Note 49 — Chapter III · THE FINAL FORM OF VESTMENTS IN THE WESTERN CHURCH.

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 Goodrick, 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 Milton 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.