Mitre

Μίτρα, mítra (Ionic μίτρη, mítrē) is Greek, and means a piece of armour, usually a metal guard worn around the waist and under a cuirass, as mentioned in Homer's Iliad.

In later poems, it was used to refer to a headband used by women for their hair, and a sort of formal Babylonian headdress, as mentioned by Herodotus (Histories 1.195 and 7.90).

[1] In its modern form in Western Christianity, the mitre is a tall folding cap, consisting of two similar parts (the front and back) rising to a peak and sewn together at the sides.

The camelaucum (Greek: καμιλαύκιον, kamilaukion), the headdress that both the mitre and the papal tiara stem from, was originally a cap used by officials of the Imperial Byzantine court.

In the late Empire it developed into the closed type of Imperial crown used by Byzantine Emperors (see illustration of Michael III, 842–867).

[citation needed] In the Church of England, the mitre fell out of use after the Reformation, but was restored in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a result of the Oxford Movement, and is now worn by most bishops of the Anglican Communion on at least some occasions.

In the case of a person who is canonically equivalent to a diocesan bishop but does not receive episcopal ordination, this presentation normally occurs during a public installation as the ordinary of his jurisdiction.

It substituted for the helm of military arms, but also appeared as a crest placed atop a helmet, as was common in German heraldry.

However, as a sign of the perceived need for greater simplification of the papal rites, as well as the changing nature of the papacy itself, he abandoned the use of his tiara in a dramatic ceremony in Saint Peter's Basilica during the second session of Vatican II in November 1963.

[9] This claim was repeated by Symeon of Thessalonica in the fifteenth century, who in his Concerning the Holy Temple, wrote that all Eastern hierarchs and priests, with the exception of the patriarch of Alexandria conduct sacred service with uncovered heads.

[11][9][12][13] Another evidence pointing to the lack of headgear among the Orthodox bishops was the complaint against John XI of Constantinople who was accused of copying the Catholic pope in wearing a mitre.

Together with other imperial-derived vestements like the sakkos, the crown-like mitre embodied the regality and richness of the defunct empire, of which the bishops inherited the legacy.

[10] In 1988, the Holy Synod of the Russian Church decided that the mitres of all bishops would be topped with a cross, which until then was reserved for the Patriarch (also granted to the metropolitan of Kiev starting in 1686).

[19][10] The Eastern mitre is made in the shape of a bulbous crown, completely enclosed, and the material is of brocade, damask or cloth of gold.

As first adopted in the 1680s this cap had been worn instead of the usual broad-brimmed hat to avoid the headdress being knocked off when the soldier threw a grenade.

[21] The hand grenade in its primitive form had become obsolete by the mid-18th century[21] but grenadiers continued as elite troops in most European armies, usually retaining the mitre cap as a distinction.

The British style—usually simply called a "grenadier cap" instead of a mitre—had a tall cloth front with elaborate regimental embroidery forward of a sloping red back, lined in white.

By the end of the 18th century, due to changes in military fashion, the mitre had generally given way to the bearskin or had been replaced by the standard infantry tricorn or bicorn.

Andreas Vesalius, the father of anatomy, noted the striking similarity between the two while performing anatomic dissections in the sixteenth century.