Chapter III (2)

'The pall which the principal bishops wear signifies the discipline with which archbishops should rule themselves and those set under them. By this the golden chain[59] is obtained which those receive who strive lawfully, of which Solomon saith, "My son, hear the instruction of thy father and forsake not the law of thy mother, for they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head and chains about thy neck." For the pallium is made of white wool, woven, having a circle above constraining the shoulders, and two tails (_lineae_) hanging down on either side; moreover, there are four purple crosses, front and back, on the right and on the left. On the left side it is double, and single on the right.'[60] After a long moralization on these facts, he goes on: 'The three pins which are fixed in the pallium over the breast, on the shoulder and in the back, denote pity for his neighbour, the administration of his office, and the meting out of justice.... There is no pin fastened in the right shoulder,' because there is no trouble in everlasting rest. 'The needle is golden, sharp below, rounded above, enclosing a precious stone,' which bears a variety of meanings. If we may believe the Elizabethan reformers, the pall was an expensive item in an archbishop's insignia. Although Gregory I ordained that it should be given to the archbishop-elect freely, Jewel speaks of the Archbishop of Canterbury giving 5,000 florins (£1,125 at 4s. 6d. the florin) to the Pope for his pall, in addition to the first-fruits of his province; and Bullinger speaks of the pall being so dear that 'in gathering money for it' the archbishop often 'beggared his whole diocese.'

X. _The Stockings_, or buskins, seem to have been originally appropriated to the Pope alone, bishops being content with the somewhat scanty sandal already described. But by the time of Ivo of Chartres the _caligae_ had taken their place among the articles in an episcopal wardrobe. He is the first writer who mentions them. In the middle ages they, like all the other vestments of which we have been treating, forsook their primitive simplicity and became enriched with elaborate ornamentation. They signify the need of framing the courses of their feet aright; and in that they reach to the knees, they indicate that the wearer should strengthen the feeble knees weakened by heedlessness, and hasten to preach the Gospel.

XI. _The Subcingulum._—The discussion of this vestment will be more difficult than that of any other among the equipment of the clergy of the West. It is all but obsolete at the present day; there does not seem to be more than one representation of it extant, and that only shows a small portion of it in an unsatisfactory manner; and the references to it in ecclesiastical writers are few and far between.

In antiquarian or any other investigations it is invariably the best rule, when a puzzle is set for solution, to work backwards from the known to the unknown. We will follow this course in speaking of this vestment, and commence with a description of it as worn at the present day.

The modern _subcingulum_ is reserved for the exclusive use of the Pope. It takes the form of a girdle, passed round the alb, and having on the left side a maniple-like appendage. This seems to have been the form which it had in the end of the fourteenth century, for in an 'Ordo Missae Pontificalis,' published by Georgi,[61] we read: 'Primo induit (pontifex) sibi albam, deinde cinctorium cum manipulo ad sinistram partem.' In the century before this Durandus, in his 'Rationale Divinorum Officiorum,' writes: 'Sane a sinistro latere pontificis ex cingulo duplex dependet succinctorium'[62]—a doubled 'apron' hangs on the left hand side; and he likens it to a quiver, in the course of an elaborate comparison between the episcopal vestments of his time and the spiritual armour of the Christian.

The _succinctorium_ must have adopted this form about the middle of the thirteenth century. At the beginning of that century we find that it had its use, and was not a mere ornament. In the 'Ordo Romanus' of Cencio de Sabellis, written at the end of the twelfth century,[63] is a description of the new Pope's taking possession of the Church of St John Lateran. He is there described as being 'girt with a belt of crimson silk, hanging from which is a purple _purse_ (bursa) containing twelve precious stones and some musk.' These all had their symbolical meaning: the belt denoted purity, the purse almsgiving, the stones the apostles, the musk 'a good odour in the sight of God.'

Innocent III, writing at the commencement of the thirteenth century, describes the vestment as peculiar to _bishops_, but does not refer to it as peculiar to _popes_; neither, be it noticed, does Cencio. The last restriction may have crept in one or two centuries after Innocent. He does not enter into many details concerning it, but he clearly distinguishes it from the _zona_, or girdle, which denotes continence, as the _subcingulum_ signifies abstinence.[64]

About this time a fresco was executed on the wall of the _Sagro Speco_ at Subiaco, which remains till the present day. It represents a Pope fully vested, but under the folds of the chasuble on either side is a fretted ornament which is certainly not part of any of the ordinary vestments of any rank of clergy. There is no alternative but to regard Dr Rock as correct in considering this ornament as part of the subcingulum.

This being granted, the subcingulum is seen to be a girdle, from either side of which depends a lozenge-shaped 'lappet.' We shall meet with a similar lappet in the =epigonation= of the Greek Church. Only portions of these lappets are to be seen in the fresco in question, but enough is apparent to show them to be lozenge-shaped.

