Cope

A full semicircular cloak used as an alternative to the chasuble* in the 1549 Prayer Book, but retained when the latter was forbidden in 1552, and prescribed for use at the Holy Communion in cathedral and collegiate churches in the 1604 canons of the Church of England. While there is little doubt that its origin was either the Roman paenula or pluviale, scholars disagree as to the date of its use as a specifically clerical vestment, from as late as the mid-ninth century to as early as Gregory of Tours in the sixth. Revived with other ceremonial robes by the Oxford Movement* in the nineteenth century, it is highly embroidered with a vestigial hood as a triangular or semicircular ornament on the back.