Religious Habits by Order: Colours, Parts and What Each One Means

A religious habit is the everyday dress of a member of a religious order or community: a long tunic, usually a scapular over it, a cincture at the waist, and a hood, mantle or veil according to the order. The colour tells you which family the wearer belongs to, not how senior they are. Benedictines wear black, Franciscans brown, Dominicans white under a black mantle, Cistercians white with a black scapular, Carthusians white throughout. Each of those habits is set down in the order’s own constitutions, and only that order decides who may wear it.

This guide sets out the parts of a habit, the colours by order, why those colours arose, who wears what inside a community, and how a habit is cut and measured. One honesty note before we start. The habits and monk robes we sell are worn by professed religious, but also by oblates and third-order members on retreat, by Anglican, Lutheran and ecumenical communities, by Orthodox and Anglican solitaries, and by choirs. They are not the official habit of any order. If you are a novice or a professed member, your community’s clothing rules come first, and this article is background rather than instruction.

Monk robe or habit?

Most people search for a “monk robe”; monks themselves say “habit”. They mean the same garment: the long hooded tunic, usually with a scapular and a cincture, that a monk, friar or nun wears every day. “Habit” is the correct word inside the Church and in an order’s constitutions. “Monk robe” is the everyday English description, and it is also used for the robes of Buddhist monks, which are a different garment altogether. In this guide we use “habit” for the dress of an order and “monk robe” where we mean the garment in general.

The parts of a habit

Most habits in the Western tradition are built from the same five or six pieces. Orders differ in colour, in the cut of the hood, and in which pieces are worn on which occasion, but the vocabulary is shared.

Tunic

The base garment: a long, loose, T-shaped robe reaching to the ankle, pulled on over the head or fastened at the neck, with sleeves that are usually wide. Unlike a cassock it has no row of buttons down the front. The tunic is the piece that carries the order’s colour.

Scapular

A long strip of cloth with an opening for the head, hanging down the front and the back over the tunic, often to the same length. The Catholic Encyclopedia describes the monastic scapular as roughly 14 to 18 inches wide and reaching nearly to the feet, joined at the shoulders by two narrow connecting bands, and records that in St Benedict’s time it was “nothing else than a working garment or apron such as was then worn by agricultural labourers”. Many orders and congregations later adopted it from the monastic orders, and in some, notably the Carmelites, it carries a devotional meaning of its own. The small cloth scapular worn by lay people under their clothes is a descendant of this garment, not the same thing.

Cowl and capuche

The hood. In Benedictine and Cistercian usage the “cowl” is properly a separate, very full, pleated over-garment with wide sleeves and an attached hood, worn over the tunic and scapular in choir. In Franciscan usage the hood is the capuche, attached to the habit or to a short shoulder cape; the Capuchins take their name from the long, pointed form of theirs. In everyday speech “cowl” is used loosely for any monastic hood, which is how most catalogues, ours included, use it.

Cincture

What holds the tunic at the waist. Franciscans use a white cord knotted at the hanging end, three knots for the three vows (some houses tie four). Augustinians use a leather belt. Benedictines and Dominicans use a belt or cord according to the house. A wool or cloth cincture is the third common form. If you have tied a cincture on an alb, you already know how these are worn.

Mantle and cappa

A long, sleeveless outer cloak for choir, procession and cold weather. The Dominicans’ black cappa over the white habit is the best-known example and gave them the name Black Friars. Carmelites wear a white mantle over brown. Not every order has one, and some wear it only in choir or outdoors.

Capelet, pellegrina and mozzetta

Short shoulder capes, with or without a hood, worn over the tunic. They appear on some friars’ habits and on some communities’ choir dress. A hooded capelet is also the form many non-monastic buyers ask for because it gives the outline of a habit without the weight of a full cowl.

Veil

Worn by women religious over a close-fitting cap or coif, in a colour and shape fixed by the community. In many women’s orders a novice wears a white veil and a professed sister a black one, so the veil rather than the tunic marks the stage of formation.

Colours by order

The table gives the habit as generally worn today. Every entry is subject to the order’s constitutions, and individual houses vary, so treat it as a field guide, not a rule book.

