ALB, a liturgical vestment of the Catholic Church. It is a sack-like tunic of white linen (Lat. alba, white) with narrow sleeves, and a hole for the head to pass through, and when se cured round the waist by the girdle (cingulum) just clears the ground. Albs were originally plain, but about the loth century the custom arose of ornamenting the borders and the cuffs of the sleeves with strips of embroidery, and this became common in the 12th century. These at first encircled the whole border; but soon it became customary to substitute for them square patches of em broidery or precious fabrics. These "parures," "apparels" or "orphreys" (Lat. parurae, grammata, auri f risia, etc.) were usually four in number, one being sewn on the back and another on the front of the vestment just above the lower hem, and one on each cuff. A fifth was occasionally added just below the neck opening. In the 16th century the parures began to go out of use, and broad bands of lace soon afterwards replaced them, as in a mag nificent specimen preserved at South Kensington. Apparelled albs are now only in regular use at Milan (Ambrosian Rite), and, par tially in certain churches in Spain ; but attempts have been made, especially in England, to revive their use.
The alb is worn by bishops, priests, deacons and subdeacons under the other eucharistic vestments at mass and at functions connected with it. It is sometimes also worn by clerics in minor orders, whose proper vestment is, however, the surplice—itself a modification of the alb. (See SURPLICE.) The alb is supposed to symbolize purity, and the priest, when putting it on, prays: "Make me white, 0 Lord," etc. In the middle ages the parures were taken to symbolize the wounds of Christ; and at Toledo the singers of the Passion on Good Friday still wear apparelled albs.
In England at the Reformation the alb went out of use with the other "Mass vestments," but was reintroduced in the ritual revival of the i9th century. It is now worn in many churches not only by the clergy but by acolytes and servers at the Communion. Where the ritual is a revival of pre-Reformation uses, these albs are frequently apparelled. (For the question of its legality see