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Abstract
By the end of the twelfth century, Orthodox liturgical vestments began to be decorated with figural embroideries depicting Christ, the saints, and narrative scenes drawn from sacred history. The images embroidered on liturgical vestments relate them to Byzantine exegeses of the Divine Liturgy, which explain the Eucharist as a symbolic unfolding of the entire life of Christ. Each action of the rite corresponds to a particular moment from Christ's life, be it the Annunciation, Nativity or Ascension. Just as the visualization of this anamnesis is reflected in the choice of scenes from the life of Christ for frescoes and icons, so it is also, I propose, reflected in the depiction of these same scenes on liturgical vestments. The celebrant, ministering in persona Christi, symbolically re-enacts Christ's works through his role in the liturgy, and these events from the life of Christ accordingly find a place as images on his costume. Furthermore, the repetition of the same images in several media establishes a striking visual analogy that relates the celebrant to the church building and its icons. Both surrounded by and clothed in holy images, he would appear to the faithful as a living extension of the church itself.
Previous scholars have argued that the Orthodox clergy actively borrowed elements from the dress of the emperor and his court in the late Byzantine period. I argue that, in addition, the decoration of liturgical vestments adapts the hierarchical code of imperial imagery used on court costume. Byzantine court officials wore garments bearing imperial portraits, symbolic emblems, and particular colors to signify the power vested in them by the emperor. Without exactly paralleling the court garments, late Byzantine liturgical vestments bore analogous decoration that established a symbolic hierarchy dependent on Christ rather than the emperor as its head.
