Liturgical Colours by Arthur
Crumly
The
wearing of differing colours for vestments according to the season or feast,
familiar to us today, is of late origin and does not appear to have begun until
the ninth century at the earliest.
At first, vestments were of one colour, white. Black was sometimes worn as a
sign of mourning. A tenth or eleventh century writer speaks only of white
vestments, except he refers to scarlet stripes (clavi) on the diaconal
dalmatic, and says that black vestments were used during the procession on the
feast of the Purification.
By the twelfth century, Rome had a canon regulating the use of colours for
vestments. Pope Innocent III, who reigned from 1198 to 1216, is the first to
mention four colours : white which the Roman Church used on feasts of
confessors, virgins and on other joyful days; red used for martyrs, of the Holy
Cross, and at Pentecost. Some, it seems also wore red for the feast of All
Saints, but there is nothing strange in this as the feast was in origin the
anniversary of the dedication, in AD 609, of the church of Our Lady, Queen of
All Martyrs (the Pantheon in Rome). However, the Roman Curia wore white on this
day. Black was used in penitential seasons and for Masses for the Dead ; green
was used on common days because it was "midway between black and
white". Pope Innocent regards violet as a variant of black and says the
former was used on the feast of the Holy Innocents and Laetare Sunday. Scarlet
and saffron yellow (coccineus et croceus) were considered as versions of red
and green. Rose coloured vestments, he tells us, were sometimes worn for feasts
of martyrs and yellow for confessors.
Until the introduction of chemical dyes in the nineteenth century, it was very
difficult to produce a real black. Black was in reality a very dark shade of
blue or green or brown. At the Catholic Church in Croydon there is (or was some
years ago) a set of "black" velvet vestments which date from the
earlier years of the nineteenth century when vegetable dyes were still in use.
When the priest stands at the altar wearing them the vestments look black, but
laid out on the vestment press in the sacristy with the light shining on them
from a different angle it is clear they are a very dark navy blue. When I was a
boy, many of the old servers' cassocks (the cassocks were old, not the servers)
in my parish church had faded very badly and patches of them were seen to be
brown or green; they had been dyed with vegetable extracts.
The medieval Rites employed a greater number of colours and, because it was a
matter of custom not rubric, there was considerable variation as to what
colours were used for different feasts and seasons. Parish churches might have
followed something of the colour scheme of the cathedral or some other great
church, but much would depend in smaller churches on the number of sets (ore
suits, as they are usually called in medieval records) of vestments which the local
church owned.
The sacramentary of one great church in the Middle Ages listed as the vestments
for use on ferias as "any old vestments the sacristan sets out" while
elsewhere "the best vestments" irrespective of colour were specified
for great feasts. The Bishop of Salisbury had vestments stitched with plates of
gold, which tinkled as he moved. They must have very heavy to wear.
Amongst colours used then, but not in current use, were blue, yellow and
unbleached linen. The last was the colour for Lent, sometimes "ash",
a greyish colour was used for "Lenten array". In the Lyons Rite in
France this was still the Lenten colour until the liturgical upheaval of the
last three decades of the twentieth century, and, indeed may, for all I know,
still be so in their New Order of Masses.
Blue and yellow were differently used in various places in, for example, the
Sarum Use; blue was the colour for Virgins and Widows in some colour schemes
with yellow for Confessors, in other places use of the two colours was reversed.
Yellow continued until modern times as the colour for Confessors in the
Carmelite Rite. That Rite also made use of blue as the colour for feasts of the
Blessed Virgin Mary. These two colours are not used in the Roman Rite;
although, exceptionally, blue was worn for feasts of Our Lady in the Roman Rite
in Spain and, because it was converted from that country, in Spanish America.
In Florence in the Middle Ages, red and white striped vestments are known to
have been worn on the feast of Corpus Christi : the colours of bread and wine.
In the Gallican Rites of France, red was the usual colour for the Blessed
Sacrament. During the French Revolution, bishops and priests escaping from the
Terror came to England. Some re-introduced the practice of burning a lamp
before the Blessed Sacrament in the then newly established Catholic chapels,
hence in many churches today the red sanctuary lamp is in the Eucharistic
liturgical colour of the Gallican Rites, not that of the Roman Rite.
It was not until the Missal of Pope St.Pius V, that there were rubrics
requiring the uniform scheme of five colours for the Roman Rite:-
White (albus) which is worn for the seasons of Christmas and Easter, on feasts
of Our Lord and of Our Lady, on feasts of angels, the feast of All Saints and
the feasts of saints who are not martyrs.
Red, which represents fire and blood, is worn on the feasts of the Precious
Blood, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Cross, apostles and martyrs.
Green vestments, the colour of hope, are used for the Sundays and Ferias after
Epiphany and those after Pentecost.
Violet is the colour of penitence, is worn in Advent and Lent, and on Rogation
and Ember Days (except those of Pentecost when red is worn), the season of
Septuagesima and Vigils (except those of the Ascension and Pentecost).
Black , the colour of mourning, is used for Good Friday and for Requiems.
Exceptionally, when Masses of the day are being celebrated (away from the High
Altar) when the Blessed Sacrament is being exposed for the Forty Hours
Devotion, on the Commemoration of All Souls (November 2nd), violet vestments
are worn instead of black.
Rose colour (color rosaceus) vestments are prescribed by the Caerimoniale
Episcoporum for use in cathedral churches and may be worn elsewhere instead of
violet on the third Sunday of Advent (Gaudete) and mid-Lent Sunday (Laetare);
on those two Sundays the Pope blessed golden roses for presentation to Catholic
queens.
White may be replaced by real cloth of silver and white, red and green, but not
violet or black, by real cloth of gold.
The Missal of 1962 (the reforms actually date from 1961) modifies the use of
some of the colours prescribed by the Missal of Pope St.Pius V. The Pian Missal
specifies violet vestments for the feast of the Holy Innocents (28th December),
except when it falls on a Sunday when red replaces violet. The reform changed
this to red on the feast on whatever day it fell, even though Pope Innocent III
had recorded violet as being their colour even in his day. Red has been worn on
the Octave day of the Holy Innocents, but the Octave was abolished in 1961.
Another variation which was "tidied up" was the replacement of violet
vestments for the procession of candles on the feast of the Purification (2nd
February) with white ones to match those of the Mass which follows. The
procession seems, in fact, to be older than the Mass and, until 1961, followed
the normal rule of violet vestments for processions of supplication.
The Holy Week reforms of 1956 which (with slight modifications) were
incorporated into the 1962 Missal, also changed some of the traditional
liturgical colours eg: the colour for the Palm Sunday procession was changed
from violet to red and black for the Communion Rite on Good Friday was changed
to violet.
As Abbot Cabrol wrote, "colours…have their own symbolism and speak to the
eye: black tells of grief and mourning; violet is a sign of penance, red
reminds us of the blood of the martyrs; white denotes purity, and green
exuberant life. How much more expressive and lively the liturgy becomes when we
try to discover the meanings of its formulas and rites."
Arthur
Crumly was the Principal Master of Ceremonies to the Latin Mass Society
for 25 years, an Altar Server for over 60 years, and Master of Ceremonies for over 50; he sadly passed from this earthly realm
in May 2011.
(N.b.
this article was also published on the Latin Mass Society's May 2001
Newsletter.)
