Apostasy
1000 years
From penitential sackcloth to royal brocade

The modern liturgical vestment of a bishop—the sakkos—is striking in its opulence. It is fashioned from heavy, costly brocade and adorned with gold embroidery, pearls, and precious stones. Yet few realize that the word originally referred to coarse sackcloth worn as a sign of deep mourning.

How did this amazing metamorphosis come about? The history of the transformation of the penitential hairshirt into a symbol of supreme ecclesiastical authority spanned nearly fifteen hundred years.

The word “sakkos” derives from the ancient Hebrew word “sak” (שַׂק), which literally translates as “sack” or sackcloth—a coarse fabric made of goat or camel hair.

In Old Testament times, such a garment was worn exclusively as a sign of mourning, fasting, or sincere repentance. Its cut was extremely primitive: a rectangular piece of fabric with an opening for the head and no sleeves. It chafed the body and served as a constant reminder of human insignificance before God.

Coexisting with this during Late Antiquity was a garment of a similarly simple cut but with short sleeves—the dalmatic (or divitision). Unlike a beggar's sack, the imperial divitision was fashioned from the finest silk and dyed crimson.

Gradually, these concepts became intertwined due to deep Christian symbolism:

• The Mocking of Christ: It was precisely in a scarlet robe—a mock imitation of the royal purple—that Roman soldiers clothed Jesus Christ during the trial before Pilate.
• The humility of rulers: As a sign of repentance and in memory of the Savior’s suffering, Byzantine emperors began wearing special, fully closed vestments during fasts and coronations—garments that, by long-standing tradition, came to be known as sakkos vestments.

In the 11th and 12th centuries, Byzantine emperors began gifting their own magnificent sakkoi—worn personally by them—to the Patriarchs of Constantinople as a mark of the highest recognition of their status.

Initially, the sakkos was not a garment worn by all clergy in the Christian Church; all bishops wore the customary round mantles known as phelonia.

• 11th–15th centuries: Initially, the sakkos remained the exclusive privilege of the patriarch alone. He wore it only three times a year—on the greatest feast days: Easter, Christmas, and Pentecost. By the 14th century, the right to wear the sakkos began to be granted as an honor to select, prominent metropolitans.
• 16th century: After the fall of Constantinople (1453), Byzantine court traditions passed definitively into the ecclesiastical sphere. In the Christian East, the sakkos became standard attire for the majority of Greek hierarchs.
• Russian tradition: The first sakkos appeared in Rus' in the early 15th century, brought from Byzantium by Metropolitan Photius of Kyiv. For a long time, it was worn only by metropolitans and, later, by patriarchs. The matter was finally settled by Peter I, who, in 1705, issued a decree making the sakkos mandatory vestment for absolutely all bishops, replacing the episcopal phelonion.

Even though the modern sakkos appears to be the pinnacle of Byzantine opulence, the Church has preserved its original theological significance.

Whenever the bishop vests in these costly robes, according to the Church typikon, they symbolize the very purple robe that Roman soldiers placed upon Jesus—whom they mocked as the “King of the Jews”—prior to the Crucifixion. They also symbolize the penitential sackcloth which, since ancient times, has served as the primary outward sign of deep repentance, contrition for sins, and sorrow. This serves to remind the hierarch of humility and the sufferings of the Cross.

Even the details of the sakkos are imbued with this symbolism: its edges are fastened by 33 button-clasps (corresponding to the number of years of Christ’s earthly life), while small bells are attached to the sides, symbolizing the resounding proclamation of the Gospel.

As long as the Church served as a prefiguration of Christ—with bishops wearing the sakkos (originally a garment of sackcloth) as a sign of repentance, recalling the purple robe (chlamys) in which Jesus Christ was clothed during His trial before Pilate prior to the Crucifixion—she was a “lampstand standing before the God of the earth” (Rev 11:4). However, when the Church’s episcopate transformed the sakkos—once a symbol of penitence—into the sakkos as the pinnacle of Byzantine opulence, she became a prefiguration of the Antichrist: she retained all ecclesiastical rites, polished them, labeled them “Tradition,” and began to strictly enforce adherence to that Tradition—acting like the “blind Pharisee! First cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also” (Matt 23:26).