The testimony of Cencio points to these lappets being, not mere ornaments, but bags or purses hung to the belt; and this brings us to another stage in the evolution of this vestment. We know that through the middle ages a bag called a _gypcière_ hung at the belts of civilians, and served the double purpose of purse and pocket. It is but natural to suppose that the early clergy found such appendages useful even in divine service. Let us now go yet further, and see whether confirmation of these theories awaits us.

Honorius of Autun in 1130 writes: 'The subcingulum, also called perizona or subcinctorium, is hung doubled about the loins; this signifies zeal in almsgiving,' etc.

Note, in this passage, the expression 'hung doubled.' This can only refer to the 'lappets' being hung _one on each side_. And the 'almsgiving,' which Honorius asserts this vestment to signify, suggests a purse.

Other writers, in the century preceding Honorius, write to the same effect; and even as early as the tenth century, in a manuscript of the mass, we find a distinction drawn between the 'cingulum' and the 'baltheum' in the prayers said while vesting.

In short, it seems probable that the subcingulum, with its appendages, is, like several other sacerdotal vestments, a modification into an ornament of something which had been designed for some natural requirement. When the maniple became too narrow and too richly embroidered to be of the slightest use as a handkerchief, it cannot be supposed that the priest did entirely without some resource; some plain piece of cloth must surely have been employed in its place, and some pocket must then have been required in which to place it. Again, some receptacle must have been wanted in which to place those comforting metal 'apples' in which hot water was placed when the day was cold; and the thumbstall or ponser, the thimble designed to keep the oil which adhered to his thumb after it had been dipped in the chrism, from greasing any of his vestments. It seems only natural to suppose that the subcingulum was originally designed to supply these wants.

XII. _The Rational._—This ornament, obsolete now, was assumed by the bishops of the early years of the middle ages, in direct imitation of the breastplate of the ephod worn by the Jewish High Priest.

It consisted of a wooden brooch, overlaid with enamelled metal, which was fastened high up on the breast of the chasuble, and seems commonly to have been worn when there was no central orphrey on that vestment.

The shape and ornamentation of the rational varied altogether with the caprice of the artist who designed it. Examples are extremely rare in inventories of cathedral goods, if, indeed, they occur at all. It is probable that they were catalogued together with the _morses_ of copes, with which they were practically identical in appearance.

The word 'Rationale' first meets us in the expression 'rationale judicii,' used in the Vulgate _passim_ as a translation of the =to logeion tês kriseôs=, by which the Septuagint expressed the breastplate of the ephod. In the early Church writers the word 'judicii' was dropped and 'rationale' used alone, but always to denote the Jewish ornament. When pseudo-Alcuin wrote, in the tenth or eleventh century, the ecclesiastical rational was quite unknown, for he says: 'Pro rationali summi pontifices, quos archiepiscopos dicemus, pallio utuntur'—a statement which he would certainly not have made if anything less unlike the rational than the pallium had been known to him. Ivo of Chartres, too, knows nothing of the Christian ornament, for although he does not say definitely that the Jewish rational corresponded to the pallium, he says that it corresponded to an ornament _conceded_ (_concessum_) to the chief bishops of his time—an expression which would define the pallium, but certainly not the rational. Honorius of Autun is the writer in whom we first meet with direct and unequivocal mention of the ornament; and he begins his remarks upon it by definitely stating: 'Rationale a Lege est sumptum'—_Lege_, of course, being the Levitical law. This gives us very closely the limits of date between which the rational was assumed—some time between 1100 and 1130.

The rational, if we may accept the testimony of the monuments, gradually died out about the fourteenth or fifteenth century. It seems never to have been universal, and an actual rational is one of the rarest ecclesiological treasures a collector can possess.

XIII. _The Mitre._—Like that of the _subcingulum_, the history of the mitre is a curious piece of evolution; but, unlike the _subcingulum_, the mitre can be traced through all its history in an unbroken chain of literary references, monumental effigies, and actual specimens.

The word _mitra_ (Gk. =mitos=, _a thread_) is applied in the transitional period to a female head-dress, and even St Isidore of Seville makes use of the word in that sense. The Septuagint, however, occasionally translates the expression for the cap of the high priest by =mitra=; at other times they use the word =kidaris=, which they also apply to the cap of the second order of the Jewish priesthood. The Vulgate follows the Septuagint, sometimes using _mitra_, sometimes _cidaris_, and occasionally _tiara_.

