Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages / Third Edition

by Edward Lewes Cutts

Pope, Cardinal, and Bishop.

The cardinalate is not an ecclesiastical “order.” Originally the name was applied to the priests of the chief churches of Rome, who formed the chapter of the Bishop of Rome. In later times they were the princes of the papal sovereignty, and the dignity was conferred not only upon the highest order of the hierarchy, but upon priests, deacons,[291] and even upon men who had only taken minor orders to qualify themselves for holding office in the papal kingdom. The red hat, which became their distinctive symbol, is said to have been given them first by Innocent VI. at the Council of Lyons in 1245; and De Curbio says they first wore it in 1246, at the interview between the pope and Louis IX. of France. A representation of it may be seen in the MS. Royal, 16 G. vi., which is engraved in the “Pictorial History of England,” vol. i. 869. Another very clear and good representation of the costume of a cardinal is in the plate in Hans Burgmair’s “Der Weise König,” already mentioned; a group of them is on the right side of the drawing, each with a fur-lined hood on his head, and his hat over the hood. It is not the hat which is peculiar to cardinals, but the colour of it, and the number of its tassels. Other ecclesiastics wore the hat of the same shape, but only a cardinal wears it of scarlet. Moreover, a priest wore only one tassel to each string, a bishop three, a cardinal seven. It was not the hat only which was scarlet. Wolsey, we read, was in the habit of dressing entirely in scarlet for his ordinary costume. In the Decretals of Pope Gregory, Royal, 10 E. iv. f. 3 v., are representations of cardinals in red gown and hood and hat. On the following page they are represented, in pontificalibus.

The archbishop wore the habit of a bishop, his differences being in the crosier and pall.[292] His crozier had a cross head instead of a curved head like the bishop’s. Over the chasuble he wore the pall, which was a flat circular band, or collar, placed loosely round the shoulders, with long ends hanging down behind and before, made of lambs’ wool, and marked with a number of crosses. Dr. Rock has engraved[293] two remarkably interesting early representations of archbishops of Ravenna, in which a very early form of the pontifical garments is given, viz., the sandals, alb, stole, tunic, chasuble, pall, and tonsure. They are not represented with either mitre or staff. Other representations of archbishops may be found of the eleventh century in the Bayeux tapestry, and of the thirteenth in the Royal MS., 2 B. vii. In the Froissart MS., Harl. 4,380, at f. 170, is a fifteenth-century representation of the Archbishop of Canterbury in ordinary dress—a lavender-coloured gown and red liripipe.

The bishop wore the same habit as the priest, with the addition of sandals, gloves, a ring, the pastoral staff with a curved head, and the mitre. The chasuble was only worn when celebrating the Holy Communion; on any other ceremonial occasion the cope was worn, e.g., when in choir, as in the woodcut on p. 197: or when preaching, as in a picture in the Harl. MS. 1319, engraved in the “Pictorial History of England,” vol. i. 806; or when attending parliament. In illuminated MSS. bishops are very commonly represented dressed in alb and cope only, and this seems to have been their most usual habit. If the bishop were a monk or friar he wore the cope over the robe proper to his order. We might multiply indefinitely references to representations of bishops and other ecclesiastics in the illuminated MS. We will content ourselves with one reference to a beautifully drawn figure in the psalter of the close of the 14th century (Harl. 2,897, f. 380). In the early fourteenth-century MS. (Royal, 14 E. iii. at ff. 16 and 25), we find two representations of a bishop in what we may suppose was his ordinary unofficial costume; he wears a blue-grey robe and hood with empty falling sleeves, through which appear the blue sleeves of his under robe; it is the ordinary civil and clerical costume of the period, but he is marked out as a bishop by a white mitre. In the Pontifical of the middle of the fifteenth century, already referred to (Egerton, 1067) at f. 186 in the representation of the ceremony of the feet-washing, the bishop in a long black sleeveless robe[294] over a white alb, and a biretta.

The earliest form of the mitre was that of a simple cap, like a skull-cap, of which there is a representation, giving in many respects a clear and elaborate picture of the episcopal robes, in a woodcut of St. Dunstan in the MS. Cotton, Claudius A. iii.[295] In this early shape it has already the infulæ—two narrow bands hanging down behind. In the twelfth century it is in the form of a large cap, with a depression in the middle, which produces two blunt horns at the sides. There is a good representation of this in the MS. Cotton, Nero C. iv. f. 34, which has been engraved by Strutt, Shaw, and Dr. Rock.

In the Harl. MS. 5,102, f. 17, is a picture of the entombment of an archbishop, in which is well shown the transition shape of the mitre from the twelfth century, already described, to the cleft and pointed shape which was used in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The depression is here deepened into a partial cleft, and the mitre is put on so that the horns come before and behind, instead of at the sides, but the horns are still blunt and rounded. The archbishop’s gloves in this picture are white, like the mitre, and in shape are like mittens, i.e., not divided into fingers.

The shape in the thirteenth and fourteenth century presented a stiff low triangle in front and behind, with a gap between them. It is well shown in a MS. of the close of the twelfth century, Harl. 2,800, f. 6, and, in a shape a little further developed, in the pictures in the Royal MS., 2 B. vii., already noticed. In the fifteenth century the mitre began to be made taller, and with curved sides, as seen in the beautiful woodcut of a bishop and his canons in choir given in our last chapter, p. 197. The latest example in the English Church is in the brass of Archbishop Harsnett, in Chigwell Church, in which also occur the latest examples of the alb, stole, dalmatic, and cope.

The pastoral staff also varied in shape at different times. The earliest examples of it are in the representations of St. Mark and St. Luke,[296] in the “Gospels of MacDurnan,” in the Lambeth Library, a work of the middle of the ninth century. St. Luke’s staff is short, St. Mark’s longer than himself; in both cases the staff terminates with a plain, slightly reflexed curve of about three-fourths of a circle. Some actual examples of the metal heads of these Celtic pastoral staves remain; one is engraved in the “Archæologia Scotica,” vol. ii., another is in the British Museum; that of the abbots of Clonmacnoise, and that of the ancient bishops of Waterford, are in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire. They were all brought together in 1863 in the Loan Exhibition at South Kensington. One of the earliest English representations of the staff is in the picture of the consecration of a church, in a MS. of the ninth century, in the Rouen Library, engraved in the “Archæologia,” vol xxv. p. 17, in the “Pictorial History of England,” and by Dr. Rock, ii. p. 24. Here the staff is about the length of an ordinary walking-stick, and is terminated by a round knob.

Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, is represented on his great seal with a short staff, with a tau-cross or crutch head. An actually existing staff of this shape, which belonged to Gerard, Bishop of Limoges, who died in 1022, is engraved in the “Annales Archæologique,” vol. x. p. 176. The staves represented in illuminations of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries have usually a plain spiral curve of rather more than a circle;[297] in later times they were ornamented with foliage, and sometimes with statuettes, and were enamelled and jewelled. Numerous representations and actual examples exist; some may be seen in the South Kensington Museum. From early in the fourteenth century downward, a napkin of linen or silk is often found attached by one corner to the head of the staff, whose origin and meaning seem to be undetermined.

The official costume of the remaining orders, together with the symbols significant of their several offices, are well brought out in the degradation of W. Sawtre, already given at p. 214.