Mitre

The mitre is the single most legible object in Western liturgical dress, understood by people who could not name any other vestment, and it is far younger than the office it marks.

Worn, and taken off

A mitre in a church means a bishop is present and presiding. It is not worn continuously through a service: it goes on and comes off according to what the bishop is doing, off for prayer addressed to God, on for teaching and blessing, so the garment encodes the distinction between the bishop who prays with the church and the bishop who teaches it. Three grades, plain through jewelled, are chosen by the solemnity of the occasion.

A recent invention

Bishops had no distinctive headgear for the first thousand years of the church. The mitre appears only in the eleventh century, apparently as a papal grant to particular bishops before becoming general, which makes it a good illustration of how quickly an object can become so bound to an office that it looks immemorial. In Orthodoxy the corresponding headdress is a rounded crown following Byzantine imperial form rather than the Western cleft cap, a reminder that the shape is a cultural choice and not a necessity.

Western practice distinguishes three mitres and uses them for different occasions. The precious mitre is ornamented with metal, embroidery or stones and is worn on feasts. The golden or auriphrygiata is plain cloth of gold or ornamented without stones. The simple mitre is undecorated white linen or silk, and it is the one worn on Good Friday, at funerals and in penitential settings, and by the concelebrating bishops at an ordination. A bishop travelling with a full set therefore carries a small vocabulary rather than a single hat.

Two lappets, the infulae, hang at the back. They are usually explained as the loose ends of a band that once tied the headdress on, which is consistent with the earliest depictions showing a low soft cap rather than the tall stiff shape of later centuries.

When it comes off is as informative as when it goes on. The mitre is worn while the bishop is seated, while preaching, while giving a blessing and in procession. It is removed for prayer addressed to God, so it comes off for the collects, the Eucharistic prayer and the Gospel. The rule is simple and it makes the liturgy readable from the back of the building: head covered when the bishop is acting toward the people, uncovered when he is addressing God.

Abbots of certain monasteries have the right to wear one, and a very small number of other clergy hold it by ancient privilege.

The Eastern mitre is a different object with a different history. It is a rounded crown rather than a cleft cap, derived from Byzantine imperial headgear, usually surmounted by a cross and set with icons, and in Slavic practice certain archpriests may be granted the right to wear one.