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The surplice belongs to the ''vestes sacrae'', though it requires no [[benediction]]. All [[clergy|cleric]]s may wear it, even those who have only received the [[tonsure]], the [[bishop]] himself vesting with it those whom he has newly tonsured. It has very varied use in divine service. It is worn in [[choir]] at the solemn [[office]]s; it forms the official sacral dress of the lower clergy in their liturgical functions; the priest wears it when administering the [[sacrament]]s, undertaking benedictions, and the like — the use of the [[alb]] being nowadays almost exclusively confined to the [[mass]] and functions connected with this. In general such use, in all main particulars, became the custom as early as the 14th century.
Lack of exact information obscures the older history of the surplice. Its name derives, as Durandus and Gerland also affirm, from the fact that its wearers formerly put it on over the fur garments formerly worn in church and at divine service as a protection against the cold. Some scholars trace the use of the surplice at least as far back as the 5th century, citing the evidence of the garments worn by the two clerics in attendance on Bishop Maximian represented in the mosaics of S. Vitale at [[Ravenna (Italy)|Ravenna]]; in this case, however, confusing the [[dalmatic]] with the surplice. In all probability the surplice forms no more than an expansion of the ordinary liturgical alb, due to the necessity for wearing it over thick furs. The first documents to mention the surplice date from the 11th century: a canon of the synod of Coyaca in Spain (1050); and an ordinance of King Edward the Confessor. Rome knew the surplice at least as early as the 12th century. It probably originated outside Rome, and was imported thence into the Roman use. Originally only a choir vestment and peculiar to lower clergy, it gradually — certainly no later than the 13th century — replaced the alb as the vestment proper to the administering of the sacraments and other sacerdotal functions.
The Oriental rites lack a surplice and any analogous vestment. Outside the Church of Rome in the [[Western world|West]] the surplice has continued in regular use only in the [[Lutheran]] churches of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and in the [[Anglican Communion]].
