What Are Vestments?

Vestments are sacred garments worn by Orthodox Christian clergy to glorify God and communicate meaning during liturgical celebrations (Kalaitzis 2023; McGuckin 2011, 622). Clergy take their vestments upon ordination (the sacrament that occurs when one becomes a clergy member), and the garments are "liturgically, functionally, [and] ontologically related to the priesthood, which comes down directly from the Holy Spirit" (Kalaitzis, 2023).

Orthodox believe that the requirements for vestments were given by God in the Old Testament, and that asceticism and monasticism further influenced their current form (Kalaitzis 2023). This view presents vestments as an example of a conservative tradition (Gross 2017), stating that they have remained largely the same through time. However, others view vestments as a more dynamic, or frequently changing, tradition (Gross 2017), with Woodfin (2012) insisting on the "continuous changes underway both in the vestments themselves and in the visual and cultural contexts that they inhabited" (xxxii).

Image: Priest during Easter service

Vestments As Symbols

Throughout this website, the word "symbol" is used. Kalaitzis (2023) clarifies the meaning of this word in the Greek understanding, in which the definition is not focused on metaphor or 1:1 connection; instead, symbols are a source of connection between "many things coming together and meeting on the specific point." Thus, vestments are not just pieces of clothing used in a ritual, but symbolic, material expressions of the connection between divinity and humanity, the visible and invisible, and eternity and that which is just history (Kalaitzis, 2023). This aligns with Sims and Stephens' (2011) contemplation of anthropological rituals as spaces for making the intangible and frequently hidden become visible and concrete (100).