ECCLESIASTICAL GARMENT. - The garment ordinarily worn by the secular and regular clergy; to be distinguished from liturgical vestments (v.), which ministers of worship put on during sacred functions. In the first centuries ecclesiastical dress was in no way distinguished, either in form or in color, from the dress of the laity. But when, beginning in the 5th century, short garments, introduced by the barbarians, began to become fashionable for the laity, the councils prohibited them to ecclesiastics and prescribed that these should always wear long, closed garments, without superfluous ornaments, of no loud color but rather dark: « Humilitatem, quam corde gestant... habita demonstrent » (Council of Aix-la-Chapelle of 816, can. 124; cf. also the Germanic Council of 742, can. 7). However, no universal norm was issued on the matter until the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and the Council of Vienna (1312), which forbade clerics certain forms and colors of dress (reproduced in the Corpus Iuris Canonici: cf. c. 15, X, III, 1; c. 2, III, 1, in Clem.). The color black, imported by the Benedictines, did not become obligatory until the 15th century and more so in the 16th century, under the influence of St. Charles Borromeo and the Council of Trent. The latter imposed penalties against clerics who did not wear appropriate dress, leaving further determinations to the ordinaries and to customs (sess. XIV, de ref., chap. 6). Sixtus V (const. Cum sacrosanctam, 9 Jan. 1589) prescribed the cassock for all clerics; but particular laws and local customs have in many regions determined different forms.
Ecclesiastical dress is called a "soutane," because it must be worn under the sacred vestments. It is now black for priests; violet for bishops; red for cardinals (since Paul II, 1464-71); white for the Pope.
The Code of Canon Law requires clerics always to wear a suitable ecclesiastical dress, of the style established by local laws or customs (can. 136).
The priest's dress, however, must in every case be the cassock when he celebrates Mass (can. 811, § 1); and it requires religious to wear the dress proper to each religious order, unless the superior authorizes otherwise (can. 596). It further forbids anyone else to wear ecclesiastical or religious dress (can. 492, § 3 and 683); which may not be worn even by clerics reduced to the lay state (can. 213, § 1), nor by those to whom its use has been forbidden as a penalty for some crime (cann. 2300, 2304, 2305), and furthermore, as regards religious dress, by clerics who have left their order or been secularized (cann. 639-640).
Grave canonical sanctions exist against clerics who unlawfully fail to wear the prescribed ecclesiastical dress (cann. 136 § 3, 188, no. 7, 2379); from which it is rightly deduced that these are provisions that produce a grave moral obligation, although, as is obvious, there may be plausible reasons that allow them to dress otherwise, as, for example, a state of persecution, or a journey in a region of different custom.
Article 498 of the Italian Penal Code, substantially reproducing (but, according to the more common interpretation, extending it also to non-Catholic churches) the provision of article 29 of the Concordat, punishes with a fine of from 1,000 to 10,000 lire (now to be multiplied by eight) anyone who unlawfully wears ecclesiastical dress in public. Although, under the Concordat, for such a penalty to be applicable to clerics or religious deprived of the use of the dress, the measure of deprivation had to have been notified to the civil authority, now such notification no longer seems necessary, given that the Penal Code does not mention it. - See Pl. VI.
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