I have never been a "fan" (if such word can be used in this context) of high-back vestments. It's probably a result of my upbringing having been a high-backed-less one; one tends to like what one has grown accustomed to and eschew perceived other-ness. They have also always recalled to my imagination, of all things, the Monascheiwans from movie
The Fifth Element (vide supra).
Many things said about Orthodox vestiture, practices, and paraphernalia are conjecture or educated guesses that have been handed down as gospel. That said, I'm happy to see learned discussion that attempts to get at the facts over symbolizing, mystifying, or repeating half remembered explanations. The below is from the
Orthodox PSALM Yahoo! Group:
As much as I hate to say it (being a priest who will only ever wear low-back phelonia) Fr. Dn. Sergius is correct: the high-back phelonion is rather closely related to the original conical phelonion/chasuble.
There are two "creation myths" about the high-back phelon, both of which, I am convinced, are untrue. The first one, admittedly the older one, is that the Russians invented it to keep the wind off of their necks during the cold winters. What I had always been told. While this idea conjures up images of shivering priests in drafty wooden churches and admittedly has a certain charm, I don't think it has any historical basis. If the Russians wanted warm necks, they should have just hopped over the border to Armenia and ordered a vagas or two!
The second "myth" is, as far as I can tell, of more recent origin and spread thanks to Ancient Faith Radio and the "opinionated tailor". In this version, the high-back phelonion is Athonite and was created by monks who wanted to have "one-size-fits-all" phelonia.
I think the reality is much less deliberate than either of these ideas. We know that the original form of phelonion was conical in shape, and pretty uniform through East and West for 1000 years, give or take. It was a cone of fabric with a hole cut out of the top, but unlike the "poncho" chasuble worn in many RC churches today, the neck was scooped out, leaving--you guessed it--a high back.
If you look at a Western conical chasuble, like this one from the 11th century...
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| St. Vitalis chasuble, bell shaped originate from 11th century and is now in St. Peter archbishop abbey, Salzburg. |
...and compare it with a 15th century Russian phelonion....
...it is abundantly clear that the Athonites nor the Russians invented the high-back. The only difference between the St. Vitalis Chasuble and the Russian model is that the latter has a slightly wider neck and the addition of buttons to shorten the front.
Here is another example of a Western-style conical chasuble on a priest:
For more photos of Russian phelonia over the centuries, see here.
So, yes, the Russians shortened the front, and widened and stiffened the neckline. Maybe they even did that to keep the cold off their necks. But I think the evolution of the high-back was much more gradual and less deliberate than many would like to think.
S'Bohom!
Fr. David
Posts
The western conical chasubles seem to look more like the ancient phelonia depicted in icons of the holy fathers than modern phelonia do.
ReplyDeleteWe may have some answers to this mystery next month when Oxford UP is supposed to publish a new book by Warren Woodfin entitled "The Embodied Icon: Liturgical Vestments and Sacramental Power in Byzantium."
ReplyDeleteLook outside of the church for your answers. Most priestly vestments have there parallels in the culture of ancient Rome. A high-back vestment is similar to a hooded Roman army cloak. When the hood is not worn up but down the fabric piles up behind the head. It was a common outer garment pattern of the era.
ReplyDeleteJustinian
Kh. Krista West asked me to post this response:
ReplyDelete"Josephus Flavius, in his reposting of Fr. David's historical comments, has offered me an opportunity for clarity on this rather hazy matter. When I mentioned the high-back or "Athonite" phelonion, I was referring to a standardization of the garment on Mt. Athos (among other Eastern monastic centers) rather than its origins, and I regret that I did not communicate this adequately in the podcast (I referred to it obliquely by mentioning the difficulty of dart tailoring and how this would most likely have been a later development, but this wasn't clearly stated). Rather than promulgating yet another high-back "myth", I would tend to agree with Fr. David that the high-back phelonion is not far removed from the basic design of the historical, conical-shaped phelonion and its secular predecessor: the paenula or cloak. If one examines the apse mosaic of St. Apollinare in Classe (one of the earliest mosaics depicting liturgical garments similar to our present-day usage), you can see that the phelonion St. Apollinaris wears is slightly mounded around the neck area--a result of the lack of dart shaping in the neck area (http://www.sacred-destinations.com/italy/ravenna-sant-apollinare-classe-photos/slides/xti_7382p.htm.) Thank you Fr. David for pointing out the incompleteness of my original explanation!"
What I know of is that the conical western chasuble and the Byzantine phelonion have a shared ancestory, that being the ancient chasula of the Roman Empire. However, if the issue had been drafty church buildings, then the Icelanders, Swedes, Norwegians, and Finns would have done the same with their chasubles, for they have built wooden "stave" churches in some of the most inhospitable land in Northern Europe. And while the Eastern phelonion have retained its ancient character, savefor the front being cutaway to facilitate the movement of the priest's arms, the Western conical chasuble gave way to the gothic and monastic chasubles, only to be further "butchered" by the Roman Church into the "fiddleback" chasuble normally associated with the Latin Mass.
ReplyDelete