STOLA (more anciently orarium). — It is a liturgical insignia common to deacons, priests, and bishops, but worn differently: by deacons over the left shoulder, diagonally across the body, and knotted under the right arm; by priests hanging from the neck and crossed over the chest when worn over the alb, or simply hanging with the two ends parallel; by bishops, who never cross it because they already wear the pectoral cross. It is given to the deacon and priest at ordination.
It is a strip of silk 200–50 cm long and 8–10 cm wide; the one worn with the chasuble has a cross in the middle and at the end of each section (sixteenth century), while the one used over the surplice is often more ornate and richer. It follows the rules of the liturgical colors.
The s. is found in the East as early as the fourth century as an insignia of the lower-ranking clergy (Council of Laodicea), with the following distinction: the deacon wears the s. called « orarion » visibly over the left shoulder (not under the outer garment) and hanging loosely, whereas the priest wears that called « epitrachelion », hanging from the neck. The higher ranks wear the pallium. Both insignia have the same origin, not as ecclesiastical institutions but as imperial privileges; the pallium is made of wool, the s. of linen or silk. In the West, outside Rome, in Spain, the s. belongs to bishops, priests, and deacons. Deacons wear it over the left shoulder, hanging in front and behind over the dalmatic, always white and made of linen or wool; from the twelfth century it is worn diagonally across the body and like a scarf, and from the fifteenth century in the color of the dalmatic and beneath II.
In the Ambrosian rite it is still worn over the dalmatic today. The priests of Spain wore it around the neck like bishops, but as early as the Council of Prague in 675 it was crossed
over the chest; this manner was introduced everywhere from the fourteenth century onward and was prescribed for priests by the missale pianum. In Gaul the s. is found as an insignia of bishops, called « pallium » by pseudo-Germanus; the diaconal s. was worn over the alb; the priestly s. was so characteristic of priests in the ninth century that they wore it even when traveling. In Rome, on the other hand, it was not a special insignia, and subdeacons and acolytes also wore it under the chasuble; it was called « orarion » and was above all a distinctive insignia separating the clergy from the laity.
Around the tenth century, when the subdeacon and the acolyte no longer wear the chasuble, the s. becomes the proper insignia of the deacon, priest, and bishop. From this time onward, the use and meaning of the s. are uniform throughout the West.
The origin of the s. and of its name is still obscure. The name orarium (Latin os = mouth, face) comes from Latin, whereas the term « s. » derives from Greek. Wilpert derives the deacons’ orarium from the mappa used when serving at table and worn over the left shoulder; deacons were ministers at the Eucharistic and agape tables.
Ministers of pagan sacrifices, like table servants, were provided with such a mappula. Through contabulatio, this mappula became a strip or band. The priestly orarium, a true orarium or scarf used to protect the face from the cold in winter and from perspiration in summer, likewise passed from the contabulated form to that of a strip. But all these explanations leave its origin obscure, and L. Duchesne’s derivation from an imperial insignia is preferred, as Klauser has recently maintained. The term « s. » comes from the designation used in Gaul and derived from Greek to designate not a woman’s garment, but a distinctive garment in the scriptural sense (Apec. 6, 11; 7, 9, 14).