The advocates of an origin in primitive antiquity for Ecclesiastical Vestments make much of two passages which are certainly obscure, and would seem to indicate that in apostolic times 'bishops' wore a _gold plate_ upon their heads. These passages are in a letter sent by Polycrates of Ephesus to Victor, bishop of Rome, about the year 200 A.D., in which he alludes to St John as 'having become a priest wearing the gold plate' =egenêthê hiereus to petalon pephorêkôs=;[65] and in the writings of Epiphanius of Salamis (_circa_ 400 A.D.), in which he says of James, the brother of Our Lord, that he was a priest after the ancient rite, and was permitted to wear a gold plate—=hierateusanta auton kata tên palaian hierôsunê heuromen ... kai to petalon epi tês kephalês hexên autô pherein=,[66] citing the authority of Eusebius, Clement, and others. These statements are so hopelessly vague and confused that very little can be made out of them, but it has been pointed out that (i) the passages in which they occur are largely allegorical, (ii) that the =petalon= seems to refer to the gold plate of Jewish priesthood, and that the expression 'priest with the =petalon=' probably was used currently in the early years of Christianity, much as 'mitred abbot' is by us at the present day. In any case, as Dr Sinker says,[67] it 'is plain enough that if St John and St James, or either of them, did wear this ornament, it was an ornament 'special to themselves' and ceased with them, affecting in no sense the further use of the church.'

Other passages, supposed to refer to this or similar practices, bearing dates between the fourth and sixth centuries, are found on examination to have no real bearing on the question. The number of extracts from writers of that time which have been brought forward to prove the antiquity of the mitre is considerable; but those which can at all bear consideration apart from their contexts are all vague, unconvincing and inconclusive; some, indeed, are so obviously figurative that their production is only an amusing illustration of the straits to which the believers in the elaboration of primitive ritual are reduced. And the evidence of Tertullian on the other side is very clear—'quis denique patriarches, quis prophetes, quis levites, aut sacerdos, aut archon, quis vel postea apostolus aut evangelizator aut episcopus invenitur coronatus?'[68]

In the face of this quotation it is not easy to see what to make of the passages in St Jerome and elsewhere, in which a bishop is addressed by the expression 'corona vestra,' much as we use the words 'your lordship' now. Dr Rock argues from this that bishops, even so early as the fifth century, wore a circlet or crown of gold at Divine service. If so, the use must have been confined to Rome, for otherwise the Toletan or other councillors would surely have given us definite information concerning it.

St Isidore of Seville, in his treatise 'De Officiis Ecclesiasticis,' book ii, chap. vii, describes the tonsure as indicative of the priesthood and the regal nature of the church, the shaven part of the head representing the hemispherical cap of the Jewish priests, and the circlet of hair representing the coronet of kings. It is true that he is not speaking definitely of bishops, but the fact that he is absolutely silent respecting a crown of any kind other than the crown of hair—for which he expressly uses the word _corona_—is at least presumptive evidence that the crown of gold was not worn in his day. The prophecy of King Laoghairé's druids affords a very curious corroboration of this; see _post_, p. 128.

The earliest representation that Dr Rock can adduce of an ecclesiastic wearing this circlet is a figure in the Benedictional of St Aethelwold, an MS. of the tenth century at Chatsworth. Here we have a figure, the brows of which are certainly encircled with a gold band set with precious stones. As Marriott points out, however, this is probably more of a secular than an ecclesiastical nature, and may indicate the royal rank to which bishops at that time frequently laid claim.

Menard, after a careful study of ancient liturgies, came to the conclusion that the mitre was not in use in the church prior to the year 1000. Contemporary art bears out this statement. Probably the earliest genuine representation of a bishop wearing a head-dress to which any importance can be attached from a liturgical point of view is an illumination of St Dunstan[69] in an MS. (Claud. A 3) in the British Museum. This is of the early years of the eleventh century. It shows us a simple cap, low and hemispherical in shape, without the least trace of the cleft now invariably associated with the episcopal headgear.

The fashion seems to have changed with considerable rapidity, and the cleft very soon began to make its appearance. Its first beginning was a very shallow, blunt depression between two low, blunt, rounded points, one over each ear—in fact, a depression such as would naturally be made in a soft cloth cap by passing the outstretched hand gently across the crown. This change was not long in giving place to another and more important modification. The mitre was turned so that the horns appeared one in front, one behind, and they were raised a little higher than before, and, instead of being rounded, were made of a triangular form. The mitre in this shape is that universally represented in MSS. of the twelfth century.

Little difference in shape is traceable in the mitres of the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. During these four hundred years the mitre increased considerably in size, but it was reserved for the seventeenth century to stereotype the final modification in form. Hitherto the two horns of the mitre had as a general rule been in the shape of plain triangles, bent round so as to adapt themselves to the outline of the head; the mitre was thus cylindrical in outline. By the seventeenth century, however, the triangles had been made spherical, so that the mitre assumed the form of a pair of parentheses, or of a barrel, which it still possesses.[70] By this time it had grown to a considerable height—some eighteen inches.

