shall have a more fitting opportunity for speaking a little further on. At Rome, in the Pope's chapel, the frontal set before the altar for the function of Maundy Thursday, is of gold cloth figured, amid other subjects suitable to the time, with our Lord lying dead between two angels who are upholding His head, as we learn from the industrious Cancellieri's description, in his "Settimana Santa nella cappella pontificia."[1]
In Greece may be still found several churches built with a dome, all around which is figured, in painting or in mosaics, what is there known as and called the "Divine Liturgy," after this manner. On the eastern side, and before an altar, but facing the west, stands our Lord, robed as a patriarch, about to offer up the mass. The rest of the round in the cupola is filled with a crowd of angels,—some arrayed in chasubles like priests, some as deacons, but each bearing in his hands either one of the several vestments or some liturgical vessel or appliance needed at the celebration of the sacred mysteries,—all walking, as it were, to the spot where stands the divine pontiff. But amid this angel-throng may be seen six of these winged ministers who are carrying between them a sindon exactly figured as is the one of which we are now speaking. How, according to the Greek ritual, this subject ought to be done, is given in the Painter's Guide, edited by Didron.[2] Though of yore as now a somewhat similar ceremonial was always observed according to the Latin rite, in carrying his vestments to a bishop when he pontificated, never in such a procession here, in the west, was any frontal or sindon borne, as in the east.
With regard to "red" as the mourning colour, in the sindon, our own old English use joined it with "black" upon vestments especially intended to be worn in services for the dead. For especial use on Good Friday Bishop Grandison gave to his cathedral (Exeter) a black silk chasuble, the red orphrey at the back of which had embroidered on it our Lord hanging upon a green cross: "j casula de nigro serico, pro Die Paraschive, cum j orfrey quasi rubii coloris, cum crucifixo pendente in viridi cruce, ex dono Johannis Grandissono;"[3] and in the same document, among the black copes and chasubles, we find that they had their orphreys made of red: "cape nigre cum casulis—j casula de nigro velvete cum rubeo velvete in le orfrey. ij tuniculi ejusdem panni et secte. iij cape ejusdem panni et secte."[4]
At Lincoln cathedral there were "a chesable of black cloth of gold of bawdkin with a red orphrey, &c.; a black cope of cloth of silver with
