ings,the liturgical fans with bells (p. 441), relics, the chalice-veil, perhaps a huge mitre (p. 436). All these show their gilding and finery, so that one wonders where the celebrant can find room to celebrate.[1] The impression of the whole is like that of a Baroc Latin altar, but more full of bad ornament. Sometimes there is a tabernacle on the altar, but they do not make much of it (p. 440). Lamps and ostrich-eggs (p. 270) hang in front. They always have two rods with curtains before the altar, a small curtain near it, drawn during the celebrant's Communion, and a large curtain (hiding the whole sanctuary) drawn at other times in the liturgy, and kept always drawn throughout Lent.[2]
Armenian vestments are the usual Eastern ones, Latinized in some particulars. All ministers wear an amice (varkas), with a broad apparel which stands up and forms a high collar round the neck. This varkas is put on after, and worn above the tunic. Armenians will not admit that it is an amice at all; they compare it to our humeral veil.[3] The deacon has a tunic ((
Greek characters), shapik) of any colour; it may be of silk or velvet.[4] Over this comes the deacon's stole (urar) from the left shoulder, sometimes wound under the right arm. The priest has the amice, shapik, a girdle (goti), and his stole (porurar), which is a broad piece of stuff hanging down in front with a loop for the head (as p. 273). He wears the Byzantine epimanikia (bazpan). During the holy liturgy he wears a phainolion (shurtshar), now just like our cope without a hood. Since bishops adopted the Roman mitre every priest uses the Byzantine crown (saghavart)[5] when he
- ↑ But a space is cleared for the holy liturgy.
- ↑ A few Byzantinized churches (including, oddly enough, Etshmiadzin) have an ikonostasion in front of the sanctuary. There is, normally, only one altar, with credence tables right and left. But some large churches have real side altars, used occasionally on feasts (Ormanian: op. cit. 125). Etshmiadzin has four (fig. 16, p. 433).
- ↑ In modern times the deacon and clerks below him wear, as a substitute for the varkas and its apparel, a little cape down to the elbows. See the picture in Braun: Liturgische Gewandung (Freiburg: Herder, 1907), p. 93. Ormanian says this is contrary to rule (op. cit. p. 127).
- ↑ Clerks below the deacon and singers wear the shapik and cape only, no epitrachelion.
- ↑ This crown is often a very modest bonnet of silk with some gold braid. The deacon too wears it when he attends on a bishop (in Braun: op. cit. 93, the deacon wears a crown).