When the mitre was a plain cloth cap it was kept in position by two ribbons, which were knotted at the back of the head. The end of these ribbons are well shown in the figure of St Dunstan. But the ribbons very early lost their usefulness and became simple ornaments, and the ubiquitous embroiderer was not long in seizing on these _infulae_, or lappets, and enriching them with needlework to the best of her ability.

The mitre was originally made of plain white linen, and until about the twelfth century continued to be so; it was occasionally, though by no means always, elaborately decorated with needlework. Such simplicity, however, was not consistent with the spirit of the age which followed, and we find that in the thirteenth century the mitre was made of silk, and invariably overlaid either with embroidery or pearls and other jewels. To such a length was this enrichment carried at last in England, that we read that Henry VIII removed from Fountains Abbey, among other treasures, a silver-gilt mitre set with pearl and stone—weight seventy ounces!

Although properly belonging to the seventh chapter, in which the ritual uses of the various vestments which we have been describing will be discussed, it is necessary here to detail the three classes into which mitres are divided. Unlike other vestments, which are classified according to the particular liturgical _colour_ which predominates in their embroidery, mitres are classified according to the _manner_ in which they are ornamented. The background, when it can be seen at all, is white. A mitre which is simply made of white linen or silk, with little or no enrichment, is called a _mitra simplex_; one ornamented richly with embroidery, but without precious metals or stones, is called a _mitra aurifrigiata_; and one in which precious metals and stones are employed in its decoration is called a _mitra pretiosa_. The different times at which these different kinds of mitres are worn will be noted in their proper place in Chapter VII.

The papal tiara may be briefly described in this place. It first appears about the eleventh century as a conical cap, encircled with a single crown at the brow; assumed about the time of the growth of the earthly power of the papacy, it may well be regarded as symbolical of spiritual and temporal rule. The subsequent modifications through which it passed were few in number, though considerable in character: they consisted in the addition of a second crown by Boniface VIII (1300 A.D.), of a third by Urban V (1362-70), and the swelling out of the body of the head-dress into a bulging form about the sixteenth century, much about the time when the mitre assumed the same shape.

XIV. _The Episcopal Gloves._—These undoubtedly owe their invention to the coldness and cheerlessness of the early churches, and were invented simply to keep the hands of the wearer warm. But about the ninth century they, with so many similar vestments, assumed a more sacred character, and a prayer was prescribed for putting them on, as was the case with the other and better established vestments. They do not appear to be formally mentioned as vestments till the time of Honorius of Autun, who draws moral lessons from them.

Throughout the middle ages the gloves were richly embroidered and jewelled; often a large stone is to be seen on the back of each hand.

The gloves (_chirothecae_, or _manicae_) must be carefully distinguished from the _manicae_ or _brachialia_, the sleeves of coarse cloth which the bishop used to draw over his arm to protect the apparels of his alb from the water when administering baptism by immersion.

As the hands are sometimes covered with gloves and sometimes bare, so good deeds should be sometimes hidden to prevent self-sufficiency, and sometimes revealed as an edifying example to those near us. So says Honorius of Autun; perhaps this is as satisfactory an exegesis as has ever been given of the gloves or any other vestment.

XV. _The Episcopal Ring._—Although, as we have seen, the ring was recognised as one of the special marks of a bishop at the time of the fourth council of Toledo, and was regarded by St Isidore of Seville as a special article used in the investiture of a bishop, none of the liturgical writers of the earliest years of the mediaeval period notices it; not till we come to Honorius of Autun is any mention of it to be found. The reason of this is not far to seek, and has been given by Marriott. Rabanus, Amalarius, Ivo, and the rest, occupied themselves more or less with the supposed connexion between the liturgical and the Jewish vestments, and therefore, as they were not writing treatises dealing solely with Christian vestments, they omitted all mention of ornaments which had no direct bearing on the questions with which they were engaged. Hence, both the ring and pastoral staff suffered, as the most ingenious torturing could not extract anything in the Levitical rites analogous to these important insignia.

The evidence of the monuments is conclusive on two points. First, that the episcopal ring proper was only one of a large number of rings worn by the bishop, the others being probably purely ornamental and secular; second, that it was worn on the third finger of the right hand, and _above_ the second joint of that finger, not being passed, as rings are now, down to the knuckle. It was usually kept in place with a plain guard ring.

The ring was always a circlet with a precious stone, never engraved, and it was large enough to pass over the gloved finger. The stone was usually a sapphire, sometimes an emerald or a ruby.