The Church had become, in large measure, an assembly of Pharisees. Yet the Lord commanded His disciples: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” (Mark 8:15). It is not without reason that in Western Europe, the withdrawal of saints and ascetics into the “wilderness” (where dense forests served the very function of the desert) began as early as the 4th century— precisely when the First and Second Ecumenical Councils were taking place, steering the Church toward the acceptance of the concept that the Millennium is already here.

In Russia, the “Northern Thebaid” began in the late 14th century (a development linked to the spread of the sakkos, the pinnacle of Byzantine opulence), when Muscovite monks and followers of Sergius of Radonezh began founding the first remote hermitages in the forests of the Russian North.

This means that the beast 666 has conquered the two lamps of the Lord (Rev 11:7). But “of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage” (2 Pet 2:19). This means they are slaves of the beast 666 and now preach only what is advantageous to the beast. In effect, the beast puts sermons that serve its own interests into their mouths. Moreover, they have literally become corpses (Rev 11:8); that is, the Spirit of life from God no longer dwells within them.

The public display of the corpses was a deliberate act of humiliation; the law of Israel condemned leaving a body unburied (Deut 21:22–23). This scene highlights the universal contempt for God’s messengers: “And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies” (Rev 11:9). [Such moments of humiliation precede God’s vindication and retribution (Ps 78:2–3; 2 Kgs 9:10); here, however, the stage is being set for the resurrection of the witnesses (Rev 11:11-12).]

From the time the beast from the abyss conquered the Church, she became a prefiguration of the Antichrist: outwardly she appears unchanged, yet inwardly she has lost her power; inwardly, she has renounced victory over the beast 666 (having become its slave) and abandoned the attainment of the Millennium—the First Resurrection—proclaiming instead that the Millennium has already been attained and the devil is already bound. The devil—already bound? This is simply unthinkable.

See also

• Articles. Number of the Beast, 666
• 1000 years. First Resurrection
• 1000 years. Devil is not yet bound for a thousand years
• Bible. Victory. Last days
• 1000 years. First Resurrection
• 1000 years. Co-enthroned with Christ. Varsonofy Khaibulin
• 1000 years. World beyond the grave. Bulgakov, Sergei
• 1000 years. Christ the King. Bulgakov, Sergei
• Texts. Varsonofii Khaibulin. About the problem of chiliasm

Links

• BLB, σάκκος G4526 — sak'-kos; of Hebrew origin (H8242); "sack"-cloth, i.e. mohair (the material or garments made of it, worn as a sign of grief):—sackcloth.
• BLB, שַׂק H8242 — saq, sak; from H8264; properly, a mesh (as allowing a liquid to run through), i.e. coarse loose cloth or sacking (used in mourning and for bagging); hence, a bag (for grain, etc.):—sack(-cloth, -clothes).
• Wikipedia: Sakkos
• Wikipedia: Sackcloth
• Wikipedia: Cilice
• Wikipedia: Phelonion
• Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), The Sakkos
• Kingdom on www.brithadasha.org

Bibliography

• Pseudo-Kodinos, Treatise on the Dignities and Offices (mid-14th c.); ed. and trans. Ruth Macrides, J. A. Munitiz and Dimiter Angelov, Pseudo-Kodinos and the Constantinopolitan Court: Offices and Ceremonies (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).
• Theodore Balsamon, Responses to the Questions of Mark, Patriarch of Alexandria (late 12th c.).
• Symeon of Thessalonica, On the Sacred Temple and Dialogue against All Heresies (early 15th c.), in J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca, 155.
• “Саккос,” in Полный православный богословский энциклопедический словарь (St Petersburg, 1913).
• Ibid. Sources differ on the decisive date for Russia: some point to the Council of 1675, others to Peter I’s measures of 1702–1705. The two are best read as successive stages.
• Warren T. Woodfin, The Embodied Icon: Liturgical Vestments and Sacramental Power in Byzantium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
• Pauline Johnstone, The Byzantine Tradition in Church Embroidery (London: Alec Tiranti, 1967).
• "Sackcloth" on Google Books