78 CONSTITUTION OF EASTERN CHURCHES

must be administered by the bishop, who clips off a bit of
hair from the candidate, returning it to him in a paper.
Though not in priest's orders, the archdeacon may say mass
by especial order of the bishop. However, this order ap-
pears to be lapsing in the Jacobite Church, and is not recog-
nized by the Syrian Catholics. The deacon proper is called
in Arabic Shemmas' Anji'li, as he reads the Gospels. He
may marry before his ordination to this degree, but is
"unfrocked," as it were, by marriage afterward. Many
remain full deacons all their lives, without passing to the
priesthood, but during the week carry on their ordinary
business. The Shemmas Anjili figures prominently in the
church services. He prepares the holy bread, swings the
censer, passes on the kiss of peace to the people from the
sanctuary,1 communes in both kinds separately, drinking
from the cup, and sometimes gives the holy elements from
the priest's hands to the people. During the celebration
all "deacons," including the singers, wear white surplices,
with gayly decorated stoles. These are worn "with a
difference"; thus the archdeacon wears his over the right
shoulder, the reader, in the form of a cross. All who take
part in the sanctuary or chancel should wear a girdle.
"The celebrant wears a special alb, with colored girdle,
and over this a chasuble split down the front and fastened
at the neck by large silver buckles. Over the sleeves of this
alb he wears long richly embroidered gauntlets, and over
his head he draws from time to time the top part of a veil,
that hangs over his back like a kind of amice. He has on
his head besides this only a skull-cap of the same sort as
generally worn under the turban, but more richly em-
broidered with white crosses on black ground. Under the
chasuble he wears an undivided stole, like a scapular, and
on his feet the yellow shoes always exchanged within the
sanctuary for the usual black or red ones." 3

A large number of Syrians, estimated at about four
hundred and forty thousand, have their head-quarters at
St. Thomas, on the Malabar coast, being found also in

1 See page 137

2 Parry's "Syrian Monastery/' op. cit., p. 346.