Produced by deaurider, Chris Pinfield, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Transcriber's Note. Apparent typographical errors have been corrected. Italics are indicated by _underscores_ and transliterated Greek by =equal signs=. Small capitals have been replaced by full capitals. Paragraphs in smaller font have been indented. Combining characters have been used to add tildes and macrons to some letters. They may not work properly in some applications. The same limitation applies to a composite character that represents a pointed cap. The Errata that follow the List of Illustrations have not been incorporated in the text. [Illustration] The Camden Library. EDITED BY G. LAURENCE GOMME, F.S.A., AND T. FAIRMAN ORDISH, F.S.A. [Illustration: BRASS OF SIMON DE WENSLAGH (CIRC. 1360), WENSLEY, YORKSHIRE (showing the Eucharistic vestments of a priest of the Western 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_ [Illustration] LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW 1896 [Illustration] PREFACE Within comparatively recent years the discovery has been made that it is possible to treat the Bible, for critical purposes, as though it were an ordinary item of national literature, while maintaining a fitting reverence for it as the inspired Word; and that by so doing a flood of sidelight is cast upon it which illuminates the obscurity of some of its most difficult passages. So, to compare lesser things with greater, it is possible and advisable to discard all feeling of ecclesiasticism (so to term it) when speaking of ecclesiastical antiquities. The science of ecclesiology is of comparatively recent growth, and it has hitherto suffered much at the hands of those who have approached it not so much to learn the plain lessons it teaches, as to force it to declare the existence or non-existence in early or mediaeval times of certain rites and observances. While we should treat ancient churches and their furniture with respect—a respect which should not be denied to the despised, though often quaint and interesting, high pews and west galleries—as being edifices or instruments formed for the use of the worshippers of God, yet for antiquarian purposes they should be examined and dissected in exactly the same spirit as that in which we investigate the temples of ancient Greece, or the stone weapons of prehistoric man. In this spirit the author of the present book has worked.