Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851

Magnum Sedile.—Can any of your correspondents throw light on the singular arched recesses, sometimes (though rarely) to be found on the south side of chancels, west of the sedilia. The name of magnum sedile has been given to them, I know not on what authority; but if they were intended to be used as stalls of dignity for special occasions, they would hardly have been made so wide and low as they are generally found. A good example occurs at Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire,—certainly not monumental; and another (but more like a tomb) at Merton, near Oxford, engraved in the Glossary of Architecture. Why should they not have been intended for the holy sepulchre at Easter? as I am not aware that these were necessarily restricted to the north side. Is there any instance of a recess of this kind on the south side, and an Easter sepulchre on the north, in the same church?

    C. R. M.

Ace of Diamonds—the Earl of Cork.—In addition to the soubriquets bestowed upon the nine of diamonds of "the Curse of Scotland," and that of "the Grace Card," given to the six of hearts (Vol. i., pp. 90. 119.), there is yet another, attached to the ace of diamonds, which is everywhere in Ireland denominated "the Earl of Cork," the origin of which I should be glad to know.

    E. S. T.

Closing of Rooms on account of Death.—In the Spectator, No. 110., July, 1711, one of Addison's papers on Sir Roger de Coverley, the following passage occurs:

"My friend, Sir Roger, has often told me with a good deal of mirth, that at his first coming to his estate he found three parts of his house altogether useless; that the best room in it had the reputation of being haunted, and by that means was locked up; that noises had been heard in his long gallery, so that he could not get a servant to enter it after eight o'clock at night; that the door of one of his chambers was nailed up, because there went a story in the family that a butler had formerly hanged himself in it; and that his mother, who lived to a great age, had shut up half the rooms in the house, in which either her husband, a son, or daughter had died. The knight seeing his habitation reduced to so small a compass, and himself in a manner shut out of his own house, upon the death of his mother ordered all the apartments to be flung open, and exorcised by his chaplain, who lay in every room one after another, and by that means dissipated the fears which had so long reigned in the family."

The practice of shutting up rooms in which members of the family had died was retained up to the end of the last century. I learn from a friend that, in a country house in the south of England, his mother's apartment, consisting of a sitting-room, bed-room, and dressing-room, was closed at her death in 1775. The room in which his grandfather had died in 1760 was likewise closed. These four rooms were kept locked up, with the shutters shut, till the year 1793, when the next owner came into possession, who opened them, and caused them to be again used. Probably other cases of the same sort may be known to your correspondents, as having occurred in the last century; but the custom appears to be now extinct.

    L.

Standfast's Cordial Comforts.—I have lately procured a copy of an interesting book, entitled

"A Little Handful of Cordial Comforts: scattered throughout several Answers to Sixteen Questions and Objections following. By Richard Standfast, M.A., Rector of Christ Church in Bristol, and Chaplain in Ordinary to King Charles II. Sixth Edition. Bristol, 1764. 18mo. pp. 94."

Can any of your readers give me further particulars of Mr. Standfast, or tell me where to find them? In what year was the work first published? It was reprinted in Bristol in 1764, "for Mr. Standfast Smith, apothecary, great-grandson of the author." Has any later edition appeared?

    Abhba.

"Predeceased" and "Designed."—J. Dennistoun, in his Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, ii. p. 239., says—

"His friend the cardinal had lately predeceased him."

Can any of your readers give me an instance from any one of our standard classical authors of a verb active "to decease"?

The same author uses the word designed several times in the sense of designated. I should be glad of a few authorities for the use of the word in this sense.

    W. A.

Lady Fights at Atherton.—A poem, published in 1643, in honour of the King's successes in the West, has the following reference to a circumstance connected with Fairfax's retreat at Atherton Moor:

"When none but lady staid to fight."

I should be glad to learn to what this refers, and whether or not the real story formed the basis of De Foe's account of the fighting lady at Thame, laid about the same period, viz. the early part of the year 1643.

    James Waylen

Sketches of Civil War Garrisons, &c.—During the civil war, sketches and drawings were, no doubt, made of the lines drawn about divers garrisons. Some few of these have from time to time appeared as woodcuts: but I have a suspicion that several remain only in MS. still. If any of your readers can direct me to any collection of them in the British Museum or Oxford, they would shorten a search that has long been made in vain.

    James Waylen.

