by right to the investiture of the pallium, has induced me to bring under the notice of the Institute various particulars derived from existing monuments, my object being to show, either that the statement of recent writers on ecclesiastical costume—that the bishop is distinguished by the round- headed pastoral staff, whilst the archbishop is to be known by the cross-staff, and occasionally also by the pallium—is not to be depended upon; or, that the contemporary monuments of various prelates are incorrect in their details, having been confided to artists who exercised their own fancy in the delineation of the persons to whose memory such monuments were designed. This latter alternative is, however, one which any person who has studied the contemporary medieval portraitures of deceased individuals, will scarcely be inclined to adopt. The inquiry, it will be observed, may acquire some additional interest from the discovery of the body of an ecclesiastic in the ruins of St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster; who, chiefly on the authority of the pastoral staff found with the body, has been regarded as one of the Bishops of St. David's, in the fifteenth century.
The few observations which I now beg to offer have been chiefly derived from three classes of monuments—namely, sepulchral representations, illuminated MSS., and seals. Their object is to prove—1st. That arch-bishops are often represented with the curved-headed pastoral staff, instead of the cross-staff; and 2ndly, That bishops are occasionally represented as invested with the pallium.
On opening the tomb of Ataldus, Archbishop of Sens, in the choir of the cathedral of that city, and who died in A.D. 933, a curved-headed pastoral staff was found with the body; the upper part terminating in a very beautiful foliated ornament, composed of three groups of large leaves, and two buds on long footstalks. (Willemin, Mon. Inéd. vol. i.)
In the splendid Benedictional of St. Æthelwald, one of the illuminated pages represents a group of confessors, the three foremost figures being inscribed—"Sc's Gregorius Presul," "Sc's Benedictus Abbas," and "Sc's Cud'berhtus Antistes." None of these figures wear a mitre, nor do they bear any kind of staff; but all three are invested with the pallium, which, in the two former is white with red crosses, and in the last blue with white crosses.
The remarkable Cottonian MS., Nero C. IV., contains several groups of ecclesiastics, amongst which are several evidently representing bishops, having very low mitres and bearing long round-headed pastoral staves in their right hands; one, however, habited in every respect like the others, and bearing a similar staff, is invested with the pallium, reaching only to the waist. This MS. is of the twelfth century.
Amongst the beautiful series of sculptures of the portal of the Cathedral of Chartres, is one of a figure wearing a long pallium, holding in his left hand the base of a pastoral staff or cross, the top of which is destroyed, and who is crowned with a conical kind of cap. Mr. Shaw has given a beautiful representation of this figure, which he describes as an archbishop, and says that the mitre bears a close resemblance to the tiara seen on the head of the pope in an illumination given by Gerbertus. (De Cantu et Musicâ Sacra, tom. i., last plate.) Didron has also engraved this figure in his Iconographie de Dieu, p. 459; but he calls it Pope Gregory the Great, inspired by the Holy Ghost seated as a dove on his right shoulder. In the fine manuscript of Matthew Paris, in the British Museum, several instances occur of ecclesiastics wearing a similarly shaped mitre. May they not be
