b.1. What do the colors mean? - Follow up |
For printing use a "Printer Friendly" PDF version. Here is what the Russian Church’s “Nastol’naya Kniga Sviashchenno-sluzhitelia” says about colors: The most important Feasts of the Orthodox Church and the sacred events for which specific colors of vestments have been established, can be united into six basic groups.
Funerals, as a rule, are done in White vestments. In earlier times, there were no Black vestments in the Orthodox Church, although the everyday clothing of the clergy, especially the Monastics, was Black. In ancient times, both in the Greek and in the Russian Churches, the clergy wore, according to the Typikon, "Crimson Vestments": Dark (Blood) Red vestments. In Russia, it was first proposed to the clergy of Saint Petersburg to wear Black Vestments, if possible, to participate in the Funeral of Emperor Peter II [1821]. From that time on, Black Vestments became customary for Funerals and the weekday Services of Great Lent. Also, please note that there are two shades of red which are worn liturgically; dark red for Lenten periods, to signify the blood of Martyrs, and on Holy Thursday - the symbolism of the color of blood is evident - and bright red, worn in some places in the Russian Church at Liturgy on Pascha and on the Nativity of the Lord. The words for 'red' and 'beauty' being the same in the Russian language, bright red is worn as the sign of supreme joy. In some places, where the changeover to black was not 'legislatable,' dark red or blood red continues to be worn as THE Lenten color - in the Ukrainian Church, notably. |