HABIT

HABIT is particularly used to signify the uniform garments of the religious orders, conformably to the rule of which they make profession; as the habit of St Benedict, of St Augustin, St Francis, St Dominic, and the like. In this sense we say absolutely, such a person has taken the habit, meaning he has entered upon a noviciate in a certain order. So he is said to quit the habit when he renounces the order. The habits of the several religious orders are not supposed to have been calculated for singularity or novelty. The founders of the orders, who were at first chiefly inhabitants of deserts and solitudes, gave their monks the habit usual amongst the country people. The primitive habits of St Anthony, St Hilarion, St Benedict, and others, are described by the ancient writers as consisting chiefly of sheep skins, the common dress of the peasants, shepherds, and mountaineers of that time; and the same they gave to their disciples. The orders established in and about cities and inhabited places took the habit worn by other ecclesiastics at the time of their institution. Thus, St Dominic gave his disciples the habit of regular canons, which he himself had always worn to that time. The same thing may be said of the Jesuits, Barnabites, Theatins, Oratorians, and others, who took the common habit of the ecclesiastics at the time of their foundation. And what makes them differ so much from each other, as well as from the ecclesiastical habit of the present times, is, that they have always kept invariably to the same costume; whereas the ecclesiastics and laics have been changing their mode on every occasion.