These "apparelled albs" (albae paratae) continued in general use in the Western Church till the 16th century, when a tendency to dispense with the parures began, Rome itself setting the example.
The Roman Catholic Ghegs appear to have abandoned the Eastern for the Western Church in the middle of the 13th century.
In the Byzantine and early Romanesque periods it was an essential part of church furniture; but during the middle ages it was gradually superseded in the Western Church by the pulpit and lectern.
Whether he meant it so or not, the saint's argument became a programme and an apologia for the imperializing of the Western Church under the leadership of Rome during the middle ages.
But the Western Church was also more conservative than the Greek.
