“But what went you out to see? A man clothed in soft garments? Behold they that are clothed in soft garments, are in the houses of kings.” Matthew 11:8

In addition to its famous defence of the veneration of holy images, the Second Council of Nicaea, held in 787, promulgated a series of canons regulating the Orthodox clergy. Canon 16, “That a man in the priesthood should not wear expensive clothes,” begins with these words: “All indulgence and adornment of the body is alien to the priestly order. Therefore all those bishops and clerics who deck themselves out in brilliant and showy clothes should be called to order, and if they persist, let them be punished.”1 The decree goes on to spell out what features amount to an unacceptable degree of luxury for the clergy: garments made of silk fabrics, having trimmings of different colours, or embroidered with various designs.2 The canon concludes by quoting Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:8, “they that wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses,” words that, in their original context, implicitly praised the rugged dress of John the Baptist.

The question confronting anyone who approaches the subject of luxury in Byzantine liturgical dress is how a church that acknowledged the authority of this canon – which, as we shall see, was reiterated and commented upon over the course of several centuries – nonetheless developed vestments for the Divine Liturgy that violated its express prohibitions: vestments made of silk fabrics, embroidered with various designs, and trimmed not only with contrasting colours but with pearls and gilded silver (fig. 1). What happened within Byzantium to cause such a radical change in the attitude towards luxury in the vesture of the clergy? Clearly a major cultural shift occurred between the prohibitions against such luxury in the eighth-century canons and the actual production of vestments of silk and gold that survive from the twelfth century onward.3

To tell the story of luxury in Byzantine liturgical vestments, one must really tell two stories in parallel: one about luxurious Western liturgical vestments made from imported Byzantine silks and another about the enrichment of liturgical vestments in Byzantium itself. These two developments did not unfold simultaneously – luxurious vestments in the West took the lead by almost two centuries over those in Byzantium – but the driving inspiration behind both can be traced ultimately to the Byzantine court and its carefully cultivated image of luxe. The results in the medieval Latin West and the Byzantine East are visually distinct from one another. The former is dominated by the woven patterns of silk textile, the latter by the application of gold embroidery. Both, however, ultimately arrived at a visual presentation of the clergy that echoed the splendours of the imperial court in Constantinople.

Luxury Silks in the Latin West

By the eighth century, when the canon against luxury in the dress of the clergy was promulgated, Byzantium was already famed for its patterned silks, the best class of which were given away as diplomatic gifts, while others were an important element of Byzantium’s international trade.4 Some of these luxury silks were indeed made into vestments but, so far as one can ascertain, only in the medieval West. Reginald of Durham describes the purple silk vestments, presumably imported from Byzantium or the Islamic East, that elicited admiration when the tomb of St. Cuthbert was opened in 1104:

“The dalmatic ... offers a reddish purple tone, quite unknown in our time even to connoisseurs. It still retains the bloom of its original freshness and beauty throughout, and when handled it makes a kind of crackling sound because of the solidity and compactness of the fine, skillful weaving. The most subtle figures of flowers and little beasts, very minute in both workmanship and design, are interwoven in this fabric.”5

We can imagine the effect of such a splendid purple dalmatic through the justly famed griffin silk – part of the lower portion of a dalmatic – preserved in the Church of Valère in Sion (fig. 2).6 Other vestment fragments from Sion attest to the prestige of the see, whose bishops held the concurrent title of Counts of Valais from the end of the tenth century. Although it is possible that some of these textiles might have been looted from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, the impressively large scale of the patterns, the presence of the true purple dye, and the color combination of purple and yellow (expressly forbidden from commercial export by the early tenth-century Book of the Eparch) attest to the silks’ probable origin as imperial gifts from Byzantium.7

In fact, a substantial portion of the most spectacular Byzantine silks to have survived were made into vestments, whether the large-scale, eagle-patterned samite making up the chasuble of St. Albuin in the Cathedral Treasury of Brixen (Bressanone) or the monochromatic “incised twill” chasuble of St. Willigis of Mainz, now in Munich, both dated to the late tenth or early eleventh century (fig. 3).8

The fashion for vestments woven of silk seems to have arisen in Western Europe in the tenth century in conjunction with the gathering of bishops as counselors to kings and emperors, as the recent study by Maureen Miller has demonstrated.9 The chasuble of St. Willigis is a case in point: Willigis had been a close advisor to Emperor Otto II prior to his appointment to the archbishopric of Mainz in 975, a see which carried with it the role of archchancellor for Germany.10 Silk vestments befitted the princes of the “imperial church.”11 Not only did luxury silk vestments allow bishops and archbishops to dress appropriately for their advisory roles “in the houses of kings,” they allowed an opportunity for Western secular rulers to regift Byzantine textiles that had come their way with ideological strings attached.12 As I have argued elsewhere, the prestation of textiles associated with the Byzantine court was meant to assimilate the recipients into an imagined hierarchy dependent on the throne of Constantinople.13 One can imagine that the kings and emperors who received these Byzantine silks, recognizing the message of their own subordination implicit in the gifts, reoriented it through regifting. Through giving the textiles to their clergy, these rulers could both evade the original subtext of the Byzantine gift and transform it into a message of their own superiority over the princes of the Church. The ultimate result was that silk textiles of a sort normally reserved for high-ranking courtiers in Byzantium were used to clothe high-ranking clerics in the West.