Although the ring is distinguishable, by its position on the right hand as well as by other circumstances, from the wedding-ring, Honorius of Autun (after referring to the ring placed on the finger of the Prodigal Son and the wedding ring of iron with an adamantine stone forged by 'a certain wise man called Prometheus') has been trapped into saying that the bishop wears a ring that he may declare himself the bridegroom of the church and may lay down his life for it, should necessity arise, as did Christ.

XVI. _The Pastoral Staff._—We have briefly sketched the probable origin of the pastoral staff in the preceding chapter, and come now to discuss the forms it presented and the connexions in which it was used during the middle ages. As there is no department of the study of Ecclesiastical Vestments about which so much popular misconception exists, it will be necessary to enter into these details at considerable length.

As utterly unfounded as the common notions concerning 'low-side windows' and crossed-legged effigies is the idea that the differences in the positions of pastoral staves as represented in sculptured monuments have any meaning whatsoever, secret or personal. A pastoral staff remains a pastoral staff, and nothing more, whether it is on the right side of the bearer or on the left, and whether its crook is turned inwards or outwards.

Synonymous with 'pastoral staff' is the word _crozier_ or _crosier_; but it is frequently ignorantly applied to a totally different object—the cross-staff borne before an archbishop. The statements which we so often see in works professing to treat on ecclesiological subjects as to the pastoral staff being crook-headed and borne by bishops, the crozier cross-headed, and borne (instead of the pastoral staff) _by_ archbishops, are derived from a misunderstanding of the evidence of mediaeval monuments.[71] The truth is, that the pastoral staff, with which the crozier is identical, is borne by bishops and archbishops alike; but archbishops are distinguished from bishops by having a staff, with a cross or crucifix in its head, borne _before_ them in addition. In many monuments, it is true, archbishops are represented as carrying the cross-staff, as, for instance, the brass of Archbishop Cranley in New College, Oxford; but it was obviously impossible in a monument of this kind to represent a cross-bearer preceding the archbishop, and the slight inaccuracy was, therefore, perpetrated of making the archbishop bear his own cross, thereby substantiating the evidence of the _pall_, that the person represented was of higher rank than that of a bishop. It was better managed at Mayence, where, in the monument of Albrecht von Brandenburg, 1545, figured above (p. 101), the figure is represented as bearing both the crozier and the cross-staff, one in each hand; and at Bamberg, in the cathedral of which city is a brass to Bishop Lambert von Brunn[72] (1399), wherein he is represented holding the crozier in his left hand, the cross-staff in his right.

In the earliest representations of a staff of office there is a considerable variety in the shape of the head; knobs, crooks, and even Y-shapes, all meet us. The shape probably depended on the shape of the branch of the tree from which the staff was cut, much as does the shape of an ordinary walking-stick. By St Isidore's time, however, the crook-head had become stereotyped; the number of exceptional forms which we find after that date is small. There is a considerable number of staves of about the eleventh century, either represented on monuments or actually existing, of which the heads are tau-shaped; these possibly betray Eastern influence. A few effigies or pictures of bishops remain with a knob-headed staff; an example is to be seen in a ninth-century Anglo-Saxon pontifical at Rouen.

The crook-headed staff is, however, by far the commonest, and after the eleventh century the only, form in which the bishop's crozier is found. Some variety is discoverable in the extent to which the staff is crooked. In some—notably in Irish specimens—the head is shaped like an inverted U, the form of the whole staff being that represented in the annexed diagram; but in the great majority of instances the head is recurved into a spiral or volute.

In the Irish form of crozier the front is flat, and shaped like an oval shield. This is often moveable, disclosing a hollow behind it, which was almost certainly used as a reliquary.[73]

The materials of which the pastoral staff was made were very diverse. The stick was of wood, usually some precious wood, such as cedar, cypress, or ebony. This wood was often gilt or overlaid with silver plates. In the twelfth century the staff was shod with iron and surmounted with a knob of crystal, above which the crook proper was attached. The crook-head of the Irish crozier was of bronze; that of the other form generally of carved ivory. When the process of elaboration was felt in this as in all the other sacerdotal ornaments, the stick as well as the head was often carved from ivory, and either gilt or silvered heavily, and set with precious stones. Beneath the crook were often niches or shrines, containing figures of saints.

