Rochet

Rochet, a linen garment worn by bishops under the chimere (q.v.). The word appears first about the 13th century, being called sarcos at Cambrai and saroht by John of Liege. The Council of Buda (1279) mentions it as the white camisia, or rosettta, worn under the cappa, or mantle when walking or riding. Between 1305 and 1377 the popes introduced it at Avignon, but it was of far earlier date, having been in common use in the 7th century, and identified with the linea prescribed by the Ordo Romanus. In the following ages the bishops were obliged by the canon law to wear their rochet whenever they appeared in public; and this practice was long kept up in England, but has been abandoned since the Reformation, except in Parliament and in Convocation, over the scarlet habit. Secular prelatic prothonotaries, and canons who had the right to use it, put it on over the vestis talaris before robing for mass. The rubric of the First Common Prayer Book of Edward VI prescribes that the bishop shall wear the rochet at communion. The rochet, according to Lyndwood, was sleeveless, and worn by the server to the priest, and by the latter in baptizing. The chief difference between this garment and the surplice was that its sleeves were nary rower than those of the latter. The modern full sleeve is not earlier than the time of bishop Overall. Before and after the Reformation, till Elizabeth's time, the rochet was always of scarlet silk, but bishop Hooper changed it for a chimere of black satin. Bale describes the clergy wearing white rochets of raines (linen of Rennes or Rheims), or fine linen cloth. See Walcott, Sac. Archoeol.; Hook, (Ch. Dict.; Eden, Theol. Dict.; Gardner, Faiths of the World, s.v. SEE ORNAMENTS.