Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages: Third EditionCutts, Edward Lewes
History
Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages: Third Edition
Cutts, Edward Lewes
Civilization, Medieval; Middle Ages -- Social life and customs
The bishop wore the same habit as the priest, with the addition of
sandals, gloves, a ring, the pastoral staff with a curved head, and the
mitre. The chasuble was only worn when celebrating the Holy Communion; on
any other ceremonial occasion the cope was worn, _e.g._, when in choir, as
in the woodcut on p. 197: or when preaching, as in a picture in the Harl.
MS. 1319, engraved in the "Pictorial History of England," vol. i. 806; or
when attending parliament. In illuminated MSS. bishops are very commonly
represented dressed in alb and cope only, and this seems to have been
their most usual habit. If the bishop were a monk or friar he wore the
cope over the robe proper to his order. We might multiply indefinitely
references to representations of bishops and other ecclesiastics in the
illuminated MS. We will content ourselves with one reference to a
beautifully drawn figure in the psalter of the close of the 14th century
(Harl. 2,897, f. 380). In the early fourteenth-century MS. (Royal, 14 E.
iii. at ff. 16 and 25), we find two representations of a bishop in what we
may suppose was his ordinary unofficial costume; he wears a blue-grey robe
and hood with empty falling sleeves, through which appear the blue sleeves
of his under robe; it is the ordinary civil and clerical costume of the
period, but he is marked out as a bishop by a white mitre. In the
Pontifical of the middle of the fifteenth century, already referred to
(Egerton, 1067) at f. 186 in the representation of the ceremony of the
feet-washing, the bishop in a long black sleeveless robe[294] over a white
alb, and a biretta.
The earliest form of the mitre was that of a simple cap, like a skull-cap,
of which there is a representation, giving in many respects a clear and
elaborate picture of the episcopal robes, in a woodcut of St. Dunstan in
the MS. Cotton, Claudius A. iii.[295] In this early shape it has already
the infulæ--two narrow bands hanging down behind. In the twelfth century
it is in the form of a large cap, with a depression in the middle, which
produces two blunt horns at the sides. There is a good representation of
this in the MS. Cotton, Nero C. iv. f. 34, which has been engraved by
Strutt, Shaw, and Dr. Rock.
In the Harl. MS. 5,102, f. 17, is a picture of the entombment of an
archbishop, in which is well shown the transition shape of the mitre from
the twelfth century, already described, to the cleft and pointed shape
which was used in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The depression
is here deepened into a partial cleft, and the mitre is put on so that the
horns come before and behind, instead of at the sides, but the horns are
still blunt and rounded. The archbishop's gloves in this picture are
white, like the mitre, and in shape are like mittens, _i.e._, not divided
into fingers.
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