History of the Chasuble.

It is a historical fact that the coat known as "the chasuble" was, in former days, the regular "overall" worn by the ordinary poor of the South of Europe, including the monks. And when the fashion of the common people changed, the monks and secular clergy retained the garment as their ordinary dress.

The following extract from an article by the Rev. Frederick Meyrick, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Oxford, and Prebendary of Lincoln, will be of interest in this connection. He says:—

Thus it appears that the chasuble, beginning as the ordinary outer garment of the poor, was retained by the Clergy when other people changed the fashion of their clothes, and thus became their ministerial dress. But down to the end of the thirteenth century the idea of its being a sacrificial garment had not arisen. Its accepted meaning was charity. But in the thirteenth century Innocent III. and the Fourth Lateran Council introduced such wide-reaching modifications of the Christian Faith as page 6 almost to change its character. In 1215 Transubstantiation became the authorised belief, and auricular confession the authorised practice of the Latin Church. Transubstantiation, which is the basis of the sacrifice of the Mass, and compulsory confession, profoundly altered the conception entertained of the priesthood. The presbyter now became a sacrificing priest, and the victim that he sacrificed was no other than Christ Himself, while in the confessional he sat as the representative of God. His vesture must indicate the stupendous office which he held. The most noticeable, because the outside, garment that he wore was the chasuble; the chasuble therefore must symbolise sacrifice By degrees it attracted to itself this character, and in the course of the subsequent centuries it became recognised as the priestly sacrificial vestment, while it underwent considerable changes in form. But if the chasuble did not symbolise sacrifice for at least 1300 years, why should it be supposed to symbolise it now ? The whole theory of the symbolical meaning of vestments, which first grew up in the nineteenth century, is partly a pretty and quaint, partly a fantastic and foolish, imagination. Ritualistic fancy has again declared the chasuble to be necessary for the priest who offers the Sacrifice of the Mass, or celebrates the Holy Eucharist. Mr. Passmore pronounces it to bo "an ecclesiastical vestment indispensable to, and characteristic of, the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar" (Sacred Vestments vii). The Ritual Reason Why tells us that the priest removes his chasuble when preaching "because the sermon is not directly a part of the sacrifice," and that he lays it on the altar "because it "is a sacrificial vestment." (No. 430). The Congregation in Church is daring enough to state, without any regard to historical fact, that the alb, girdle, amice, maniple, stole, and chasuble "have been worn at Holy Communion from the days of the Holy Apostles;" the cloak which St. Paul left at Troas having, been, no doubt, his chasuble! And it states that it is the sacerdotal or priestly vestment worn by the celebrant at the Holy Eucharist (pp. 54, 176). This theory is a reason why so strong a desire is entertained for restoring the use of the pre-Reformation vestments in the Church of England. It is not merely a matter of æstheticism, but of doctrine, although the sketch above given of the history of the chasuble proves that the connection between it and the doctrine, which it is now supposed to symbolise, is an arbitrary dictum of the later Middle Ages, unknown for more than a thousand years.

The views of those who USE, and of those who Want the chasuble, have been pithily summarised thus : "Historically, then, the chasuble means the Mass; it was retained by the Church of' Rome because it meant the Mass; it was rejected by the Church of England because it meant the Mass; it was revived by the Ritualists because it meant the Mass."