Beyond the actual vestments surviving in church treasuries in Western Europe, we have the depictions of clergy wearing dalmatics and chasubles that are obviously meant to represent patterned silks from the Eastern Mediterranean, as in the dedication page of the Gospels of Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim (ca. 1015) (fig. 4) or in the twelfth-century frescoes of sainted clergy in the crypt of the cathedral at Aquileia (fig. 5).14

Sadly, we have very little textual documentation about the arrival of these textiles in the West. We have at least the report of the hapless Liutprand of Cremona, who, when leaving Constantinople to return from his unsuccessful diplomatic mission in 968, was deprived of several purple silks, at least some of which he claims to have bought “for the use of the church.” Byzantine customs officials confiscated the textiles on the grounds that they were too precious to be exported except as imperial gifts.15 On the other hand, we are fortunate to have the preserved lists of gifts to Islamic rulers – primarily the Fatimids of Egypt – recorded in the Book of Gifts and Rarities (Kitab al-Hadāyā wa al-Tuḥaf), which gives some sense of the kinds of textile gifts that the Byzantine emperors distributed to their fellow princes.16 In a handful of cases, the descriptions are detailed enough to correlate to surviving material from the medieval West. Among the textiles sent by Romanos I Lekapenos to the Abbasid Caliph al-Radi (r. 934–940) are several that are singled out for their woven patterns of eagles, lions, elephants, winged beasts, hunters, and animal combats. A further silk is described as bearing the image of an emperor on horseback carrying a standard.17 This may be compared to a fragment found in 1982 in the grave of one of the canons of Bamberg Cathedral (fig. 6).18 Despite its fragmentary state, it has a palette of a dark green figure on a reddish-purple ground – the same as the Brixen eagle silk – whilst the pattern repeat is approximately 80 cm, making it comparable in scale and ambition to the famous elephant silk from the shrine of Charlemagne. The Arabic Book of Gifts thus helps to confirm the likely Constantinopolitan origin of the textile, which was perhaps given to Bamberg by its great patron, Emperor Henry II (r. 1014–1025). Given the other categories of motifs named in the tenth-century gift, it is likely that many other silks with these designs, now surviving as vestments or fragments of vestments in European church treasuries, might also have originated as Byzantine imperial gifts (fig. 7).19

Luxury Vestments in the Byzantine Church

The Arabic Book of Gifts also highlights the absence of evidence for luxury silks used as vestments within the Orthodox Church at this period. The source gives us an inventory of the liturgical furnishings sent from the emperor in Constantinople to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (which lay under Fatimid rule at the time) upon its rebuilding by Constantine IX Monomachos in 1053. Among all the various jewelled and gilded crosses, vessels, and chandeliers and the richly brocaded silk hangings, there is no mention of liturgical vestments per se.20 The absence of silk vestments for the clergy from this imperial gift is echoed by the absence – at least until the end of the eleventh century – of vestments made of ornamented textiles in depictions of the clergy in Byzantine manuscripts, fresco paintings, and mosaics. Thus the source tends to confirm what we have already observed, namely, that the use of Byzantine luxury silks for liturgical vestments was an innovation of clergy in the Latin West rather than of the Byzantines themselves.

By the mid-eleventh century, however, there is evidence that the taste for luxury was beginning to have an impact on the dress of the Byzantine clergy, although this change came largely in the form of embroidered ornament rather than patterned silks.21 Vestments in use for centuries, such as the epitrachelion (priestly stole) and omophorion (episcopal stole) were increasingly ornamented with gold embroidery, whilst new insignia, such as the epimanikia (liturgical cuffs) and encheirion or epigonation (a stylized handkerchief suspended from the zonē) appear around this time specifically as vehicles for embroidered ornament (fig. 8).22

These last insignia are mentioned for the first time in a letter from Patriarch Peter III of Antioch to Patriarch Michael Keroularios in 1054.23 The mention comes in the context of a reply to Keroularios’ complaint about various “abuses” by the clergy of the Western church, including their uncanonical use of silk vestments.24 While Peter of Antioch agrees with his Constantinopolitan colleague about his more substantive complaints, such as the introduction of the filioque clause into the creed, he also attempts to soothe Keroularios’ indignation over more trivial Latin practices. Against Keroularios’ complaint about the Latin clergy wearing silk vestments, the Patriarch of Antioch points out that such “abuses” as silk vestments and gold embroidery were also common among the Byzantines.25 This is the first hint in the textual record of Byzantine use of luxury vestments made of silk and embroidered in gold, and it stands in sharp contrast to the position – staked out not only by Michael Keroularios but also by canonists of the eleventh and twelfth centuries such as John Zonaras and Theodore Balsamon, who agreed that plain, woolen vestments were the appropriate dress of the clergy. Although the original canons promulgated in the seventh and eighth centuries might have been referring primarily to the everyday dress of the clergy rather than to what they wore in the course of the liturgy, the contexts and details of the later writings imply that liturgical vestments are the focus of concern.26