The bronze Irish crozier was decorated with the marvellous interlacing knots and bands which are the special glory of early Irish Christian art. On the flat front is often to be seen a plain cross, at the centre of which is a setting for a precious stone, and in each quarter an interlacing band. In the volute form of crozier a different style of ornamentation was adopted; the surface was not ornamented, but the head was carved into solid forms; in the centre of the volute was usually represented some sacred person or scene, real or legendary, or else some symbolical device or conventional patterns. It is hard to say which of these two forms of crozier is the better from an aesthetic point of view. The graceful curve of the volute certainly compares favourably with the somewhat stiff outline of the Irish crozier; but the feebleness of even the best mediaeval attempts at representing the human figure in miniature considerably detracts from the artistic value of the volute crozier when a human figure is introduced; while, on the other hand, the incomparable excellence of the Irish metal-workers transformed the U-shaped crozier into an object of great beauty. The lines of the knots are always faultlessly executed, and the ornamentation is invariably in good taste.[74]

The following copy of the Lincoln Inventory of pastoral staves (1536) illustrates some of the points already noticed. It also indicates that the head and staff of the crozier were separable, and, when stored in the vestry, kept apart from one another:

'In primis a hede of one busshopes staffe of sylver and gylte wᵗ one knop and perles & other stones havyng a Image of owʳ savyowʳ of the one syde and a Image of sent John Baptiste of the other syde wanting xxj stones & perles wᵗ one bose [boss] and one sokett weyng xviij unces.

'Item one other hede of a staffe copoʳ & gylte.

'Item a staffe ordend for one of the seyd hedes the wyche ys ornate wᵗ stones sylver and gylte and iij circles, a boute the staffe sylver and gylte wantyng vij stones.

'Item a staffe of horn and wod for the hede of copoʳ.

'Item j staff covered wᵗ silver wᵗʰout heeid.'

In the corresponding inventory of Winchester Cathedral we find entered three pastoral staves silver-gilt, one pastoral staff of a 'unicorn's' (presumably a narwhal's) horn and four pastoral staves of plates of silver.

Suspended to the top of the staff was a streamer or napkin, which, like the lappet of the mitre, was called the _infula_. This was originally introduced to keep the moisture of the hand from tarnishing the metal of the staff. The symbolists think it is a 'banner' of some sort or other.

It will be convenient, before proceeding to the discussion of the next vestment on our list, to give a few particulars regarding the archbishop's cross. This is necessary owing to the confusion already noticed, which exists between the crozier and the cross; but as the cross cannot strictly be included in a catalogue of ecclesiastical vestments, we shall make our notes as brief as possible.

The custom of preceding an archbishop with a cross was introduced throughout the Western Church about the beginning of the twelfth century. It was carried by one of the archbishop's chaplains, who in this country received the name of 'croyser,' or cross-bearer, for that reason. The cross was usually richly ornamented with metalwork and jewels, and often, if not always, bore a figure of Our Lord on each face, so that the eyes of the archbishop were fixed on the one, those of the people on the other.

The circumstance of highest importance connected with the archbishop's cross, so far as it concerns our present purpose, is this: the prelate _never_ bore the cross himself, except on the one occasion of his investiture. He then received the cross into his own hands, but immediately passed it on to his cross-bearer.

The Pope is often in mediaeval monuments and illustrations represented as preceded by a cross with three transoms of different length, the uppermost being the shortest, the lowermost the longest. This is simply the result of a desire on the part of the artist to improve upon the patriarch's cross of the Eastern Church, which _appears_ to have two transoms, the upper transom being in point of fact a representation of the board on which the superscription on the cross was written.

One more staff may be worth a passing mention—the staff borne as an emblem of authority by the ruler of the choir, who looked after the singing and behaviour of the boys. This was of silver, with a cross-head.

The false conceptions about the crozier have probably arisen from an inaccurate etymological analogy with the word _cross_. The true derivation connects it with such words as our _crotchet_ and _crook_.

The symbolism of the shepherd's staff is naturally the leading thought in the minds of the mystics. It was probably, however, considered too obvious, and they cast about to find yet further secret meanings. Thus, Honorius notices that the Lord commanded the apostles to 'take nothing save a staff only' when they were going out to preach, and then says that 'the staff which sustains the feeble signifies the authority of teaching,' and much more to the same effect. Innocent III says that the point is sharp, the middle straight, the top curved, to indicate that the priest should spur on the idle, rule the weak, collect the wandering. He further explains the fact that the Pope does not bear the pastoral staff by telling us that 'the blessed St Peter sent his staff to Eucharius, the first bishop of Trèves, whom he had sent, together with Valerius and Maternus, to preach the Gospel among the Germans. Maternus succeeded him in the bishopric; he had been raised from the dead by the staff of St Peter. And this staff is preserved with great reverence in the church of Trèves.' St Thomas Aquinas supplements this piece of information by telling us that for this reason the Pope carries the pastoral staff when pontificating in Trèves.[75]

The episcopal staff is alleged to have borne the following inscriptions: round the crook, 'Cum iratus fueris misericordiae recordaberis'; on the ball below the crook, 'Homo'; on the spike at the bottom, 'Parce.' By these inscriptions the bishop was warned that he was but a man himself; that in wrath he should remember mercy; and that he should spare, even when administering discipline. Whether these warnings were invariably effective is a matter into which we will not inquire.

