The high priest rent his garments

Saint Matthew - Chapter 26

The high priest rent his garments. J-J Tissot

[62] Et surgens princeps sacerdotum, ait illi : Nihil respondes ad ea, quae isti adversum te testificantur?
And the high priest rising up, said to him: Answerest thou nothing to the things which these witness against thee?

[63] Jesus autem tacebat. Et princeps sacerdotum ait illi : Adjuro te per Deum vivum, ut dicas nobis si tu es Christus Filius Dei.
But Jesus held his peace. And the high priest said to him: I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us if thou be the Christ the Son of God.

[64] Dicit illi Jesus : Tu dixisti. Verumtamen dico vobis, amodo videbitis Filium hominis sedentem a dextris virtutis Dei, et venientem in nubibus caeli.
Jesus saith to him: Thou hast said it. Nevertheless I say to you, hereafter you shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven.

[65] Tunc princeps sacerdotum scidit vestimenta sua, dicens : Blasphemavit : quid adhuc egemus testibus? ecce nunc audistis blasphemiam :
Then the high priest rent his garments, saying: He hath blasphemed; what further need have we of witnesses? Behold, now you have heard the blasphemy:

[66] What think you? But they answering, said: He is guilty of death.
quid vobis videtur? At illi respondentes dixerunt : Reus est mortis.

From The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by J-J Tissot (1897)

In spite of the bitter animosity of the false witnesses and the evident bias of the charges against the Accused, no distinct charge could be proved against Jesus which was not immediately upset by other testimony.  Then the High Priest himself, laying aside all dignity and reserve, abandons his position as supreme judge to become himself one of the accusers.  He addresses himself direct to Jesus and in so doing oversteps the rights of his office in the hope of drawing from the Prisoner a declaration which he can distort into an offence against Jehovah.  Rising up in his place he adjures the Accused to bear witness against Himself.  The expected reply came: "I am the son of god", and the iniquitous High Priest at once exclaimed: "He has spoken blasphemy", and rent his to clothes.  This reending of the clothes was the customary, indeed the prescribed, sign intended to mark the force of the blow struck on the heart, the intolerable anguish inflicted on the soul of a just man by hearing blasphemy.  The people of the East have ever been remarkable for outward and visible expression of all emotion, which, though at first genuine and sincere enough, resulted in a whole series of ceremonial actions which in course of time degenerated into mere formalities and sometimes even into positive absurdities.  At the original institution by the religious authorities of these various ceremonies, the aim of the law givers appears to have been to bring vividly home to each individual mind the truths of the symbolic actions shadowed forth and thus intensify the feelings of which they were the expression.  This is illustrated, for instance, by the way in which the Jews, worshipping in the synagogues of Jerusalem, standing with their faces to the wall and the palms of their hands turned outwards and uplifted, rise on tiptoe to symbolise the elevation of their soul towards God.  In the same way, when chanting the psalm De Profundis, the choristers, the better to mark the meaning of the words: "Out of the depths, oh lord, I cry unto the", stands in a deep hole dug in the earth.  It was expected as a matter of course that every good Israelite who heard of blasphemy should rend his garments, and in course of time this Pharisaical ceremony had become quite ridiculous.  A small knife was hung from the waistband with which the operation was performed, and a slit a few inches long cut in the mantle and are likely caught together again, rendered it yet more easy.  The Rabbis, who delighted in such puerile details, had drawn up a whole code of rules on the subject.  The rent in the garments must be made standing, it must, moreover, be in the front of the robe, starting from the neck and on no account from the fringe.  Furthermore, the rents must be a hand's breadth long and must be made in all the garments, of which ten would generally worn, except in that next the skin and in the tallith (Maimonides).  Of course, in a court of justice the rending of his garments by the judge was but a faint intended to impose on the spectators, or perhaps it was merely meant to shadow forth in a tangible way the judgment about to be pronounced.

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam