MITRE

(Yunanca köken — orijinale bakınız.) The pontifical ornament worn on the head by the pope, cardinals, and in some instances by abbots, in the Roman catholic church, and in the Protestant episcopal church by archbishops and bishops, upon solemn occasions. It appears to have been a hierarchal head covering from the earliest ages of antiquity. Pellerin says, it waslthat worn by the regal pontiffs of the Hebrews, and, with a few slight modifications, was afterwards adopted by the oriental kings and pagan high priests under the name of cidaris. Among the Romans the mitre was originally a sort of head-dre worn by ladies; and Servius makes it a matter of reproach to the Phrygians that they were dre ed like women, inasmuch as they wore mitres. There is every reason for supposing that in England the mitre was worn by the bishops on the first introduction of Christianity into the island; and it is supposed in Gotcgh's Sepulchral Monuments (vol.i. p. 1-53.) that the practice was borrowed from the apex or tutulus of the Flamen Dialis in ancient Rome. As an heraldic ornament the mitre of a bishop is surrounded by a fillet set with precious stones: the archbishop's mitre, on the other hand, i ues from a ducal coronet. MiTBE. In Architecture, a junction of two pieces of wood or other material at an interior or exterior angle by diagonal fitting. [s. 769]