It reminds the wearer that the grace of the Holy Spirit covers him as with a garment of salvation and joy. The sticharion is a long-sleeved tunic that reaches all the way to the ground. The confusion has arisen by the common reference to a man being 'tonsured a reader' which, while widespread, is not technically correct.Īll degrees of clergy, beginning with Reader, wear the sticharion. It is through ordination - not the tonsure - that one is made a reader or subdeacon this is highlighted by the fact that the tonsure is performed only once and is not repeated before the ordination of a subdeacon.

In monastic communities, the ruling archimandrite may tonsure those monks over which he rules. This short phelon is then removed (and never worn thereafter) and replaced with a sticharion, which the reader generally wears thereafter whenever he performs his liturgical duties.Ī reader is usually tonsured by the bishop, though in some traditions, an archpriest or archimandrite may do the tonsure with the bishop's blessing if he is not available. The ordination itself is, like that of the subdiaconate, through Cheirothesia - literally, 'to place hands' - as opposed to Cheirotonia - 'to stretch out the hands' - which is practised at the ordination of bishops, priests and deacons.Īfter being tonsured, the reader is vested in a short phelonion, which he wears while reading the Epistle for the first time. This is a separate act, making a layperson into a clergyman, and occurs immediately prior to his ordination as a reader. Immediately before ordination as a reader, the candidate is tonsured as a sign of his submission and obedience upon entry into the clerical state. The office of a reader subsumes that of a taper-bearer, and the service of ordaining a reader mentions both functions.īyzantine icons often show readers and church singers wearing a stikhar-like garment (more loose and flowing than the modern stikhar) and a pointed hat with the brim pulled out to the sides (see here, lower left corner). This order is higher than the doorkeeper (now largely obsolete) and lower than the subdeacon. The title of psalomshchik survives in the later reformed Nikonian Russian rite as an alternative, slightly archaic and quaint name for chanter. This office survives in those churches that utilise the Pre-Nikonian Russian ritual: Old Believers (both priested and priestless), those parishes under ROCOR or the Moscow Patriarchate.

In the Pre-Nikonian Russian Church, there existed an additional junior grade of reader called psalomshchik (in Slavonic, Ѱаломщикъ), whose sole function was to read the long Kathisma Psalms, thus permitting the reader and chanter to save their voices. Others, however, counter that in such societies where high literacy has caused information without meaning, the value of a dedicated Reader to prayers, psalms and epistles with parishioners is even more vital.

Some have argued that in societies with high literacy rates, the office of Reader is superfluous. In the past, low literacy rates meant that a Reader reading in church was the main way that people would hear Scripture read.

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