_Alba_: worn by all alike. _Orarium_: worn by deacons, priests, and bishops. _Planeta_: worn by priests and bishops. _Ring and staff_: exclusively for bishops. Some letters of Gregory the Great (Bishop of Rome 590-604) give us particulars relating to three other vestments not in general use throughout the church. These are the _dalmatica_, the _mappula_, and the _pallium_. Lastly, an anonymous MS. of uncertain date[17] enumerates the _pallium_, _casula_, _manualia_, _vestimentum_, _alba_, and _stola_ as the vestments worn in the Gallican Church. It is to be regretted that none of the British authors of the period have preserved any record of contemporary vestment-usage in this country; we have, however, no reason to suppose that it differed from that of the Continent. Let us now take each of the above vestments in order, and collect whatever information is obtainable upon their appearance and history, comparing each in turn with its supposed Roman prototype. I. _The Alba._—This word is the abbreviated form of the full name, _tunica alba_, by which a flowing tunic of white linen was denoted. It appears that the first use of this word as a technical term for a special robe is in a passage of Trebellius Pollio (in Claud., xiv, xvii), who speaks of an _alba subserica_, mentioned in a letter sent from Valerian to Zosimio, Procurator of Syria, about 260-270 A.D. In the 41st canon of the fourth council of Carthage (_circa_ 400 A.D.)[18] we meet with the first use of this word in an ecclesiastical connection, in one of the earliest (if not _the_ earliest) regulations ever passed to govern the ritual usage of vestments. This ordains that the deacon shall wear an _alba_ only '_tempore oblationis tantum vel lectionis_.' The constant evidence of contemporary pictures indicates that the _alba_ was a long, full, and flowing vesture. In this respect it differed from the Mosaic tunic, on the one hand, and the mediaeval alb on the other. Both these vestments fitted closely to the body for reasons of convenience, for a flowing tunic would obviously hamper the Levitical priest in the discharge of his sacrificial duties, and would not sit comfortably under the vestments with which it was overlaid in mediaeval times. Nearly two centuries after the fourth council of Carthage we find the first council of Narbonne (A.D. 589) enacting that 'neither deacon nor subdeacon, nor yet the lector, shall presume to put off his _alba_ till after mass is over.'[19] To this canon, which was clearly framed to check some tendency to irregularity that had become noticeable in the celebration of mass, we are indebted for two facts: first, that ritual usage in vestments was now firmly established; and second, that the _alba_ was the dress of the minor orders of clergy. This latter point is not clearly brought out in the Toletan canon already quoted.