Mitre

Good day Worthy Knights,

In this part 82, The Mitre                                                                                           Wikipedia

In Greek: μίτρα, “headband” or “turban”) is a type of headgear now known as the traditional, ceremonial headdress of bishops and certain abbots in traditional Christianity.

Mitres are worn in the Catholic ChurchOrthodox Church, as well as in the Anglican Communion, some Lutheran churches, and also by bishops in the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Oriental Orthodox Churches.

Byzantine empire

The camelaucum (Greekκαμιλαύκιον, kamilaukion), the headdress, that both the mitre and the Papal tiara stem from, was originally a cap used by officials of the Imperial Byzantine court.

“The tiara [from which the mitre originates] probably developed from the Phrygian cap, or frigium, a conical cap worn in the Graeco-Roman world.

Worn by a bishop, the mitre is depicted for the first time in two miniatures of the beginning of the eleventh century. The first written mention of it, is found in a Bull of Pope Leo IX in the year 1049and by 1150 the use had spread to bishops throughout the West.

The evolution of the mitre, from the eleventh century to the present time

 Western Christianity

In its modern form in Western Christianity, the mitre is a tall folding cap, consisting of two similar parts (the front and back) rising to a peak and sewn together at the sides. Two short lappets always hang down from the back.

In the Catholic Church, ecclesial law gives the right to use the mitre and other pontifical insignia (crosier, pectoral cross, and ring) to bishops, abbots and cardinals.

The principal celebrant presents the mitre and other pontifical insignia to a newly ordained Bishop during the Rite of Ordination and to a new Abbot during the Rite of Blessing. In the case of a person who is canonically equivalent to a diocesan bishop but does not receive episcopal ordination, this presentation normally occurs during a public installation as the ordinary of his jurisdiction.

Three types of mitres are worn by Roman Catholic clergy for different occasions:

  • The simplex is made of undecorated white linen or silk and its white lappets traditionally end in red fringes. It is worn most notably at funerals, Lenten time, on Good Fridayand by concelebrant bishops at a Mass. Cardinals in the presence of the Pope wear a mitre of white linen damask.
  • The auriphrygiata is of plain gold cloth or white silk with gold, silver, or coloured embroidered bands; when seen today it is usually worn by bishops when they preside at the celebration of the sacraments.
  • The pretiosa is decorated with precious stones and gold and worn on the principal Mass on the most solemn Sundays (except in Lent) and feast days. This type of mitre is rarely decorated with precious stones today, and the designs have become more varied, simple, and original, often merely being in the liturgical colour of the day.

Simplex

Pretiosa

With his inauguration as popeBenedict XVI broke with tradition and replaced the papal tiara even on his papal coat of arms with a papal mitre (containing still the three levels of ‘crowns’ representing the powers of the papacy in a simplified form).

Prior to Benedict XVI, each pope’s coat of arms always contained the image of the papal tiara and St. Peter’s crossed keys, even though the tiara had fallen into disuse. As a sign of the perceived need for greater simplification of the papal rites, as well as the changing nature of the papacy itself, Paul VI abandoned the use of his tiara in a dramatic ceremony in Saint Peter’s Basilica during the second session of Vatican II in November 1963.

Pope John Paul II’s 1996 Apostolic Constitution left open several options by not specifying what sort of ceremony was to be used, other than that some ceremony would be held to inaugurate a new pontificate.

Pope Paul VI donated his tiara (a gift from his former archdiocese of Milan) to the efforts at relieving poverty in the world. Later,  Cardinal Spellman of New York received the tiara and took it on tour of the United States to raise funds for the poor. It is on permanent view in the Crypt Church in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

In the Church of England, the mitre fell out of use after the Reformation, but was restored in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a result of the Oxford Movement, and is now worn by most bishops of the Anglican Communion on at least some occasions. The mitre is also worn by bishops in a number of Lutheran churches, for example the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia and the Church of Sweden.

Heraldry

In ecclesiastical heraldry, a mitre was placed above the shield of all persons who were entitled to wear the mitre, including abbots. It substituted for the helm of military arms.

In the Anglican Churches, the mitre is still placed above the arms of bishops instead of the ecclesiastical hat.. Previously, the mitre was often included under the hat, and even in the arms of a cardinal, the mitre was not entirely displaced. In heraldry, the mitre is always shown in gold, and the lappets (infula) are of the same colour. It has been asserted that before the reformation, a distinction was used to be drawn between the mitre of a bishop and an abbot by the omission of the infula in the abbot’s arms. In England and France, it was usual to place the mitre of an abbot slightly in profile.

As with his predecessor’s personal arms, Francis replaced the traditional papal triregnum by adopting a silver mitre with three gold bands. These bands allude to the papal tiara’s three crowns, which came to represent the three powers of Orders, Jurisdiction, and Magisterium, all joining at the centre depicting unity in the same person. Coincidentally, the three stripes and the vertical stripe in the centre of the mitre also forms the Chinese character for “sovereign” (王).

Papal Arms of Pope Benedict XVI. The papal tiara was replaced with a bishop’s mitre.