In the Orthodox Christian tradition, an epitaphios is a liturgical veil used during Holy Week to represent Christ in the tomb. An aër is a type of textile used to cover the vessels containing the Eucharistic bread and wine on the altar during the Divine Liturgy. The form and function of the epitaphios developed from the form and function of the aër. Just when these two types of liturgical textile became completely distinct is something that scholars have yet to determine, and it is doubtful that we can deduce a precise function for any extant example of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries solely from its iconography. Careful study of the iconography embroidered on early aëres and epitaphioi confirms that these veils developed as expressions of the theology behind the rites in which those textiles were used. Analyzing iconography, style, and inscriptions, however, reveals less about how any aër or epitaphios fits into the development of these types of textiles than it reveals about the concerns of the patrons and embroiderers at the time and place when each textile was made.

Iconography is not the only evidence for the meaning and functions of liturgical textiles. Early texts reveal that aëres and epitaphioi might have had flexible functions well into the sixteenth century. Sources for the special terms applied to liturgical textiles include the inscriptions on the textiles themselves, which scholars have sometimes overlooked. The inscriptions provide some of the most promising evidence for understanding the functions of these liturgical textiles. Combining embroidered images and embroidered inscriptions, aëres and epitaphioi also carried messages other than their most obvious theological meanings. Aëres and epitaphioi have been useful sites for the display of a patron’s Orthodox Christian identity. Some patrons, including Byzantine emperors, grand princes of Moscow, and Moldavian voivodes, used aëres and epitaphioi to identify themselves with a specifically Byzantine legacy even after the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. This study includes a catalogue of all known, extant aëres and epitaphioi of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.