Order	Habit colour	Distinctive features	Nickname
Benedictines (OSB)	Black	Tunic, scapular, hooded cowl in choir; style varies by monastery	Black Monks
Cistercians (OCist) and Trappists (OCSO)	White tunic, black scapular	Same colour scheme in both branches; white cowl in choir	White Monks
Carthusians	White	White throughout; novices wear a black cloak over the white habit
Dominicans (OP)	White tunic and scapular, black cappa	Belt, rosary at the side; cappa and black hood worn on formal occasions and outdoors	Black Friars
Franciscans, Friars Minor (OFM)	Brown (grey in some provinces)	White cord cincture with three knots; hood attached to a shoulder cape	Grey Friars (historic)
Capuchins (OFMCap)	Brown	Long, pointed capuche
Conventual Franciscans (OFMConv)	Black historically; grey in many provinces today	Cord cincture; the order has moved back towards grey in recent years
Carmelites (OCarm, OCD)	Brown	Brown scapular (the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel); white mantle	White Friars
Augustinians (OSA)	Black	Leather cincture
Norbertines / Premonstratensians (OPraem)	White	White habit	White Canons
Servites (OSM)	Black	Black habit
Missionaries of Charity	White sari with blue border	Habit based on the Indian sari rather than the European tunic

Two things stand out from the table. First, the same colour serves several unrelated orders: Benedictines, Augustinians and Servites are all in black, and a brown habit could be Franciscan or Carmelite. You tell them apart by the cincture, the scapular and the mantle, not the tunic. Second, the “nickname” column is history, not current usage. Nobody calls a Cistercian a White Monk in conversation, but the name survives in place names and in the older books.

Why the colours

The colour of a habit identifies the order. It does not signal rank: an abbot, a prior and a newly professed monk of the same house wear the same habit, and any distinction of office is shown by insignia or by place in choir, not by the cloth. That is the single most common misunderstanding we hear from buyers, who assume a white habit is “higher” than a brown one.

The usual account of how the colours arose is that the earliest habits were the cheap, coarse clothing of the poor, made of whatever local wool was to hand, and undyed or dyed with the cheapest dye available. On that account black and brown are the colours of undyed or lightly dyed dark fleece, and white is unbleached, undyed pale wool. Whatever the origin in each case, once a colour became attached to an order it became a badge of identity, and the constitutions fixed it.

Colour has also changed within orders. The Friars Minor have worn grey as well as brown, which is where the old English name Grey Friars comes from, and the Conventual branch has moved between black and grey in modern times. So a colour is stable within a generation but not fixed for all time.

Novices, professed and lay: who wears what

Inside a community the habit marks stages of formation, and each order marks them differently. The general pattern is that a postulant wears ordinary clothes or a simple partial habit; a novice receives the habit, or most of it, at clothing; and a professed member wears the full habit. The item withheld or changed for a novice varies. In many women’s communities it is the veil, white for the novice and black for the professed. Among Carthusians the novice wears a black cloak over the white habit. In other houses the novice wears the tunic but not the scapular, or the scapular but not the cowl. None of these are rules across the Church; each is that order’s own custom.

Outside the community, oblates of a Benedictine monastery and members of the Franciscan, Dominican and Carmelite third orders are lay people or secular clergy attached to the order. Whether they may wear any part of the habit, and when, is again set by the order. Some provide a scapular or a small habit for particular occasions; many oblates wear no habit at all. Buying a habit does not make anyone a member of anything, and a lay buyer who wears one in public where it could be taken as a claim to be a religious is doing something the orders reasonably object to. On retreat in a guesthouse, in a choir, on a stage or at a living-history event the context is plain and nobody is misled.

Beyond Roman Catholic orders

Habits are not a Roman Catholic monopoly. The Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion have Benedictine and Franciscan communities among others, and their habits generally follow the colour of the Roman order they take their rule from: black for Anglican Benedictines, brown or grey for Anglican Franciscans. The Episcopal Church’s glossary is a useful reference for the vocabulary of Anglican religious life. Lutheran and ecumenical communities exist too; the brothers of Taizé wear a white habit for prayer. Colours in these communities are decided by the community itself, which is exactly the position in the Roman orders.

Eastern Orthodox monastic dress is a different system with its own terms, and we are not competent to describe it in detail. The general colour is black, understood as a sign of repentance and simplicity, and the garments, head coverings and grades of monastic profession are not the same as in the West. If you are an Orthodox monastic or solitary asking us to make something, we will cut to your instructions rather than to a Western pattern.

Cloth and construction

Historically the habit was wool, because wool was what there was, and many communities still specify wool or a wool blend. Wool hangs well, takes a pleat, breathes and is warm in an unheated church. It is also heavy, slow to dry and needs careful washing, which is why communities in hot climates and many modern houses have moved to cotton, a cotton and polyester blend, or a polyester suiting cloth that can go through a domestic machine. We have written elsewhere about the trade-offs between polyester, wool and silk for vestments; the same reasoning applies to habits, with the added point that a habit is worn every day and washed far more often than a chasuble.

Weight should follow climate and use. A habit for a Northern European winter and a habit for a retreat house in Texas should not be the same cloth. If you are unsure, ask us before ordering and we will describe the weight and hand of each cloth.

