Whenever we do something new and different, I’m never sure if people are going to like it. I had a hunch that folks would like

our 1892 Eucharist on Sunday, and that hunch was confirmed. I’ve heard great feedback about it, and so yes, we’ll do it again at some point…in the future…as in next year. The surprise hit of the day was a surprise. People loved the hat. What hat, you may be asking if you weren’t in church on Sunday (by the way, if you missed church on Sunday, find an old prayer book and read the invitation to communion…it was written with you in mind!)? I wore a biretta for the procession in and out of church. No, not a pistol – that is spelled differently and would look quite silly on top of my head. The biretta is a liturgical hat that is not used frequently in the Anglican tradition.

No one knows where the biretta I wore came from. It has been in the Rector’s office for at least five years. And that’s fitting, because no one is quite sure where birettas originally came from, although we know they’ve been around for 1000 years or so. They are square hats, usually with three or four peaks on the corners, and with or without a tuft, or pom-pom on the top. Their use in the Anglican tradition is in those places with a “Catholic” flavor in particular. Within the Roman Catholic Church there is a wide range of colors and configurations depending on your role within the church. It certainly has roots in the academic world. It may be that the biretta is the ancestor to today’s mortarboard hats worn at graduation ceremonies. Even today, the biretta is ecclesiastical garb, worn with academic dress in the liturgy. The cassock and surplice are known as academic vestments, and full academic dress would include a tippet (a black stole-like garment, often with insignia of the Church or an institution on it), an academic hood and/or a biretta. You may have seen academic hoods in use at Christ Church during Choral Evensong services.

The most historic attire for the Eucharist is the alb, the white robes that we wear for the Eucharist at Christ Church. Albs take their name from the Latin word for white. It was the shortening of the alb over time that led to the surplice, the white vestment worn over black cassocks. In the middle centuries of the Church the common vestiture became the cassock and surplice instead of the alb. Today the alb is back in common use as a Eucharistic vestment, which was its primary function in the ancient church. When a service is not a Eucharist, we refer to it as an academic office or choir office and default to cassock and surplice.

So, knowing all that, the $64,000 question is whether or not a priest at Christ Church would have worn a biretta in the 19th century? I had several of you ask me that very question. The truthful answer is that I don’t know! I have not seen any

photographs of Anson Dodge in his vestments (although since Sunday I did find an icon written by Louise Shipps – no biretta…but then I don’t think she was working from a photograph either). What I do know is that Anson was a graduate of the General Theological Seminary in New York, THE Episcopal seminary, in that it is the only seminary under the direct authority of the Episcopal Church and its General Convention. General Seminary has (and still is) a moderately “high church” chapel and liturgical instruction, which would have likely included the use of a biretta for the formal dress, at least by some priests and seminarians.

General Seminary had been heavily influenced by the Oxford movement, an Anglo-Catholic movement that spread from England to the United States in the first half of the century. Among other things the movement influenced, like vestments, it also led to a return in Anglican houses of worship of placing altars against the East-facing wall, which Anson clearly subscribed to. Therefore, I made the easiest of a priori conclusions that it was at least feasible that Anson or another priest of this church could have worn a biretta. And, it’s been in my office since I arrived and I thought it would be fun to wear at least once. So there’s that.

Doing things that are different and unique and new does get our attention. I found myself having to pay much closer attention to what we did in church this past Sunday, and found myself asking why we did things the way we did in 1892. Some of that was addressed in the notes we included in the bulletin. It is true for many things that we don’t know where they came from and why we still utilize them. Rediscovering their meaning is a key to our ongoing devotion in the liturgy. The colors, the candles, the vestments, the furniture – they all bear meaning and few of them are accidental. (Who accidentally wears a chasuble!)

I still can’t say exactly what wearing a biretta added to the service, except that in this case it helped remind us that something was different about the day’s liturgy. In my search for the meaning behind the biretta, I did come across one important piece of advice: Don’t sit on it! Short of that, despite searching every place I can find, I haven’t found an explanation for why one would wear a biretta, in terms of devotional meaning. It seems it really is a hat that helps delineate office among the clergy, and that’s not a horrible explanation. It simply isn’t enough of one for me to become a regular biretta bearer. But, for one day, it was fun and different. I’ll probably find an excuse to wear it again in the future. For now, it will take up a quiet residence in the rector’s office once again…unless you can come up with a biretta idea.

Tom+

O God, from whom all good proceeds: Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.