CLERGYMAN’S COLOURS

Evening Star, Issue 21879, 16 November 1934, Page 14

CLERGYMAN’S COLOURS

The world had not been going very long before mankind began to give external and visible expression to theninward feelings by wearing garments of colours that suggested themselves as appropriate. White betokened jov; grey or black, grief. It is from that beginning that the various colours, puzzling to many of the laity, of the stoles (long strips of silk passed over the neck and hanging down in front to about the knees) of the clergy have developed. A parson of the Established Church may one day wear stoles of white, red, black, and green! Each has its symbolism. On a Sunday morning he may have a wedding, and for that his stole would be of white silk. Joy. The same colour would be worn at joyous festivals, such as Easter or Christmas. If duty called him to take a funeral service in the afternoon he would wear a black stole. Black symbolises mourning and sorrow. If the Sunday were one of the “ Sundays after Trinity ” —there are some twenty of them, stretching from June to November—the stole worn at the ordinary services would be green. Trinity Sundays are “ ordinary ” ones, and green is the ordinary colour of Nature. But if a Saint’s Day fell on one of those Sundays, and the saint commemorated was also a martyr, then the clergyman would wear a rod stole—red being the colour of blood. In the seasons of Lent and Advent he would wear purple. That is the traditional ecclesiastical penitential colour, and Lent and Advent are “ penitential ” seasons. Purple, by the way, is the mourning colour for Royalty. The “ hoods ” wor n by the clergy vary in colour, too, but that is merely because the different universities, for distinction, have adopted varying colours. Black and red is the Oxford M.A. hood: black and white silk the Cambridge M.A.