XVII. _The Tunicle._—This was simply a small variety of the dalmatic, appropriated to the use of subdeacons and bishops.

It differed from the dalmatic merely in being somewhat smaller. It was made of silk or of wool, and first appears about the year 820 as a subdeacon's vestment; but it is considerably later than this that it appears as a bishop's garment. In the ninth century bishops appear with but one vestment—the alba—under the chasuble; between the ninth and eleventh centuries the dalmatic makes its appearance; and it is not till about 1200 that we find the tunicle illustrated in paintings or effigies of bishops. A reference to the table given in the early part of the present chapter will show that the literary evidence points in the same direction.

The tunicle did not escape the common fate of all the vestments of the mediaeval church, and it, too, became overlaid with needlework, first in a strip across the breast of the subdeacon, then (as this would not show under the vestments of the bishop) on the rest of the surface. The tunicle on Bishop Goodrick's brass at Ely Cathedral—one of the latest representations of this vestment in England—is as richly embroidered as the dalmatic.

In a few episcopal effigies of the thirteenth century the dalmatic alone appears. The tunicle being worn beneath the dalmatic, and being naturally smaller, was hidden. This difficulty was, however, very soon surmounted by the simple process of shortening the dalmatic.

Properly, the dalmatic only is fringed; the tunicle of the subdeacon seldom, if ever, shows this manner of ornamentation. But in the later episcopal effigies it is by no means uncommon.

XVIII. _The Orale_, or, as it is now called, the _Fanon_, is described by Dr Rock as 'an oblong piece of white silk gauze of some length, striped across its width with narrow bars, alternately gold, blue, and red.... It is cast upon the head of the Pope like a hood, and its two ends are wrapped one over the right, the other over the left shoulder, and thus kept until the holy father is clad in the chasuble, when the fanon is thrown back and made to hang smoothly and gracefully above and all around the shoulders of that vestment, like a tippet.'

From the orale being supposed to represent the ephod, as well as from the manner of its being put on, it is probable that it was an evolution from the amice. It is not mentioned by liturgical writers before Innocent III, and does not appear in paintings or monuments of much older date; it therefore seems to have been assumed about the twelfth or thirteenth century.

XIX. _The Pectoral Cross._—We must not omit to mention this important episcopal ornament. As an official ornament it is of comparatively late introduction; it first appears in the pages of Innocent III and Durandus, and from the references which these liturgiologists make to it, it was evidently regarded by them as exclusively confined to the Pope's use. Thus, Innocent says: 'Romanus autem pontifex post albam et cingulum assumit orale, quod circa caput involvit et replicat super humeros' for certain symbolic reasons; 'et quia signo crucis auri lamina cessit pro lamina quam pontifex ille [Judaeus] gerebat in fronte, pontifex iste crucem gerit in pectore.' Dr Rock has been unable to find any trace of the pectoral cross appearing on the breast of an ordinary bishop before the sixteenth century. Even by the Popes it appears before this time to have been covered by the chasuble. Probably the cross was originally a reliquary.

On p. 29 we referred to a MS. of uncertain date in the monastery of St Martin at Autun, which details the vestments worn in the Gallican church in (probably) the tenth century. This gives a somewhat different catalogue from the lists of the rest of the Western Church, and displays some Eastern influence. The _pallium_, _casula_, _alba_, and _stola_ are described so that they appear identical with the corresponding vestments elsewhere; the maniple also appears, under the name _vestimentum parvolum_; and we have in addition the _manualia_ or _manicae_, which do not appear in any other Western lists; they are said in the MS. to have been regularly worn 'like bracelets,' and to have covered the arms of 'kings and priests.' This points to vestments after the style of the =epimanikia= of the Greeks, which will be noticed in their proper place in Chapter V.

We have now described the vestments worn by the priests of the Western Church at the Eucharistic service, and are thus in a position to give a satisfactory answer to the question, 'Were they adaptations of the Jewish, or natural evolutions of the Roman costume?' We have seen that the jeweller, the goldsmith, and the embroiderer conspired to make the vestments of the middle ages as gorgeous as possible, and that therein, and in some few other particulars, they resembled the Mosaic costume; but as we go back nearer and nearer to the first ages of Christianity all the glitter drops off, vestment after vestment disappears, till we reach the three plain white vestments of the fourth century, from which it is but a step to the ordinary costume of a Roman citizen of good position during the second or third century of our era. We have also seen that all attempts at drawing hidden meanings from the vestments fail; the results, when not far-fetched, are contradictory and unconvincing.