John Zonaras, for instance, commenting on canon 16 of the Second Council of Nicaea, condemns vestments made of figured silks or affixed with patches of contrasting colour, reiterating the earlier council’s claim that such garments are an innovation.27 He and other canonists who comment on vestments are at pains to affirm that they should be woolen, of a single colour, and unadorned, despite evidence that the contrary was increasingly the case. Theodore Balsamon’s commentary on canon 27 of the Quinisext Council spells out that the prohibition applies not just to “unclerical” forms of dress but to various forms of ostentation: “the costly gold-embroidered borders, the things commonly called ribbons, the letters and appliqués, and the garments dyed purple with the sea-snail [dye].”28 Elsewhere, he reiterates these prohibitions but acknowledges that the rules were being openly violated by his contemporaries:

“While the clergy who dress splendidly in garments called samite (having not only borders of contrasting color but also sprinklings of gold, and letters of precious gold besides) are condemned by the canon, some have said that it was promulgated on account of the disorder then prevailing in the churches and the great irreverence of the clergy [during Iconoclasm], but that nowadays the canon does not apply, when, by the grace of God, all is good order and piety in the Church, and the clergy minister in splendid garments for the glory of God. But they have heard not to speak so speciously. This canon is universal, and its contents are bound to hold sway and be in force to ages of ages. Those conducting themselves contrary to the canon are rightly to be penalized if they will not accept correction.”29

Balsamon insists on the continued enforcement of the canon against rich clerical dress, but it is clear from his commentary that less rigorous ecclesiastics saw luxurious liturgical vestments in a more positive light.

In fact, remains of gold-embroidered vestments – roughly contemporary with the writings of Zonaras and Balsamon – were only recently uncovered in the grave of a Bulgarian bishop in a ruined church at Kardzhali, in the Rhodope Mountains of Bulgaria.30 Interestingly, the excavation yielded no trace of a phelonion, which may indicate that it was made of wool, which is less durable than silk under burial conditions.31 Similarly, only the silk appliqué crosses and gold-woven bands survive from the bishop’s outer stole, the omophorion, which – as Byzantine sources repeatedly stipulate – was to be made of wool to symbolize the lost sheep carried on the shoulders.32 The other insignia, however – the epitrachelion, epigonation, and epimanikia, were decorated with gold embroidery on a silk ground. The best surviving of these is the epimanikion from the bishop’s left hand, which shows the Theotokos in a medallion, surrounded by decorative patterns in gold embroidery (Fig. 9).

What was the impetus for this new embrace of luxury in liturgical dress? The increased contact between Byzantine and Western clergy in the era of the Crusades is unlikely to have played a decisive role. If this had been the case, then Balsamon, who is widely considered a leading figure in the hardening of Byzantine prejudices against the Western Church, would surely not have passed up an opportunity to blame the Latins for their deleterious influence on the Orthodox.33 On the contrary, he supplies a rationale from within the Greek Church for the use of splendid vestments, namely, the better to glorify God, even though he dismisses it as unpersuasive.34 I have elsewhere suggested that competition with the imperial court may have motivated the increasing ornamentation and luxury of liturgical vestments in Byzantium.35 The mechanism by which this dynamic was carried out differed from that which drove the introduction of luxury in liturgical vestments in the Catholic West. Whilst in certain cases, including, allegedly, Michael Keroularios himself, bishops arrogated to themselves insignia formerly associated with the emperor and his officials, more often the influence seems to have been less direct.36 Rather, in a worldview that increasingly saw the church as the “court” of Christ, it is only natural that his servants, the clergy, should be clad in vestments befitting their role.37

A wonderful illustration of this attitude comes in the long apocalyptic vision in the Life of Saint Basil the Younger, likely written in the second half of the tenth century.38 There, in a prelude to a celestial liturgy celebrated by Christ himself, the Lord bestows robes of honor on the Virgin, John the Baptist, the twelve apostles, and the seventy disciples: “He gave them imperial robes befitting God, in myriad forms, noetically fabricated, whose loveliness and beauty no mortal mind can wholly comprehend or describe in words.”39 The scene is framed as a court audience, with Christ, who is repeatedly called ὁ μέγας βασιλεῦς, the great king, enthroned in the midst of the heavenly church and receiving gifts and homage from the assembled saints. The parallels to actual court ceremonial recorded by Liutprand of Cremona are striking.40 One can envision the episode as a version of the famous full-page miniature of the Byzantine court in the Paris Homilies of John Chrysostom, which in turn bears a close resemblance to depictions of the deësis (fig. 10).41 The account of this eschatalogical liturgy given in the Life of Saint Basil the Younger foreshadows by several centuries the merging of imperial and high-priestly roles for Christ in art of the late fourteenth century, as in a famous icon in the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, in which Christ wears an archepiscopal sakkos decorated with crosses, as well as both the loros of a Byzantine emperor and the omophorion of an Orthodox bishop (fig. 11).42