Epitrachelion

The most eloquent moment in a Byzantine ordination to the priesthood is a change of clothes. A deacon wears the orarion, a long narrow band, over the left shoulder with both ends hanging free. At his ordination as a priest the bishop takes the back end and brings it forward over the front of his body, so that the single band now hangs doubled down the front from the neck, and the people cry out Axios, he is worthy. The garment is not replaced; it is rearranged, and the rearrangement is the visible statement of what has changed.

The finished vestment is the epitrachelion, in practice made as one broad band with an opening for the head or as two bands joined down their length, marked with a row of crosses and usually finished with a fringe. The prayer said as it is put on is taken from the psalm about the precious ointment on the head of Aaron running down upon his beard and to the skirts of his garment, so the vesting formula points the wearer back to the Israelite priesthood rather than to any later office.

The name simply means upon the neck. It is worn over the sticharion and under the phelonion, and a bishop wears one too, under the sakkos, since the priesthood is not left behind on becoming a bishop.

The rule is simple and it is kept strictly: a priest performs no sacred act without the epitrachelion. If the full vestments are not to hand, this one is, and a priest called to a sickbed, hearing a confession in a corner of the church, blessing a house or serving a short office will put on the epitrachelion over his cassock and nothing else. Where the other vestments belong to the solemnity of the liturgy, this one belongs to the priesthood as such, and its absence is not an informality but an impediment.

In confession it does a further piece of work. In common practice the priest lays the end of it over the head of the penitent while the prayer of absolution is said, so that the penitent is physically under the sign of the office being exercised.

The interpretations attached to it run in two directions at once. It is read as the yoke of Christ taken up, which is a weight, and as the grace poured out on the priesthood, which is a gift, and both readings are given in the same commentaries without embarrassment.

The Latin stole does the same work in a different shape, worn crossed or straight over the alb, and the atlas holds the two separately. They are counterparts rather than variants, and neither tradition would accept the other's form as its own.