VESTMENTS.) Both the alb and its name are derived from the tunica alba, the white tunic, which formed part of the ordinary dress of Roman citizens under the empire. The date of its definite adoption as a liturgical vestment is uncertain; at Rome—where until the 13th century it was known as the linen or camisia (c f . the modern Italian camice for alb)—it seems to have been thus used as early as the 5th century. But as late as the 9th and Loth centuries the alba is still an everyday as well as a liturgical garment, and we find bishops and synods forbidding priests to sing mass in the alba worn by them in ordinary life. (See Braun, p. 62.) In mediaeval inventories are sometimes found albae, described as red, blue or black; it is clear, however, from the descriptions of these vest ments that in some cases they were actually tunicles, the confu sion of terms arising from the similarity of shape (see DALMATIC) ; in other cases the colour applied to the parures, not to the albs as a whole. Silk albs appear in the inventories, but only very exceptionally.
The equivalent of the alb in the Eastern Churches is the sticharion (vrcxapeov) of the Orthodox Church (Armenian, sha pik; Syrian, Kutina, Coptic, stoicharion or tuniah). It is worn girdled by bishops and priests in all rites, by subdeacons in the Greek and Coptic rites; ungirdled, by deacons and lectors in all the rites. It is usually white for bishops and priests; for the other orders all colours, except black, may be used. Its material may be linen, wool, cotton or silk; but silk only is the rule for deacons. In the Armenian and Coptic rites the vestment is often elaborately embroidered ; in the other rites the only ornament is a cross high at the back, save for bishops of the Orthodox Church, whose sticharia have two vertical red stripes (irora,uoc, "rivers"). As in the West, the vestment is specially associated with the Eucharist. The whole subject is exhaustively treated by Father Joseph Braun in Die liturgische Gewandung (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1907). (See also bibliography to the article VESTMENTS.)