BIRETTA
577
BIRETTA
blood out of its owne bodye to do others good"
(Lyly, Euphues). Allusion is made to this belief in
"Hanilet" (act iv): —
To his good friend thus wide I'll ope my arms -And, like the kind, life-rendering pelican, Repast them with my blood. Therefore it was deemed a fitting symbol of the Sa- viour, the Jiostro pelicano of Dante, Who shed His blood in order to give eternal life to the children of men. Skelton in his Armorie of Birds" says: — Then sayd the PeUycan: Wlien my BjTdts be slajTie With my blonde I them revyve. Scripture doth record The same dyd our Lord And rose from deth to Ij-ve. The Pha-nix is a sjnnbol of the Resurrection and of eternity. According to legend this mythical bird could never die; on attaining its five-hundredth year it committed itself to the flames of a funeral pjTe, only to rise reborn from its own ashes. Dante used it as a symbol of the souls of the damned (Inf., xxiv, 197-208).
The Peacock in Byzantine and early Romanesque art was used to signify the Resurrection, because its flesh was thought to be incorruptible. (St. Augus- tine, City of God, xxi, e, iv.) It was also a s\TnboI of pride. The Raven is a sjmibol of the Jews, of confession and penance. The Cock is a s>^ubol of vigilance, and also an emblem of St. Peter. The Vulture has always tj-pified greed. Many other birds were used during the Middle Ages for symbolic and ecclesiological purposes; while the preachers of these centuries developed the sjinbolism of each one of these emblems to a degree that now seems far-fetched and often, obscure, nevertheless, they made it clear that religious instruction can be gained from birds and even from the common things of life.
L.vucHERT. Geschichte des Physiologus (Strasburg, 1SS9): Cahieh, Melanges d'archeol. (Paris, 1847-56); Ne.vl and Webb, The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments (New York. 1896); Didron, Christian Iconography (Loudon, 1851): Evans. Animal Symbolism m Ecclesiastical Architecture (London, 1896); Viollet^Le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonnr de V architecture fran(aise du Xl" au AT/' siMe (Paris, 1853).
Caryl Colem.in.
Biretta, a square cap with three ridges or peaks on its upper surface, now commonly worn by clerics of all grades from cardinals downwards. The use of such a cap is prescribed by the rubrics both at solemn Mass and in other ecclesiastical functions. Etymologically, the word biretta is Italian in origin and would more correctly be written beretta (cf. how- ever the French barette and the Spanish bireta). It probably comes from birrus, a rough cloak with a hood, from the Greek irvppds, flame-coloured, and the birretum may originally have meant the hood. We hear of the birettum in the tenth century, but, hke most other questions of costume, the history is e.xtremely perplexed. The wearing of any head- covering, other than hood or cowl, on state occasions within doors seeras to have originally been a dis- tinction reserved for the privileged few. The con- stitutions of Cardinal Ottoboni issued by him for England in 1268 forbid the wearing of caps ^'ulgarly called "coypha; (cf. the coif of the serjeant-at-law) to clerics, except when on journeys. In church and when in the presence of their superiors their heads are to remain uncovered. From this law the higher graduates of the universities were excepted, thus Giovanni d'.^ndrea, in his gloss on the Clementine Decretals, declares (c. 1320) that at Bologna the insignia of the Doctorate were the cathedra (chair) and the birettum.
.A.t first the birettum was a kind of skull cap with a small tuft, but it developed into a soft round cap easily indented by the fingers in putting it on and off, and it acquired in this way the rudimentary
outline of its present three peaks. We may nuJ
such a cap delmeated in many drawings of the fif-
teenth century, one of which, representing university
dignitaries at the Council of Constance, who are
described in the accompanjing text as birrectati, is
here reproduced.
The same kind
of cap is worn by
the cardinals sit-
ting in conclave
and depicted in
the same contem-
porary series of
drawings, as also
by preachers ad-
dressing the as-
sembly. The
privilege of wear-
ing some such
head-dress was
extended in the
course of the six-
teenth c e n t u ry
to the lower
grades of the cler-
gj-, and after a
wliile the chief
distinction be-
came one of col-
our, the cardinals
always wearing
red birettas, and
bishops violet.
The shape dur-
ing the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries
siderably modified, and,
very complicated, there
to reject the
4vunS}Wvni)l3}iaiu ul^Jlf:1i3Sipa*i^<^Sn]^p^^^S^.
ONTMENT Representing Doctor
OF Laws wearing Biretta. a.d.
1352
was even,T\here con-
though the question is
seems no good reason
identification, proposed by several
modern wTiters, of the old doctor's birettum mth
the square college cap, popularly known as the
"mortar-board", of the modern English universities.
The college cap
and ecclesiasti-
cal biretta have
probably devel-
oped from the
same original,
but along dif-
ferent lines.
Even at the
present day
b i r e t f as vary
con.siderably in
shape. Those
worn by the
French, Ger-
man, and Span-
ish clergy as a
rule have four
peaks instead of
three; while
Roman custom
prescribes that
a cardinal's bi-
retta should
have no tassel.
As regards us-
age in wearing the biretta, the reader must be
referred for details to some of the works mentioned
in the bibliography. It may be said in general that
the biretta is worn in processions and when seated, as
also when the priest is performing any act of jurisdic-
tion, e. g. reconciling a convert. It was formerly
the rule that a priest should always wear it in giv-
ing ab-solution in confession, and it is probable that
the ancient usage which requires an EngUsh judgu
