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The mitre (Commonwealth English) or miter (American English; see spelling differences; both pronounced ; ) is a type of headgear now known as the traditional, ceremonial headdress of and certain in traditional Christianity. Mitres are worn in the Catholic Church, Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (IOC), Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church (Jacobites), Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Anglican Communion, some Lutheranism churches, for important ceremonies, by the Metropolitan of the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church, and also, in the Catholic Church, all cardinals, whether or not bishops, and some Eastern Orthodox archpriests.
([[Ionic|Ionic Greek]] ) is [[Greek|Greek language]], 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 [[Babylon]]ian headdress, as mentioned by [[Herodotus]] (''Histories'' 1.195 and 7.90). It also refers to a kind of hairband, such as "the victor's chaplet at the games", a headband and a badge of rank at the Ptolemaic court, an oriental headdress, perhaps a kind of turban, worn "as a mark of effeminacy", a [[diadem]], the headdress of the priest of [[Heracles]], or the [[headdress|priestly turban]] of the High Priest of Israel referenced in the [[Septuagint]] (Greek) text of Exodus 29:6.Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dmi%2Ftra "μίτρα"], ''A Greek-English Lexicon'', accessed 17 December 2023
Worn by a bishop, the mitre is depicted for the first time in two miniatures of the beginning of the eleventh century. The first written mention of it is found in a Papal bull of Pope Leo IX in the year 1049. By 1150 the use had spread to bishops throughout the West.
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 Episcopal Church of the United States, the first Presiding Bishop,
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Three types of mitres are worn by Roman Catholic clergy for different occasions:
The proper colour of a mitre is always white, although in liturgical usage white also includes vestments made from gold and silver fabrics. The embroidered bands and other ornaments which adorn a mitre and the lappets may be of other colours and often are.
On all occasions, an altar server may wear a shawl-style veil, called a vimpa, around the shoulders when holding the bishop's mitre.
With his inauguration as pope, Benedict XVI broke with tradition and replaced the papal tiara even on his papal coat of arms with a papal mitre (containing still the three levels of 'crowns' representing the powers of the papacy in a simplified form) and pallium. Prior to Benedict XVI, each pope's coat of arms always contained the image of the papal tiara and St. Peter's crossed keys, even though the tiara had fallen into disuse, especially under popes John Paul I and John Paul II. Pope Paul VI was the last pope to date to begin his papal reign with a formal coronation in June 1963. 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. However his 1975 Apostolic Constitution made it clear the tiara had not been abolished: in the constitution he made provision for his successor to receive a coronation. Pope John Paul I, however, declined to follow Paul VI's constitution and opted for a simpler papal inauguration, a precedent followed by his four successors. Pope John Paul II's 1996 Apostolic Constitution left open several options by not specifying what sort of ceremony was to be used, other than that some ceremony would be held to inaugurate a new pontificate.
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. In 1585 a Russian envoy witnessed the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Jerusalem celebrated the divine liturgy together and only the Alexandrian patriarch wore a mitre.
Some modern scholars believe that the mitre was first adopted among the Orthodox when Cyril Lucaris (previously patriarch of Alexandria) became Ecumenical Patriarch in the early 1600s. Others instead claim that the mitre started being used after the fall of Constantinople (1453). There are some examples of Orthodox religious headgear (and possibly mitres) as early as the 14th century, such as a fresco of Metropolitan Kalevit in the Kremikovtsi Monastery or the mitre donated to the patriarch of Belgrade by Katarina Branković.
Some have hypothesized that shape of the mitres adopted after the fall of Constantinople was likely derived by the stemma, the Byzantine Empire imperial crown. 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.
In medieval Russia bishops wore hats with a fringe, but not a mitre. This is in contrast to Constantinople and most other Orthodox clergy who did not wear any headgear, and might be accounted for by the cold temperatures in Russia.Yevgeny Golubinsky " History of the Russian Church", vol. II, M. 1997-98 The mitre was first appeared in Russia with Patriarch Nikon, who adopted it from the tradition of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Initially, it was only worn by the Patriarch of Moscow, but it was soon adopted by the rest of the bishops, and a council in 1675 mandated the mitre for all bishops, following the Greek custom. Mitres were also given to some Archimandrite, by the decree of Peter the Great in 1705; in 1786 Catherine the Great awarded a mitre to her spiritual father, Archpriest John Pamphilov. In 1797 the decree of Paul I allowed the mitre to be awarded to Archpriest as mark of special distinction. 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).
The mitre is topped by a cross, either made out of metal and standing upright, or embroidered in cloth and lying flat on the top. In Greek practice, the mitres of all bishops are topped with a standing cross. The same is true in the Russian tradition. Mitres awarded to priests will have the cross lying flat. Sometimes, instead of the flat cross, the mitre may have an icon on the top.
As an item of Imperial , along with other such items as the sakkos (Imperial dalmatic) and epigonation, the mitre came to signify the temporal authority of bishops (especially that of the Patriarch of Constantinople) within the administration of the Rum millet (i.e., the Christian community) of the Ottoman Empire. The mitre is removed at certain solemn moments during the Divine Liturgy and other services, usually being removed and replaced by the protodeacon.
The use of the mitre is a prerogative of bishops, but it may be awarded to , and . The priestly mitre is not surmounted by a cross, and is awarded at the discretion of a synod of bishops.
Militarily, this headdress came in different styles. The Prussian style had a cone-shaped brass or white metal front with a cloth rear having lace braiding;Philip Haythornthwaite, page 13 "Frederick the Great's Army, vol. 2 Infantry ", the Russian style initially consisted of a tall brass plate atop of a leather cap with a peak at the rear, although the German model was subsequently adopted. 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.Stuart Reid, page 24 "King George's Army 1740-93, vol. 1 Infantry," Some German and Russian fusilier regiments also wore a mitre with a smaller brass front-plate.
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 bicorne. The British Army made this change in 1765 and the Prussian Army in 1790. All Russian grenadiers continued however to wear mitre caps until 1805, even when on active service.Philip Haythornthwaite, page 18 "The Russian Army of the Napoleonic Wars (1): Infantry, 1799-1814" The mitre in its classic metal-fronted 18th-century form survived as an item of ceremonial parade dress in the Prussian Leib-Grenadier No 1 and 1. Garde-Regiment zu Fuß regiments; plus the Russian Pavlovskii Regiment, until World War I. in mitres, 1894]]
The crowns of the Austrian Empire and Imperial Russia incorporated a mitre of precious metal and jewels into their design. The Austrian Imperial Crown was originally the personal crown of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II and has the form proper to that of a Holy Roman Emperor. At the Roman rite of their Coronation, the Pope placed a mitre on their heads before placing the crown over it. Their empress consorts also received both a mitre and crown on their heads from a cardinal bishop at the same ceremony. The form of the Russian Imperial Crown dates back to the time of Peter the Great’s early attempts to Westernisation Russia and was probably inspired by the crowns worn by Habsburg emperors of the Holy Roman Empire and possibly also the Orthodox mitre.
of certain very ancient abbeys in the West also wore mitres, but of a very different form than that worn by male prelates.
The mitral valve of the human heart, which is located between the left atrium and the left ventricle, is named so because of its similarity in shape to the mitre. Andreas Vesalius, the father of anatomy, noted the striking similarity between the two while performing anatomic dissections in the sixteenth century.Charles Davis O'Malley, "Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, 1514-1564," (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964).
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