History of Copes, Pocknee

We must now return to the West to say something about the cope. The older ecclesiologists tended to treat this vestment as a distinct and later innovation on the chasuble; and they did not trace its use as a ceremonial vestment before the eleventh century. They traced this vestment from the lacerna or byrrus.

But this view ignores important evidence. The celebrated Ravenna mosaics belonging to the sixth century provide us with much earlier evidence. Thus one of these mosaics at San Apollinare in Classe depicts Melchisedec in what is undoubtedly a cope with a morse as he offers the unbloody sacrifice of bread and wine in contrast to the offerings of Abel and Abraham. While at San Vitale, Ravenna, Melchisedec is similarly arrayed. At Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, Melchisedec is also arrayed in a cope. In the sixth century mosaic at San Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, the Jewish high priest is depicted in cope and morse. At Parenzo, another sixth century mosaic shows an unknown figure with a nimbus, also wearing a cope. Therefore, the evidence for this kind of vestment is at least as early as the sixth century. There seems very little doubt that the cope is, in fact, derived from the open fronted paenula.

We have mentioned the variations in the form of the primitive paenula, as sometimes open at the front and sometimes sewn up. Also it sometimes had a hood and sometimes was without. The form of the vestment closed right up to the front did not lend itself to use when anything had to be carried such as a reliquary. Hence the chasuble came to be confined to the celebrant at the altar in the West, while the open version came to be used by persons other than the officiant, and at other times than at the celebration of the Eucharist. In the seventh century we find the open-fronted version of the vestment referred to as the cappa; and in the ninth century it is still being used out of doors and is referred to as the pluviale or ‘rainproof.’ In fact, beside the ceremonial cope of silk damask or brocade the cloth or wool cope was used and continues in use down to the present time. The black cloth cope or cappa nigra is an example.

The hood which is usually considered to be an invariable part of the ceremonial cope was not treated as such even in the middle ages. The hood was, of course, entirely functional in origin and pulled over the head. It is supposed that the term cappa is derived from the Latin caput, head. By the fifteenth century the hood had become a mere flap on which elaborate embroidered devices were displayed. It was further debased by being depended from below the orphrey instead of at the top of the back of the vestment.

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Attention is drawn to the earlier pattern of the cope, which was lost at the Renaissance, both in the Church of England and in the Church of Rome. In the older design the orphrey was curved so as not to stand stiffly over the shoulders; and as a result also, the two sides with the orphreys in front fell straight down instead of crossing over at the bottom. We make a plea for the recovery of the ‘shaped’ cope, which is not only more comfortable to the wearer but also more graceful and dignified in appearance.

Liturgical vesture, its origins and development, Pocknee, C. E.