the {194} Lutheran Bishop Tydeman, who died in 1561, representing him in full Eucharistic vestments, in no wise differing from the vestments of his non-reformed predecessors. At the present day the predominance of the Evangelical church in Germany (as distinguished from the Lutheran) has abolished vestments, with the exception of the Geneva gown and its attendants, among the Protestants; but in Sweden and Denmark, where the Protestant Episcopal is still the national church, the old vestments, with some modifications and omissions, are retained.
The Lutheran minister of the present day in Sweden and Denmark is described as wearing an ample cassock, or black gown, and a white frilled ruff, or collar, both in his outdoor life and at morning and evening prayer. At the Communion Service he assumes an alb, or, rather, surplice—a white, ungirded garment, open down the front—over which is placed a chasuble with a large cross on the back.
The Swedish Kyrko-Handbog recognises these vestments: the chorkappa, messhake and messe-sjorta—answering to the cope, chasuble, and surplice, respectively.
§ II. The Anglican Church.
The history of vestments and their usage in England subsequent to the reformation is not {195} lacking in complexity, and is rendered harder to unravel by the heated discussions carried on, and the contradictory assertions brought forward, at the present day by the various parties within the English church. It is no part of our duty here to give an account of the different recensions of the liturgy published and approved in the years after the reformation; we are here only concerned with the rubrical directions which they contain to regulate the use of vestments permitted in the English church.
The first English Prayer-Book, published in 1549, contained the following injunction:
\'Upon the day and at the time appointed for the ministration of the Holy Communion, the Priest that shall execute the holy ministry shall put upon him the vesture appointed for that ministration, that is to say, a white alb plain with a vestment or cope. And where there be many Priests or Deacons there so many shall be ready to help the Priest in the ministrations as shall be requisite; and shall have upon them likewise the vestures appointed for their ministry, that is to say, albes with tunicles.\'
It is quite clear, even without the documentary evidence which is forthcoming, that this was merely intended as temporary, as, indeed, was the whole 1549 Prayer-Book. In a letter which Fagius and Bucer addressed to their Strassburg friends, describing their reception by Archbishop Cranmer, there is given a short account {196} of the ceremonies then in use. In the course of this letter, they say, \'We hear that some concessions have been made both to a respect for antiquity and to the infirmity of the present age, such, for instance, as the vestments commonly used in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.\'
An inspection of the rubric will show that it was ingeniously designed to please all parties. The word \'vestment,\' of course, means the chasuble, the vestment par excellence, and therefore often spoken of in that apparently general way. The \'alb and vestment\' being specified did not necessarily exclude all the other vestments which were worn between these two. Hence those clergy who preferred the old rites and ceremonies might read the rubric into permitting, or even enjoining, the maintenance of the old vestments,[91] while those who subscribed to the principles of the reforming party might set at defiance all old usages by wearing the cope while celebrating the Communion.
Another rubric relating to vestments appears in the first Prayer-Book. This is the first rubric printed after the order for the Communion, and runs thus:
\'Upon Wednesdays and Fridays the English Litany shall be said or sung in all places ... and though there be none to communicate with the Priest, yet these days (after the {197} Litany ended) the Priest shall put upon him a plain albe or surplice, with a cope, and say all things at the altar (appointed to be said at the celebration of the Lord\'s Supper) until after the offertory....\'
Finally, in this Prayer-Book also occurs the following:
\'In the saying or singing of Mattins and Evensong, baptizing and burying, the minister in parish churches and chapels annexed to the same shall use a surplice. And in all cathedral churches and colleges the archdeacons, deans, provosts, masters, prebendaries, and fellows, being graduates, may use in the quire, besides their surplices, such hood as appertaineth to their several degrees. And whensoever the bishop shall celebrate the Holy Communion in the church, or execute any other public ministration, he shall have upon him, beside his rochet, a surplice or albe, and a cope or vestment, and also his pastoral staff in his hand, or else borne or holden by his chaplain.\'
The revised Prayer-Book of 1552 is much more stringent in its reformation of vestment-use. It condescends to mention vestments but once, in a prohibitory rubric, which reduces vestment-use in the English Church to an almost Presbyterian simplicity. This rubric is as follows:
\'And here it is to be noted that the minister at the time of the communion, and at all other times in his ministration, shall use neither albe, vestment, nor cope: but being archbishop or bishop, he shall have and wear a rochet: and being a priest or deacon, he shall have and wear a surplice only.\'
In the Prayer-Book of 1559 a rubric is to be found requiring the restoration of the vestments {198} and ornaments of the first Prayer-Book, thereby setting aside the order of the second Prayer-Book. At the consecration of Archbishop Parker in 1559, we are told that at morning prayer the archbishop-elect wore his academical robes. After the sermon, the archbishop-elect and the four attendant bishops proceeded to the vestry, and returned prepared for the communion service, the archbishop in a linen surplice, the Bishop of Chichester in a silk cope, the Bishops of Hereford and Bedford in linen surplices, but the Bishop of Exeter (Miles Coverdale) in a woollen cassock only. Two chaplains of the archbishop, who assisted the Bishop of Chichester at the communion service, also wore silk copes.
