STOLE, originally a long vestment, a matron's robe, from the Latin stola, and that from the Greek croai. Pitiscus, in his Lexicon Antiquitat. Roman.; has a long article upon the stola, as worn by the ancients.
In later times stela wax the term more particularly applied to a broad strip of cloth or stuff, with three cremes upon it, worn by priests of the Romish church as a sacerdotal vestment, with whom It was also called Orarium. "Orarium eat stela," says Lyndwood, in his Provincial(); " qua sacerdos in omni obsmuio divino uti debet, et silo cello imponitur ut significet se jug= Domini suseepisse." The stole or orarium, according to Palmer (` Origines Liturgic's.; vol. ii.) has been used from the most primitive ages by the Christian clergy. It is spoken of by the first council of Braga, A.D. G63; by Isidore Ilispalensis, A.D. 600; the Council of Laodicea, in Phrygin, A.D. 360 ; Severianna Oabalitanus, in the time of Chrysoetom ; and many others (see Bingham e' Antiq.; b. xiii., c. 8, § 2 ; and Gerberti, Liturg. Aleman.; tom. i., p. 240); and it has been continually used by all the churches of the west and east, and by the Monophysites of Antioch and Alexandria. "The stole," says Palmer, " always called
'flpdpsov by the Creeks, was fastened on one shoulder of the deacon's ally, and hung down before and behind. The priest had it over both shoulders, and the two ends of it hung down in front. The Eastern churches call the stole of the priests JrcrpaxhAuv. Thus simply were the dresses of deacons and priests distinguished from each other in primitive times." The pall of the metropolitans was originally only a stole wound round the neck, with the ends hanging down behind and before.
That the word stole,' in the sense of a sacerdotal vestment, was of early adoption into the English language, appears from the Saxon Chronicle' under the year 963, when Archbishop Dunstan, at the time of personally confirming King Edgar's grant of lands to the monastery of Peterborough, added that he himself gave, among other vestments, his stol to St. Peter.