Dear all,
Since I have once shortly discussed the use of mitre in the context of
legations in the early second millenium, I would like to add a section on
my article on the matter published in "Roma, magistra mundi, Itineraria
culturae medievalis. Mélanges offerts au Père L.E. Boyle à l'occasion de
son 75E anniversaire. Louvain-la-Neuve 1998, s. 339-354". The titel of the
article is "In the Pope's Clothes: Legatine Representation and Apostolical
Insignia in High Medieval Europe." Reference on material is best to be
found through footnotes in the paper version of my article. I am sorry to
enclose such a lenghty quote, but I am highly interested if anyone has
found further indications concerning descriptions of apostolic insignia in
11th and 12th century forgeries.
All the best
Tapio Salminen
The quote goes:
"According to available material the high medieval apostolical insignia of
legati a latere consisted thus of cross, mitre, red clothes and special
harness of the horse. Especially the role of the mitre is striking. The
description on the legation of Fridericus in 1001 is among the earliest
known sources on the probable use of the mitre by other than a pope. In
Rome the mitre had became common as one of the pope's ritual vestments
around the middle of the tenth century. The cardinals established a right
to wear it before the end of the eleventh century. In 1063 Pope Alexander
II granted the abbot of St. Augustine in Canterbury a right to use the
mitre. It was commonly worn by bishops already during the first half of the
twelfth century.
The first written source on a confirmation of a mitre as a sign of
Apostolical dignity for a bishop is in a Bull of Leo IX in 1049, when he
confirmed bishop Eberhard of Trier the primacy of the Church of Trier. As a
sign of this primacy, Leo granted bishop Eberhard the Roman mitre, in order
that he could use it according to the Roman custom when performing the
offices of the church. A similar favour was made to archbishop Adalbert of
Bremen in 1053 when Leo IX confirmed him and his successors the legation
over all Nordic peoples and western Slavs with an authority similar to that
of St. Boniface's among the Germans. The archbishops were given the right
to consecrate bishops over the area concerned. As a sing of Apostolical
authority they were granted the use of pallium, cross and nactum
(horsecloth) on certain enlisted feasts. Because of archbishop Adalbert's
personal interest to evangelisation, the Pope gave him the right to supply
his pallium with the Roman mitre on Holy Saturday, feast of the Holy Cross
and St. Stephen's day. Both nactum and a permission to carry a cross had
been granted to Adalbert already by Pope Clement II in 1047, but the use of
the mitre was confirmed only with the legation in 1053.
The privilege of archbishop Adalbert in 1053 is the earliest surviving
source on the use of the Roman mitre as part of the apostolical insignia by
an archbishop with legatine authorisation. In this context of interest are
even some later forgeries of the privileges of the church of Bremen in
which the use of mitre is mentioned. The forgeries were made on two
different occasions in order to confirm the ancient rights of the church of
Bremen over the church in Scandinavia. The first group consists of six
privileges produced by the order of archbishop Liemar in order to support
his case against Pope Gregory VII in 1075. The second group consist of at
least twelve documents designed by archbishop Hartwig in 1158 to wreck the
newly established primacy of the archbishops of Lund over the Scandinavian
sees.
According to both set of forgeries the legation of the archbishops of
Bremen over the Scandinavian church had been established already in the
time of Ansgar, who was the first archbishop of the missionary see of
Hamburg-Bremen in 831-865. After him the legation had been confirmed to
several of his successors. In the real life Ansgar had been nominated as a
legate among the Nordic peoples by pope Gregory IV in 832, but the legation
was designed for mission and it did not include any organisational rights.
Of interest is that in the forged documents the supposed legation of Ansgar
and his successors was accompanied with apostolical insignia similar to
that of archbishop Adalbert's in 1053. In three forgeries of archbishop
Liemar the use of the mitre and the right to carry a cross as a sign of a
papal legate was placed in the time of Ansgar (831-865) and his immediate
successor archbishop Rimbert (865-888). The use of the mitre was even
confirmed in two early tenth century forged privileges of archbishop
Hartwig. Especially the forgeries of Liemar show clearly, that the use of
the mitre and the right to carry a cross had established themselves as
natural attributes of papal legates at the eve of the investiture struggle
in the 1070's.
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Tapio Salminen
Coordinator of the Finnish
Graduate School of History
University of Tampere,
Department of History,
FIN-33014 UNIVERSITY OF TAMPERE
[log in to unmask]
http://www.uta.fi/~hitasa/
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