"Jurat? crede minus:" Epigram.—Can any of your learned readers inform me by whom the following epigram was written? I lately heard it applied, in conversation, to the Jesuits, but I think it is of some antiquity:—

"Jurat? crede minus: non jurat? credere noli:
Jurat, non jurat? hostis ab hoste cave."

    F. R. R.
Meaning of Gulls.—What is the origin of the word "gulls," as applied in Wensleydale (North York) to hasty-pudding, which is a mixture of oatmeal and milk or water boiled?

    D. 2.

The Family of Don.—Can any of your correspondents furnish me with information regarding the family of Don, of Pitfichie, near Monymusk, Aberdeenshire; or trace how they were connected with the Dons of Newton Don, Roxburghshire?

    A. A.

Abridge.

Wages in the last Century.—I should like to have any particulars of the price of labour at various periods in the last century, especially the wages of domestic servants. May I be permitted to mention that I am collecting anecdotes of the manners and customs, social and domestic, of our grandfathers, and should be much obliged for any curious particulars of their ways of living, their modes of travelling, or any peculiarities of their daily life? I am anxious to form a museum of the characteristic curiosities of the century; its superstitions, its habits, and its diversions.

    A. A.

Abridge.

Woman, Lines on.—Can any of your correspondents inform me who was the author of the following lines:—

"She was –
But words would fail to tell her worth: think
What a woman ought to be,
And she was that."

They are to be found on several tombstones throughout the country.

    Scrutator.

Replies

THE EPISCOPAL MITRE AND PAPAL TIARA

(Vol. iii., p. 62.)

In answer to the question of an "Inquirer" respecting the origin of the peculiar form and first use of the episcopal mitre, I take the liberty of suggesting that it will be found to be of Oriental extraction, and to have descended from that country, either directly, or through the medium of other nations, to the ecclesiastics of Christian Rome. The writers of the Romish, as well as Reformed Churches, now admit, that most, if not all, of the external symbols, whether of dress or ceremonial pageantry, exhibited by the Roman Catholic priesthood, were adopted from the Pagans, under the plea of being "indifferent in themselves, and applicable as symbolical in their own rites and usages" (Marangoni, Delle cose gentili e profane trasportate nel uso ed ornamento delle chiesi); in the same manner as many Romish customs were retained at the Reformation for the purpose of inducing the Papists to "come in," and conform to the other changes then made (Southey, History of the Church). Thus, while the disciples of Dr. Pusey extract their forms and symbols from the practices of Papal Rome, the disciples of the Pope deduce theirs from the practices of Pagan Rome.

With this preface I proceed to show that the episcopal mitre and the papal tiara are respectively the copies each of a distinct head-dress originally worn by the kings of Persia and the conterminous countries, and by the chiefs of their priesthood, the Magi. The nomenclature alone indicates a foreign extraction. It comes to us through the Romans from the Greeks; both of which nations employed the terms μίτρα, Lat. mitra, and τιάρα, Lat. tiara, to designate two different kinds of covering for the head in use amongst the Oriental races, each one of a distinct and peculiar form, though as being foreigners, and consequently not possessing the technical accuracy of a native, they not unfrequently confound the two words, and apply them indiscriminately to both objects. Strictly speaking, the Greek μίτρα, in its primitive notion, means a long scarf, whence it came to signify, in a secondary sense, various articles of attire composed with a scarf, and amongst others the Oriental turban (Herod. vii. 62.). But as we descend in time, and remove in distance from the country where this object was worn, we find that the Romans affixed another notion to the word, which they used very commonly to designate the Asiatic or Phrygian cap (Virg. Æn. iv. 216.; Servius, l.c.); and this sense has likewise been adopted in our own language:

"That Paris now with his unmanly sort,
With mitred hat."—Surrey, Virgil, Æn. iv.

Thus the word mitra in its later usage came to signify a cap or bonnet, instead of a turban; and it is needless to observe that the priests of a religion comparatively modern, when they adopted the term, would have taken it in the sense which was current at their own day. Now, though the common people were not permitted to wear high bonnets, nor of any other than a soft and flexible material, the kings and personages of distinction had theirs of a lofty form, and stiffened for the express purpose of making them stand up at an imposing elevation above the crown of the head. In the national collection at Paris there is preserved an antique gem, engraved by Caylus (Recueil d'Antiq., vol. ii. p. 124.), on which is engraved the head of some Oriental personage, probably a king of Parthia, Persia, or Armenia, who wears a tall upstanding bonnet, mitred at the top exactly like a bishop's, with the exception that it has three incisions at the side instead of a single one. These separate incisions had no doubt a symbolical meaning amongst the native races, although their allusive properties are unknown to us; but it is not an unwarrantable inference, nor inconsistent with the customs of these nations as enduring at this day, to conclude that the numbers of one, two, or three, were appropriated as distinctions of different degrees in rank; and that their priests, the Magi, like those of other countries where the sovereign did not invest himself with priestly dignities, imitated the habiliments as they assumed the powers of the sovereign, and wore a bonnet closely resembling his in form and dignity, with the difference of one large mitre at each side, in place of the three smaller ones.

