Ecclesiastical stoles: White/gold and red (hand embroidered)

Easter is a busy time in both church and vicarage. As I have a houseful of family I haven’t much time for blogging or embroidering. Then it struck me that now would be a good time to blog about some of my husband’s beautiful liturgical stoles. The ecclesiastical stole is the long scarf-like garment worn by the priest. About 8′ (240 cm) long by about 4″ (10 cm) it goes around the neck, with each side hanging down the front to about knee level. A symbol of ordination, it is worn to celebrate Holy Communion. (A priest wears a tippet or preaching stole for Morning and Evening Prayer. Black, this is broader and lacking in any coloured decoration). Stoles fell out of favour during the Reformation but their use was revived by the Oxford Movement and is now a unifying reminder of a pre-Reformation church.

White liturgical stole: hand embroidered

Liturgical red stole

Decoration depends on taste and the changing style of the stole can be read as a microcosm of the the history of the Anglican church. My husband’s stoles were handmade and hand embroidered by his mother for his father when he became a priest. I find them lovely as the design is subtle and the colours harmonious. They were made at a time when many more women did hand embroidery as a matter of course and these stoles show fine shading and a variety of stitches. A cross is embroidered half way along the stole so that the wearer can match it up with the back of his neck. Somehow my husband forgets about this and at the beginning of  almost every service I have to draw my eyes away from the stole’s uneven ends and distract my mind from a desire to level them up. In general, I find many modern embroidered stoles too bright, brashly coloured as to be quite distracting and of rather crude design. But that is a matter of personal taste.

White liturgical stole: detail of ihs monogam (hand embroidered)

White/gold are festival colours used for celebration. This includes Christmas and Easter as well as many saints days. White and gold are also used  at times of personal celebration for individuals, like Baptism, Confirmation, Weddings and Ordination.

White liturgical stole: detail of hand embroidery

White liturgical stole: detail of hand embroidery

Red has 3 main liturgical uses:

1. In some churches to remind us of the spilling of Christ’s blood on Good Friday (though most priests will dress very simply, with no stole, in keeping with the stripping down of the altar and the church itself at this time).

2. At  Whitsun to denote the  coming of the Holy Spirit.

3.To  celebrate the memory of a saint who has died in the faith. 

Red liturgical stole: embroidered detail

Red liturgical stole: embroidered detail

 We are very fond of monograms on this blog and it is only right that Christ should have his own, a Christogram. However, I often forget what the initials stand for, so if I add an explanation here, perhaps it will help me to remember it in future. In western Christianity, where Latin was for centuries the language of the church (it still is in the Vatican State), the most widely used letters are ihs, as on the stoles above, which stand for the first three letters of Jesus’s name – iota-eta-sigma. These letters have also been interpreted as standing for Iesus Hominum Salvator, meaning Jesus, Saviour of men, but in this case ihs is an acronym. The first use of ihs dates from around the C7th, while one of  its earliest uses in English is found in Langland’s poem,  The Vision of William concerning Piers Plowman, a theological allegory and social satire in the form of the dream with a humble countryman, the eponymous Piers, acting as a guide to spiritual truth.

For green and purple stoles, see here: