tiara (q.v.). From Leo IX.’s time papal grants of the mitre
to eminent prelates became increasingly frequent, and by the
12th century it had been assumed by all bishops in the West,
with or Without papal sanction, as their proper liturgical
head-dress. From the 12th century, too, dates the custom of
investing the bishop with the mitre at his consecration.
It was not till the 12th century that the mitre came to be regarded, as specifically episcopal, and meanwhile the custom had grown up of granting it honoris causa to other dignitaries besides bishops. The first known instance of a mitred abbot is Egelsinus of St Augustine’s, Canterbury, who received the honour from Pope Alexander II. in 1063. From Non-bishops. this time onward papal bulls bestowing mitres, together with other episcopal insignia, on abbots become increasingly frequent. The original motive of the recipients of these favours was doubtless the taste of the time for outward display; St Bernard, zealous for the monastic ideal, denounced abbots for wearing mitres and the like more pontificum, and Peter the Cantor roundly called the abbatial mitre “inane, superfluous and puerile” (Verb. abbrev. c. xliv. in Migne, Patrolog. lat. 205, 159). It came, however, to symbolize the exemption of the abbots from episcopal jurisdiction, their quasi-episcopal character, and their immediate dependence on the Holy See. No such significance could attach to the grant of the usus mitrae (under somewhat narrow restrictions as to where and when) to cathedral dignitaries. The first instance is again a bull of Leo IX. (1051) granting to Hugh, archbishop of Besançon, and his seven cardinals the right to wear the mitre at the altar as celebrant, deacon and subdeacon, a similar privilege being granted to Bishop Hartwig of Bamberg in the following year. The intention was to show honour to a great church by allowing it to follow the custom doubtless already established at Rome. Subsequently the privilege was often granted, sometimes to one or more of the chief dignitaries, sometimes to all the canons of a cathedral (e.g. Campostella, Prague).
Mitres were also sometimes bestowed by the popes on secular sovereigns, e.g. by Nicholas II. (1058–1061) on Spiteneus (Spytihnĕw) II., duke of Bohemia; by Alexander II. on Wratislaus of Bohemia; by Lucius II. (1144–1145) on Roger of Sicily; and by Innocent III., in 1204, on Peter of Aragon. In the coronation of the emperor, more particularly, the mitre played a part. According to the 14th Roman ordo, of 1241, the pope places on the emperor’s head first the mitra clericalis, then the imperial diadem. Father Braun (Liturgische Gewandung, p. 457) gives a picture of a seal of Charles IV. representing him as wearing both.
The original form of the mitre was that of the early papal tiara (regnum), i.e. a somewhat high conical cap. The stages of its general development from this shape to the high double-horned modern mitre are clearly traceable (see fig. 1), though it is impossible exactly to distinguish them in point of date. The most characteristic Development of Form. modifications may be said to have taken place from the 11th to the middle of the 13th century. About 1100 the conical mitre begins to give place to a round one; a band of embroidery is next set over the top from back to front, which tends to bulge up the soft material on either side; and these bulges develop into points or horns. Mitres with horns on either side seem to have been worn till about the end of the 12th century, and Father Braun gives examples of their appearances on episcopal seals in France until far into the 13th. Such a mitre appears on a seal of Archbishop Thomas Becket (Father Thurston, The Pallium, London, 1892, p. 17). The custom was, however, already growing up of setting the horns over the front and back of the head instead of the sides (the mitre said to have belonged to St Thomas Becket, now at Westminster Cathedral, is of this type),[1] and with this the essential character of the mitre, as it persisted through the middle ages, was established. The exaggeration of the height of the mitre, which began at the time of the Renaissance, reached its climax in the 17th century. This ugly and undignified type is still usually worn in the Roman Catholic Church, but in some cases the earlier type has survived, and many bishops are also now reverting to it.
| Drawn by Father J. Braun and reproduced from his Liturgische Gewandung by permission of B. Herder. |
| Fig. 1.—Evolution of the Mitre from the 11th century to the present day. |
The decoration of mitres was characterized by increasing elaboration as time went on. From the first the white conical cap seems to have been decorated round the lower edge by a band or orphrey (circulus). To this was added later a vertical orphrey (titulus), usually from the centre of the front of the circulus to that of the back, partly in order to hide the seam, partly to emphasize the horns when those were to left and right. When the horns came to be set before and behind, the vertical orphrey retained its position. Of the surviving early mitres the greater number have only the orphrey embroidered, the body of the mitre being left plain. Very early, however, the custom arose of ornamenting the triangular spaces between the orphreys with embroidery, usually a' round medallion, or a star, set in the middle, but sometimes figures of saints, &c. (e.g. the early example from the cathedral of Anagni, reproduced by Braun, p. 469). The richness and variety of decoration increased from the 14th century onwards. Architectural motives even were introduced, as frames to the embroidered figures of saints, while sometimes the upper edges of the mitre were ornamented with crockets, and the horns with architectural finials. Finally, the traditional circulus and titulus seem all but forgotten, the whole front and back surfaces of the mitre being ornamented with embroidered pictures or with arabesque patterns. The latter is characteristic of the mitre in the modern Roman Catholic Church, the tradition of the local Roman Church having always excluded the representation of figures on ecclesiastical vestments.
2. Reformed Churches.—In most of the reformed Churches the use of mitres was abandoned with that of the other vestments. They have continued to be worn, however, by the bishops of the Scandinavian Lutheran Churches. In the Church of England the use of the mitre was discontinued at the Reformation. There is some Church of England. evidence to show that it was used in consecrating bishops up to 1552, and also that its use was revived by the Laudian bishops in the 17th century (Hierurgia anglicana ii. 242, 243, 240). In general, however, there is no evidence to prove that this use was liturgical, though the silver-gilt mitre of Bishop Wren of Ely (d. 1667), which is preserved, is judged from the state of the lining to have been worn. The instances of the use of the mitre quoted in Hier. anglic. ii. 310, as carried by the bishop of Rochester at an investiture of the Knights of the Bath (1725), and by the archbishops and bishops at the coronation of George II. (1727), have no liturgical significance. The tradition of the mitre as an episcopal ornament has, nevertheless, been continuous in the Church of England, “and that on three lines: (1) heraldic usage; (2) its presence on the head of effigies of bishops, of which a number are extant, of the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries; (3) its presence in funeral processions, where
- ↑ In Father Braun’s opinion, expressed to the writer, this mitre, which was formerly at Sens, belongs probably to the 13th century.