If this account be true respecting the origin of the mitre, it will lead us by an easy step to determine the place where it was first used—at Antioch, the "Queen of the East," where, as we are told in the Acts of the Apostles, the followers of Christ were first called "Christians;" thus indicating that they were sufficiently numerous and influential to be distinguished as a separate class in that city, while those in Rome yet remained despised and unknown. Antioch was the imperial residence of the Macedonian dynasty, which succeeded Alexander, who himself assumed the upright bonnet of the Persian king (Arrian. iv. 7.), and transmitted it to his successors, who ruled over Syria for several hundred years, where its form would be ready at hand as a model emblematic of authority for the bishop who ruled over the primitive church in those parts.

The tiara of the popes has, in like manner, an Eastern origin; but instead of being adopted by them directly from its native birth-place, it descended through Etruria to the Pagan priesthood of ancient Rome, and thence to the head of the Roman Catholic Church. The τιάρα of the Greeks, and tiara of the Latins, expresses the cloth cap or fez of the Parthians, Persians, Armenians, &c., which was a low scull-cap amongst the commonalty, but a stiff and elevated covering for the kings and personages of distinction (Xen. Anab. ii. 5, 23.). This imposing tiara is frequently represented on ancient monuments, where it varies in some details, though always preserving the characteristic peculiarity of a tall upright head-dress. It is sometimes truncated at its upper extremity, at others a genuine round-topped bonnet, like the Phrygian cap when pulled out to its full length, and stiffened so as to stand erect—each a variety of form peculiar to certain classes or degrees of rank, which at this period we are not able to decide and distinguish with certainty. But on a bas-relief from Persepolis, supposed to have belonged to the palace of Cyrus, and engraved by Ferrario (Costume dell' Asia, vol. iii. tav. 47.), may be seen a bonnet shaped very much like a beehive, the exact type of the papal tiara, with three bands (the triregno) round its sides, and only wanting the cross at the summit, and the strawberry-leaved decoration, to distinguish it from the one worn by Pio Nono: and on a medal of Augustus, engraved on a larger scale in Rich's Companion to the Latin Dictionary, art. Tutulus, we find this identical form, with an unknown ornament of the top, for which the popes substituted a cross, reappearing on the skull of a pagan priest. I may add that the upright tiaras represented on works of ancient art, which can be proved, or are known to be worn by royal personages, are truncated at the summit; whence it does not seem an improper inference to conclude that the round and conical ones belonged to persons inferior to the kings alone in rank and influence, the Magi; which is the more probable, since it is clear that they were adopted by the highest priests of two other religions, those of Pagan and of Christian Rome.

If space admits, I would also add that the official insignia and costume of a cardinal are likewise derived from the pagan usages of Greece. Amongst his co-religionists he is supposed to symbolize one of the Apostles of Christ, who went forth ill clothed and coarsely shod to preach the Gospel; whereas, in truth, his comfortable hat, warm cloak, and showy stockings, are but borrowed plumage from the ordinary travelling costume of a Greek messenger (ἀποστόλος). The sentiment of travelling is always conveyed in the ancient bas-reliefs and vase paintings by certain conventional signs or accessories bestowed upon the figure represented, viz., a broad-brimmed and low-crowned hat (πέτασος, Lat. petasus), with long ties (redimicula) hanging from its sides, which served to fasten it under the chin, or sling it behind at the nape of the neck when not worn upon the head; a wrapping cloak (ἱμάτιον, Lat. pallium) made of coarse material instead of fine lamb's wool; and a pair of stout travelling boots laced round the legs with leathern thongs (ἐνδρομίδες), more serviceable for bad roads and rough weather than their representatives, red silk stockings. All these peculiarities may be seen in the following engravings (Winhelm. Mon. Ined. Tratt., Prelim., p. xxxv.; Id., tav. 85.; Rich's Companion, art. "Ceryx" and "Pallium").