Many evidences of its early adoption by the Latin Church are extant. Moschus (_Prat. Spirituale_, § 150) cites an occurrence showing its employment in the time of Pope Agapetus, A.D. 535, in which a deacon, who had falsely accused his bishop, was removed from the altar when he was _holding the fan_ in the presence of the Pope, because he hindered the descent of the Holy Spirit on the gifts. This same author (_Prat. Spirituale_, § 196), in narrating how some shepherd boys near Apamea were imitating the celebration of the Eucharist in childish sport, is careful to mention that two of the children stood on either side of the celebrant, vibrating their handkerchiefs like fans,[65] thus showing that the use of the flabellum was general even at this early period. In a letter of St. Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours, _c._ 1098, accompanying the present of a flabellum made to a friend, its use and mystic import are explained—the flies, representing the temptations of the devil, are to be driven away by the Catholic faith. Gradually the waving of the flabellum acquired a deeper symbolic meaning—it was held to signify the wafting of divine influence upon the ceremony, the movements to and fro symbolising the quivering of the wings of the Seraphim; hence we find representatives of the Seraphim playing an important part in its ornamentation. In the Book of Kells we have a representation of the four evangelists in which the Seraphic symbol of St. Matthew is figured by the crossed flabella, each having a pair of bells with triple hammers; the remaining three evangelists being represented by the usual symbols of the Lion in the centre, and the Bull and Eagle at the lower corners. Germanus (Neale, _Eastern Church_, p. 396) goes even further, and holds that the vibration of the flabellum typifies the tremor and astonishment of the angels at our Lord’s Passion. In a Byzantine fresco at Nekrési (Caucasus), of a date uncertain but somewhat late, an open sanctuary is represented with two angelic winged deacons waving seraphic flabella around the head of the second person of the Trinity. [Illustration: COPTIC FLABELLUM. (From Butler.)] We have, then, in these flabella, two distinct types—the one composed of some yielding material such as vellum or peacocks’ feathers, the handles usually of ivory; the other rigid, and formed of metal, either silver or silver gilt, this latter being essentially a processional fan; both being used in ceremonial processions and celebrations of the mass. Metal flabella also divide themselves into two classes—the large-handled processional fan, and the short hand-fan; an example of the latter is given from Butler, and consists of a circular disc of metal decorated with two rude figures of the Seraphim interspersed with Romanesque ornament.