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Subdeacons [[Subdeacon]]s also wear a dalmatikon but with shorter crossed orarion.
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The dalmatikon is a long outer [[vestment ]] almost to the floor. It is fastened at the sides with loops and baubles. Usually edged in gold and carrying ecclesiastical motifs, it can be the colour of the day, and highly decorated.
The [[deacon ]] drapes the orarion over the top of it.
In the fourth century the imperial vestment, the dalmatikon, so named after the area from which it originated, started to be used in the universal [[Church]]. The emperor granted the right to wear a dalmatikon to particular high officials within the imperial bureacracy, and later extended the right to particular bishops[[bishop]]s, and some highly favoured deacons.
Over time, the dalmatikon came to be recognised as the vestment of bishops in favour with the emperor. When specific deacons were granted the right to wear the dalmatikon they were recognised as representing the emperor, or a highly favoured bishop.
Over the next few centuries, the dalmatikon then came to especially symobolise the [[archbishop]]'s primary helpers, the patriarchal deacons. Still later it was adopted as the usual liturgical vestment of all deacons, both east and west.
As part of the enormous upheavals in the eastern Church caused by the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Church had thrust upon it the worldly responsibilities formerly exercised by the emperor over his Christian subjects. The Ottoman overlords made the bishops responsible for the material government of their own people, as well as the spiritual responsibility they had always exercised.
