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For sheer beauty, there is a priest’s vestment called a phelonion.

The phelonion represents the robe that Jesus wore when he was tried by the Romans; this one’s unabashed aesthetic hedonism could not contrast more with the tragic abjection it is meant to symbolize.

Until the 11th century the phelonion is always pictured as a perfectly plain dark robe, but at this period the custom arose of decorating the patriarchal phelonion with a number of crosses, whence its name of πολυσταύριον.

The purple or black phelonion, however, remained plain in all cases.