Vestments of a Russian Bishop. A Cultural Study

Abstract

Vestments of a Russian Bishop. A Cultural StudyThe aim of the present article is to investigate from a cultural perspective the Russian Orthodox garment tradition, particularly the bishop's robes and dressing ritual.Its primary focus is the use and significance of these phenomena rather than their history.My methodology is based on Russian semiotics and the conviction that every component of a cultural tradition has something to contribute to our understanding of the entire culture.The vesting ceremony is almost identical for bishops, metropolitans or patriarchs, and it is the ritual as a whole that is of interest here.In his memoirs, the Russian émigré Bishop Johann von Gardner recalls a scene from his childhood in 1914 in which he witnessed the ceremony in the Uspenskij Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin.Concluding the narrative he wrote much later in emigration he notes: I marveled at the structured, measured, symmetrically synchronized movements of the subdeacons vesting the bishops.And again, in them as well, one sensed the traditions that had been established over the centuries, something inexpressible in words, the centuries-old tradition of our pious fathers.It was expressed in everything: in the movements of the clergy, and in how the people stood in church, and in how and what the choir sang.One had the sensation that here the best of the best had been assembled.Yes, this is unforgettable, and blessed is he who has seen and heard that beauty.Such glory and beauty no longer exists upon the earth!11

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