After the communion service they again proceeded to the vestry and returned, the archbishop in \'episcopal alb,\' surplice, chimere of black silk, and a collar of precious sable-fur round his neck; the Bishops of Chichester and Hereford in episcopalia, namely, surplice and chimere. Coverdale and the Bishop of Bedford wore cassocks only.
This passage shows us that the right of private judgment was exercised, even at such an important ceremony as the consecration of an archbishop, in 1559 as now. The Puritan principles of Coverdale were given full sway even when acting in cooperation with his less austere brethren.
{199} It also introduces us to a new vestment, the chimere, which is one of the greatest puzzles to be found in the subject of vestments. Since the Reformation, it has continued ever since as a dress peculiar to bishops, but its origin and the exact date of its introduction are uncertain.
The chimere is a short coat, properly without sleeves; but in England the tailors of the Stuart period transferred the sleeves of the rochet to the chimere. Hence the modern English bishops wear sleeveless rochets and sleeved chimeres—both solecisms. The English chimere is black, though from the reign of Edward VI to that of Elizabeth it was scarlet; but the form current on the Continent, a large cape called the mantelletum, is scarlet, and the chimere worn by the Roman prelates in England is purple.
It is not unlikely, from the appearance of the vestment, that it is a modification of the cope or almuce—possibly a combination of the two vestments.
In 1560 Thos Sampson writes complaining to Peter Martyr that \'three of our lately-appointed bishops are to officiate at the table of the Lord, one as priest, another as deacon, and a third as subdeacon, before the image of the crucifix, or at least not far from it, with candles, and habited in the golden vestments of the papacy.\' This seems to indicate that at Court (where this was to take {200} place) the old vestments were kept up. From a letter of Miles Coverdale\'s written in 1566, we learn that the square cap, bands, and tippet were enjoined to be worn out of doors (\'Zurich Letters,\' vol. i, p. 63, vol. ii, p. 121; Parker Society).
In all the subsequent Prayer-Books, the \'Ornaments Rubric,\' as it is called, is the source of our information with respect to the vestments required to be worn in the English Church. This famous rubric runs thus (as given in the Prayer-Book of 1662):
\'And here it is to be noted, that such ornaments of the church and of the ministers thereof, at all times of their ministration, shall be retained and be in use, as were in this Church of England, by the authority of Parliament, in the second year of the reign of King Edward the Sixth.\'
The indefiniteness observed in the Edwardian rubrics, to which this injunction refers, invests the \'Ornaments Rubric\' with a certain vagueness; and this is responsible for the long and violent strife that has waged around it, and for the chaotic condition of modern Anglican order, both in vestments and other observances.
Recent attempts have been made on the part of individual clergymen to introduce certain details of the ritual of the Western Church into the services of the Church of England. All such innovations are, however, regarded as illegal, {201} and clergymen attempting to introduce them lay themselves open to prosecution. The rulings in the case known as the Folkestone ritual case (Elphinstone v. Purchas) is the standard of reference in such matters. Among many other details, the use of the following vestments was declared absolutely contrary to the Ecclesiastical Law of England: The biretta, chasuble, alb, and tunicle at the Holy Communion; the cope at Holy Communion except on high feast days i............