Another passage, somewhat later in date, may be cited as a type of a large class of passages very apt to mislead too credulous students. It is the Gaulish description of St Berignus cited by Lipomanus (de Vitis Sanctor., Ed. Surius, Venice, 1581, vol. vi, p. 4), 'Vidi quendam hominem peregrinum, capite tonso, cujus habitus differt ab habitu nostro, vitaque eius nostrae dissimilis est.' The context, however, makes it plain that secular, not religious, dress is intended.
And when we refer to the few early frescoes and mosaics which have come down to us from the primitive epoch, we find ecclesiastics, apostles, and Our Lord Himself, represented as habited in the tunic and toga or pallium of Roman everyday life.
We gather, therefore, from these scattered shreds of evidence that, during the first centuries of the Christian church, no vestments were definitely set apart for the exclusive use of the clergy who officiated at Divine service: that clergy and people wore the same style of vesture both in church and out, subject only to the accidental distinctions of quality and cleanliness.
Fashion in dress or ornament is subject to constant changes which, though perhaps individually trifling, in time amount to complete revolutions; but the devotees of any religion, true or false, are by nature conservative of its doctrines or observances. Combined with the conclusions at which we have just arrived, these two universally recognised statements yield us presumptive evidence of the truth of the theory which views the Roman civil dress as the true progenitor of mediaeval ecclesiastical costume. We have seen that at first the worshippers wore the same costume both at worship and at home. Fashion would slowly change unchecked from year to year, while ecclesiastical conservatism would retard such changes so far as they concerned the dress worn at Divine service: small differences would spring into existence between everyday dress and the dress of the worshipper, and these differences, at first hardly perceptible, would increase as the process went on, till the two styles of costume became sharply distinguished from one another.
Parallel cases are not wanting to show that this is not altogether mere random theorizing. For example, the ministers of the Reformed Church of Holland maintained, till comparatively recently, a picturesque fashion of dress over a century old, which they wore only when conducting Divine service.[13] Perhaps, however, the objection may be urged against this view of the case, that if the process were such as we have described, it should apply as well to the worshippers as to the minister: that they, as well as he, should wear service-robes. It is possible that this would actually have been the case had the church services maintained their most primitive form, as St Paul describes it in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: 'When ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation';[14] that is, had all the worshippers maintained an equally prominent position instead of selecting one of their number to conduct their services. As it was, the outstanding position of the minister rendered his equipment especially liable to such stereotyping as we have imagined.