[Illustration: CROSIER IN CARVED IVORY AND GILT METAL. FRENCH XIV CENT. (7952) W M M^cGILL] [Illustration] In remote times the pastoral staff of a bishop was usually made of wood; at least, we may suppose so from the jest of Guy Coquille:— “Au temps passé du siècle d’or, Crosse de bois, évêque d’or; Maintenant, changeant les lois, Crosse d’or, évêque de bois.” These lines are not, perhaps, all in jest, for the wooden staff of St. Erhard exists at Ratisbonne: and another is in the church of St. Ursula at Cologne. The two Benedictines in their famous travels (as recorded in the “Voyage littéraire”) come to Maurienne, and tell us: “Nous vîmes aussi dans le trésor une croce d’yvoire: car les anciens évêques aimoient mieux employer leur argent à soulager les pauvres, qu’en des ornemens vains et superflus.” They saw other ivory pastoral staffs before their journeys ended: one at Marseilles, in the abbey of St. Victor; and one of the eleventh century at St. Savin, in the diocese of Tarbes; another, worthy of special mention, at Cluny: “La croce de S. Hugue, qui est de bois couvert de feuilles d’argent, dont le dessus est d’yvoire.” In later days the use of wood was generally limited to the staffs and croziers which were buried in their graves with archbishops and bishops, abbots and abbesses. A few of these have been found: one, very remarkable and in a fair state of preservation, in Westminster abbey in the tomb of bishop Lyndwood, the great canonist. This is now in the British museum. A full account of the opening of this tomb, with engravings, is printed in one of the volumes of the Archæologia. Probably the pastoral staff mentioned in the will of Richard Martyn bishop of St. David’s, who died about the year 1498, was of wood. He bequeathed to the church of Lyde “the cross-hed that Oliver the joiner made.” Inscriptions are sometimes found upon ivory pastoral staffs. For example on that of St. Aunon, archbishop of Cologne: “Sterne resistentes, stantes rege, tolle jacentes;” others on those of St. Saturnin at Toulouse, and of Otho, bishop of Hildesheim. The old Sarum pontificals order, in the first rubric for consecrating a bishop, that the _baculus pastoralis_ should be provided with the other necessary episcopal ornaments and vestments; and the staff is delivered to the new bishop in the course of the office. “_Quum datur baculus dicat ordinator_, Accipe baculum pastoralis officii,” etc., and the purpose is further alluded to as the ceremony proceeds. The symbolism of the shape and ornaments of the ivory pastoral staffs is clearly explained by Hugo St. Victor: “Episcopo, dum regimen ecclesiæ committitur, baculus quasi pastori traditur, in quo tria notantur, quæ significatione non carent, recurvitas, virga, cuspis; significatio hoc carmine continetur:— “Attraho peccantes, justos rogo, pungo vagantes, Officio triplici servio pontifici.”