Cassock: Encyclopedia II - Cassock - Western practice Roman and Anglican

Cassock - Western practice Roman and Anglican

The cassock, also known as a soutane, comes in a number of styles, though no particular symbolism attaches to these. A Roman cassock has thirty-three buttons (symbolic of the years of the life of Jesus) down the front; a French cassock has fewer front buttons, but buttons sewn to the sleeves after the manner of a suit, and a broader skirt. A Jesuit cassock has a fly fastened with hooks. An Anglican cassock is often double breasted (then more correctly called a "sarum"), fastening at the shoulders on the opposing side of the breast. The single-breasted cassock worn by Anglicans sometimes has thirty-nine buttons rather than the Roman complement of thirty three. This is often said to signify the Thirty-Nine Articles, but have developed from an older fashion.

In tropical countries, the cassock used is colored white for purposes of comfort.

Choir dress cassocks for some monsignors (prelates of honor and prothonotaries apostolic) and bishops are fully purple with amaranth trim, while those of cardinals are fully scarlet with scarlet trim.

Cassocks are frequently confused with the simar, but there is a distinction in that the simar has the small shoulder cape without buttons that does not fasten in the front. In previous times, cassocks also had buttons on the upper parts of the sleeves, thus providing another differentiation from the simar, but Paul VI dropped this custom, leaving the Cassock and Simar virtually identical, save for the small shoulder cape with the latter.

Cassocks are sometimes worn by lay people when they are assisting with the liturgy in church, such as altar servers, by seminarians studying for the priesthood, members of the choir (frequently with cotta or surplice), and for religious who are not priests (e.g religious brothers).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Western practice Roman and Anglican", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki