Before Mass, in the sacristy behind the altar, a priest picks up a long strip of cloth called a stole, kisses the cross sewn at its center and lays it around his neck. For centuries priests said a short prayer as they did it, asking God to give back the "stole of immortality" that Adam and Eve had lost.
Men have knotted cloth at the throat since the Roman legions. The Church has dressed her priests in something like it for nearly as long, and the rest of the world didn't make a fashion of it until the 1600s. That history, only half in jest, is the Catholic case for the necktie.
The soldier's scarf
Start with Rome. Roman soldiers wore a wool or linen scarf knotted at the throat to keep their armor from rubbing the neck raw. You can see it again and again on Trajan's Column, the carved monument to the emperor's wars that still stands in Rome.
A priest still puts on something like it before Mass: a plain white cloth called the amice. He touches it to his head, then settles it over his neck and shoulders before the rest of his vestments. The old prayer that goes with it is a soldier's prayer, borrowed from St. Paul: "Place upon my head, O Lord, the helmet of salvation."
The stole
The stole is older than anything in a men's shop. Nobody is quite sure where it came from. One old theory says it began as a neckcloth priests wore; another, as a napkin deacons carried. By the ninth century it had its name, and it has hung around a priest's neck ever since. In the old ordination rite, the bishop laid it on a new priest with the words "Receive the yoke of the Lord." For most of the Church's history it has been made from the best cloth a parish could afford, which very often meant silk.
A silk stole, probably Venice, mid-17th century. Note the cross at the neck. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Croats
The necktie got its name during the Thirty Years' War, the long, bloody war between Catholic and Protestant powers that tore up Central Europe from 1618 to 1648. Croatian soldiers, many of them fighting for the Catholic emperor in Vienna, wore knotted scarves at the neck. From 1635 Croats also fought for the King of France, and the French took up the scarf and named it after them. In French, a Croat became a cravate, and to this day the French word for a necktie is cravate. Croatia still celebrates Cravat Day every October 18.
Croatia already had a Catholic reputation. In 1519 Pope Leo X called it the bulwark of Christendom, for holding the line against the Ottoman Turks.
The king who made it fashionable
It was Louis XIV of France who made the cravat the thing to wear. He had a regiment called the Royal Cravates, and a man at court whose whole job was supplying the king with cravats, several a day.
A French lace cravat, 1693. Hyacinthe Rigaud, Portrait of a Man. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
From there it is a long walk through two centuries of neckcloths to the tie in your closet. That one arrived in the 1920s, when an American tailor named Jesse Langsdorf patented a way of cutting ties on the bias, at an angle to the weave, so they hang straight. Good ties are still made that way.
The wedding garment
The better argument is made at every Mass. Just before Communion, the priest holds up the Host and says, "Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb." The line comes from the Book of Revelation, where an angel calls it the wedding supper of the Lamb. The Church is telling us we have been invited to a wedding.
Christ told a story about a wedding. In the Gospel of Matthew, a king throws a feast for his son, fills the hall with guests, and then finds one man without a wedding garment. The man has nothing to say for himself, and he is thrown out. Pope St. Gregory the Great asked what that garment could be "but charity," and he was right: the parable is about the state of a man's soul, not his wardrobe. But the story only works because everyone listening already knew that you dress for a wedding.
The Catechism says it plainly. When we prepare for Communion, "bodily demeanor (gestures, clothing) ought to convey the respect, solemnity, and joy of this moment when Christ becomes our guest." The Church has never required a tie, and no man should stay home from Mass for want of one. The garment that counts is charity. A tie simply shows you know where you are.
So on Sunday morning, two men put a strip of cloth around their necks. One is in the sacristy, kissing the cross on his stole. The other is at the bathroom mirror, trying to get the dimple right. They are getting ready for the same wedding.
For what a good tie is made of, and how silk ran through the history of the Church, read The Catholic Story of Silk. If you've never put a suit and tie together, start with our beginner's guide.
Shop our silk neckties → · JHS Christogram Silk Necktie · St. Michael Silk Necktie