NLM Quiz #25: Where Does This Vestment Come From, And How Is It Used? The Answer

Can you guess where and how this vestment is used? I have two hints to offer: 1. It belongs to the current liturgical season. 2. It is not being used in an Eastern rite. (Apologies, but no better image of it is available.)

The Answer: As I suspected would be the case, this proved to be a stumper. This vestment is a kind of stole which is used in the cathedral of Milan, but not at the Mass. On the weekdays of Lent and Holy Week, there is a service after Terce, which consists of two readings from the Old Testament with a responsory after the first, and a prayer borrowed from the Rogation days after the second. The readings are done by deacons who don this long white fascia in the manner shown above, over the rochet, and then put the dalmatic on over it, whereas at the Mass, the deacon places the stole outside the dalmatic.

The deacon at a solemn Requiem Mass in the Ambrosian Rite, celebrated for Pope Benedict XVI in February of 2023. Note the stole outside the dalmatic, as well as the cappino at the top of it, which was the subject of an NLM quiz many years ago.

Originally, the deacons did not wear a dalmatic for this service, but a vestment which the ancient ordines of the Ambrosian Rite call an “alba rubea”, which little means a “red alb”. It has long since fallen out of use, and no pictures of one exist, but one may guess from the name that it was shaped like an alb, but red instead of white. The information in this post was provided, of course, by our expert in all things Ambrosian, Nicola de’ Grandi.

Congratulations to Fr Mateusz Kania, a priest of the diocese of Warsaw, who got this almost right, mentioning that it was used in Holy Week. (Father left his comment on Peter K’s Facebook page.) The Best Wildly Incorrect Answer goes to Mark for guessing that it is some kind of rationale, a vestment which is worn only by the bishops of four dioceses in the world. Special mention to a few people who guessed it was a Byzantine subdeacon’s stole, which it does indeed resemble, even though I specifically gave the hint that it was not from an Eastern Rite. The Best Humorous Answer goes to Mark Ingoglio, for his idea that it is a harness by which misbehaving clerics can be yanked out of the sanctuary with a rope - not a terrible idea, really...

Like the vestment, the readings at this service after Terce, which are done as part of the preparation rites of the catechumens for their baptism at Easter, are a very old part of the Ambrosian Rite. They were inherited from the ancient liturgy of Jerusalem, and are still preserved in other rites as well. In Lent, the first is taken from Genesis, and the second from Proverbs; in the same period, readings from these books are done at Vespers in the Byzantine Rite, while the Mozarabic Divine Office has readings from both of these books in the first two weeks of Lent. In Holy Week, the Ambrosian Rite has readings from Job and Tobias in their place, where the Byzantine Rite has Exodus and Job. Here is the rubric which mentions this service in the Ambrosian breviary.

And the special tones in which the readings were sung.