Construction is simpler than a chasuble but has a few points worth knowing. The tunic is cut wide, with a gusset or gore to give walking room, and the sleeve is set so that the arm can be raised without the hem lifting. The scapular is cut as a single length front to back where the cloth width allows, with the head opening reinforced, because it takes the strain of being pulled on and off. A hood is either attached to the tunic or to a separate capelet; an attached hood is simpler to wear, a separate one is easier to launder. The cincture is made last, to the wearer’s waist plus the hanging length.

Our monk robes and religious habits come in cotton or wool, in fourteen graded sizes or made to measure. They follow the outlines in the table above: a black hooded monk robe and a black monk robe with capelet in the Benedictine outline; a brown monk robe with cowl collar and scapular and a brown monk robe with capelet and pockets in the Franciscan outline; a stone grey monk robe with black scapular close to the Cistercian pattern; and a heather grey habit with tonal scapular. None is the habit of any order; they are garments in those colours and forms.

Measuring for a habit

A habit is forgiving compared with a clergy shirt, but four measurements decide whether it hangs properly. Full height, standing in the shoes that will be worn. Chest, measured around the fullest part over whatever will be worn underneath. Sleeve, from the point of the shoulder to where the sleeve should end, which is normally at or just past the wrist. And the length from the nape of the neck to the desired hem, which lets us set the hem clearance directly rather than working from height alone. A habit that drags picks up dirt and catches on steps; one that is too short looks like a nightshirt. Our general guide to measuring for vestments shows how to take each of these, and the store’s measuring guide has the same drawings with a form to fill in.

Two things catch people out. The first is layering: a monk who will wear a jumper under the tunic in winter needs the chest measured over the jumper, and a capelet or cowl that goes over the scapular needs room for both. What is worn underneath matters just as much for habits as for cassocks, and our piece on what goes under a cassock covers the same ground. The second is the scapular length. Front and back should hang to the same point, a little above the tunic hem, and a scapular measured on a rounded back will hang long at the front. We take the length from the shoulder seam, front and back separately.

If you are unsure between two sizes, send us your measurements before ordering and we will tell you which size code fits, or whether made to measure is the better choice.

Common questions

Why do monks wear brown, black or white?

The colour identifies the order rather than the wearer’s rank: Benedictines, Augustinians and Servites wear black, Franciscans and Carmelites brown, Cistercians white with a black scapular, Carthusians, Dominicans and Norbertines white. The colours are usually explained as the cheap undyed or dark-dyed wool of the poor, fixed by custom and then by each order’s constitutions.

What is a scapular?

A long strip of cloth with a head opening that hangs down the front and back over the tunic. It began as a monastic work apron in St Benedict’s time and is now part of the habit in most monastic and many mendicant orders. The small devotional scapular worn under lay clothing is a later derivative of it.

Can a lay person wear a monastic habit?

Whether any part of an order’s habit may be worn by oblates, third-order members or anyone else is decided by that order’s own rules, and in public a habit can be read as a claim to be a religious, which the orders object to. A habit worn on a private retreat, in a choir, on stage or at a living-history event misleads nobody, and those are the uses most non-monastic buyers have in mind.

What is the difference between a habit and a cassock?

A cassock is the daily dress of secular clergy: a close-fitting, ankle-length coat buttoned down the front, normally black. A habit is the dress of a religious: a loose tunic pulled on over the head, usually with a scapular, cincture and hood, in the order’s colour. Some religious priests wear a cassock when working outside their community; see our article on the cassock and soutane for the cassock side of the comparison.

How is a habit sized?

By height, chest, sleeve length and nape-to-hem length, taken over whatever will be worn underneath, with the scapular measured separately front and back. Our habits come in fourteen size codes, each pairing a chest range with a robe length, or made to measure from your own figures.

What is a monk robe called?

Its proper name is a habit. “Monk robe” is the common English term for the same garment: a long hooded tunic, usually with a scapular over it and a cord or belt at the waist, in the colour of the monk’s order.

What do Anglican monks wear?

Anglican communities generally follow the colour of the Roman rule they have adopted: black for Anglican Benedictines, brown or grey for Anglican Franciscans. As in the Roman orders, each community sets its own habit, and there is no Anglican-wide rule.

Looking after a habit

Because a habit is worn daily, it wears out at the hem, the cuffs and the head opening of the scapular long before the body of the cloth goes. Turn a wool hem up rather than cutting it, brush wool between washes, and wash cotton and polyester habits inside out to protect the surface. For stains, storage and pressing, the advice in our vestment care guide applies as much to a tunic as to an alb.

Sources

• Catholic Encyclopedia
• Episcopal Church's glossary