[49] Vest. Christ., p. lxxviii.

[50] Vestes etiam sacerdotales per incrementa ad eum qui nunc habetur auctae sunt ornatum. Nam primis temporibus communi indumento vestiti missas agebant, sicut et hactenus quidam Orientalium facere perhibentur.—Walafrid Strabo De Reb. Eccl., cap. xxiv (Migne cxiv 952).

[51] Very often—perhaps more often than not—the lower hem was ornamented with a narrow edging of embroidery running all round. In some albs as represented on Continental monuments there is a considerable distance between the apparel and the hem.

[52] The late brass of Bishop Goodrich, in Ely Cathedral, represents the stole between the tunicle and dalmatic. This is exceptional, and probably an engraver's error.

[53] One of these exceptions is presented by a small brass of a priest (Thomas Westeley, 1535) at Wyvenhoe, near Colchester.

[54] There is a remarkable statuette of alabaster in the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology, which originally formed part of a retable in Whittlesford Church, Cambridgeshire. In this figure, which is clad in Eucharistic vestments, the maniple is absent, and its place seems to be supplied by a _chain_ suspended over the _right_ wrist. This may, however, represent some such saint as St Leonard, whose emblem is a chain and manacles: in which case it is just possible that the sculptor omitted the maniple to avoid the inartistic symmetry which would result from its insertion.

[55] This description is given on the authority of Bloxam, companion volume, p. 64.

[56] So Mariott. The original word is _calcaneum_.

[57] We give a figure of an effigy in Mayence Cathedral to the memory of Albrecht von Brandenburg, who died in 1545. This effigy is remarkable, and probably unique, in representing the archbishop as wearing two palls. Although this is a convenient method of informing the world of the fact that the person commemorated held two archbishoprics (Mayence and Magdeburg), it is, of course, a solecism, as the pall of the one could not legally be worn within the precincts of the other, and _vice versâ_. This monument is especially valuable, as it clearly distinguishes between the cross-staff and the pastoral staff, which are often confused. See the account of the pastoral staff later on in the present chapter.

[58] It is well known that ecclesiastics were buried in their Eucharistic vestments, with a chalice and paten, the former often filled with wine. Much nonsense is talked nowadays of the piety of the mediaeval builders and undertakers, who put their best work where no human eye could see it. Unfortunately for this theory, the chalice and paten were usually cheap base metal (Canterbury affords one notable exception), and the vestments were often an inferior or worn-out set. Economy was considered then, as now.

[59] A not uncommon comparison for the loop of the pall.

[60] A survival of the old method of wearing it.

[61] Liturgia Rom. Pont., vol. iii, p. 556; _cit. ap._ Rock, Church of Our Fathers.

[62] Rationale, III 4.

[63] Printed in Mabillon, Musei Ital., ii, p. 212.

[64] Were it not for this, we might infer from the other passages quoted that the succintorium was simply hung on the ordinary girdle.

[65] Ap. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., v 24; Migne, Patrol. Graec., xx 493.

[66] Contra Haer., I xxix 4; Migne, Patrol. Graec., xli 396.

[67] In Smith and Cheetham's 'Dictionary of Christian Antiquities,' s.v. _mitre_.

[68] 'De Corona Militis,' cap. ix. Migne, ii 88.

[69] See fig. 12, p. 97.

[70] Traces of a slight 'bulge' are discernible in a few examples of even so early a date as the fifteenth century. It is well developed in von Brandenburg's effigy, figured on p. 101.

[71] This blunder has even crept into the ninth edition of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica.'

[72] The bishops of Bamberg had a right to wear the archiepiscopal pontificalia. See p. 102, _ante_.

[73] The ordinary form of crozier was not unknown in Ireland; the well-known crozier of Cashel is a beautiful specimen. The crook form was, however, earlier.

[74] This form of crozier is no doubt contemplated in the prophecy attributed to the druids of Laoghairé, King of Ireland, as cited in the law-tract known as the _Senchus Mór_—

'Tiucfaid Tailginn tar muir meirginn
A croinn cromcinn, a cinn tollcinn
A miasa in airthiur atighe,' etc.—

that is, 'the Tonsured ones shall come through the stormy sea, their staves crook-headed, their heads tonsured, their tables in the east of their houses,' etc. It is worth noting, apropos of what was said on p. 115 respecting the bishop's _corona_, that the words 'a cinn tollcinn'—'their heads tonsured,' are thus glossed in the MS.—'.i. a coirne ina cennaib'—'_i.e._, their _crowns_ on their heads.'

[75] Sentent. IV, dist. 24, quaest. 3, art. 3, _ad fin._ ed. Parmae (1873), vol. vii, p. 913.