The dalmatic is a long wide-sleeved tunic, which serves as a liturgical vestment in the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches worn by a deacon at the Eucharist or Mass. Like the chasuble, it is an outer vestment and is supposed to match the liturgical colors of the day. At a Pontifical High Mass, it is worn by the bishop under the chasuble.

Historically, the dalmatic was a garment of the Eastern Roman emperor, and was adopted by Emperor Paul I of the Russian Empire as a coronation and liturgical vestment. In Orthodox icons of Jesus Christ as King and Great High Priest He is shown in a dalmatic. (Uspenskii, B. A., Tsar' i Patriarkh: kharizma vlasti v Rossii, Moscow, Shkola "Iazyki russkoi kul'tury," 1998, 176.)

In ecclesiastical usage it is one of the earliest of the liturgical vestments, dating from the fourth century. In the Eastern Orthodox Churches and Eastern Rite Catholic Churches, there are two vestments very similar to the dalmatic - the sticharion worn as the outer vestment by subdeacons and deacons and servers and as an undergarment by bishops, and a sakkos, which is more elaborately decorated and more amply cut, worn as an outer vestment by the bishops. In the Roman Catholic Church the subdeacons wore a vestment called the tunicle which was originally distinct from a dalmatic but by the 20th century the two became identical, though a tunicle was often less ornamented than a dalmatic. Today, the tunicle is rare in the Roman Catholic Church as only certain authorized clerical societies (such as the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter) have subdeacons.

External link

• Current use and history of the Dalmatic in the Catholic church

Roman Catholic vestments | Anglican vestments | Orthodox vestments

Dalmática | Dalmatiek