The Real Origin of the Pope's Pointy Hat

this is Pope Francis and this on his head is a miter it is the formal headgear worn on ceremonial occasions by high-ranking Church officials in the Catholic church as well as other churches like the Lutheran and Anglican churches Church officials of the various branches of Orthodox Christianity also wear a miter though while Orthodox Bishops wear a rounded miter the Catholic version looks kind of like two triangular points split by a swooping indentation the design has fueled public speculation about the miter Origins some have said that the hat looks kind of like a fish's mouth perhaps

relating to the use of the fish as an early Christian symbol though others have suggested from an anti-catholic perspective that the fish mouth shape is a reference to the ancient Syrian God deeon which has no basis in reality at all the miter shape has nothing to do with fish imagery nor an ancient god but its history does provide a fascinating window into Christian symbolism and its connections with Jewish history now we don't know the exact origins of the miter though the topic has been explored by Scholars such as Dr Ruth melanoff as well as Dr

Katie Turner an expert on ancient Jewish clothing and its reinterpretation throughout Christian history she helped a ton on this video and you can check out an interview I conducted with her on my second Channel Link in the description below in the earliest centuries of Christian history there was no standard formal headdress for early Christian leaders in fact one wouldn't emerge for nearly 1,000 years but by around the 8th Century CE we have evidence for leaders such as the pope wearing a cone-shaped or helmet-shaped hat called a Kamal Alum which was was a type of headgear

worn by officials in the Byzantine Imperial Court by the 12th century however the cone shape of the Hat was altered by adding a decorative fabric band down the middle the Hat was soft so the band pushed down the middle of the Hat forming two soft Mounds on either side shown here on a 12th century chess piece of a bishop just like how a bishop in a modern game of chess often looks like a modern miter a medieval chess piece reflects the church uniform of the time by the mid 12th century the two mounds of the

headgear were stiffened using a stiff fabric lining inside of the Hat forming a horn-like shape this new hat became known as the cornua Latin for horn and also in the 12th century the Hat was rotated so that the horns were front and back however as the art historian Ruth melanoff stresses in her research we should not imagine these as exclusive phases of development but rather they overlapped one community may have retained an older form of the miter While others simultaneously started using the rotated front back form so why did The Bishop's miter take on a

horn shape the shaping of the miter into the form of horns likely originated in the Latin translation of Exodus 34:29 In this passage Moses returns from the presence of God on Mount Si holding the two tablets of the Covenant according to Exodus the face of Moses Shone because he had been talking with God so much so that his brother Aaron and the other Israelites were afraid to speak with Moses when this passage was translated from Hebrew into Latin by the church father Jerome he translated the Hebrew term for shown or radiant with the Latin word

cornuta or horned this seems pretty random but Jerome chose this word because in late Antiquity horned had a metaphorical meaning of empowered or glorified pick up your copy of the Latin Vulgate Bible today and you'll see the word cornuta which means we can literally translate this verse as his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord this is why you often see Moses depicted in Christian art as having physical horns on his head like here in Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses Jerome's Latin translation originally metaphorical came to be reinterpreted as a literal physical description by

later artists while today many might interpret this negatively like how Satan stereotypically is portrayed with horns back then this was a thoroughly positive translation someone who is horned is glorified this ancient double meaning of this Latin term also helps explain why the Bishop's miter took on a horn shape it represented the glorified power of Christian leaders a 12th Century theologian named Petrus Contour said that the horns of the miter signified The Bishop's ability to cast down the enemies with the horns of the Old and New Testament connecting the so-called horns to the Old and New

Testament became a common metaphor the 12th century pope innocent III wrote that the miter signifies the knowledge of both Testaments for the two horns are the two Testaments so the horn shape of the miter originated in a western Christian translation and interpretation of a passage from the Hebrew Bible used by Christian writers and artists to underscore the power and authority of Christian leaders so how do we get from the Sid horned miter to the front back miter as we've touched on briefly the horns of the earliest miter apparently sat on each side around the temples

but by the end of the 12th century the miter was rotated 90° such that the horns sat in the front and back of the wearer's head this came to be the Standard Version and is still warn today the rationale for this rotation is unknown though the scholar Katie Turner theorizes in her upcoming book costuming Christ which should be published next year that this switch was due to Christian supersessionist theology the idea that Christians have replaced Jews as the people of God later Christian writers interpreted this positioning as reflecting the priority of the New Testament over

the Old Testament the horn in the front represented the New Testament and thus had precedence over the horn in the back representing the Old Testament in this way the front back horned miter came to be understood as part of Christian supersessionist claims to the heritage of Judaism this switch from the Sid horn miter to the front back miter led to an interesting development in Christian art the older sorn version became a visual symbol for old-fashioned it became an easy way for your audience to distinguish between a historical figure from long ago versus a contemporary person

in other words a character wearing a sorn miter in a painting signals that that person belongs to an earlier bygone era of history in fact the visual technique was eventually extended to biblical figures figures from the Hebrew Bible such as Aaron the brother of Moses were depicted wearing a sid horned miter originally the Sid horned miter was a largely positive symbol a way to signal that biblical Heroes such as Aaron were equivalent to Pro Christians by wearing an older version of the headgear worn by contemporary church leaders you created a symbolic link between the Hebrew

Bible and modern Christians but eventually Christian artists came to associate the old-fashioned connotations of the older headgear with what they viewed as the outdated and obsolete Jewish law and this is where the imagery of the Sid horn miter originally a symbol of glorification takes a negative turn according to research conducted by Dr ktie Turner and Dr Rob priest Christians began to use used the sorn miter to depict Jewish priests in order to Signal their outdatedness this can be seen in the derogatory use of the sorn miter for Jewish figures and Christian passion plays theatrical performances

of the crucifixion resurrection of Jesus Christ that are typically performed around Easter Dr Turner and Dr Priest Point to evidence such as costume directions from a late 15th century Passion Play that orders that the high priests an us and Caiaphas appear as a bishop of the Old Law with a miter on their head after the Old Law according to the gospels Caiaphas was the high priest during the crucifixion of Jesus and played a role in the plot against him he's often portrayed in Christian art with a sorn miter Passion Play costumes for the character Caiaphas

from the German Town of obamaga dating as far back as the 1700s show that they were portrayed with sorn headgear Turner and priest argue in their research that many Protestant audience members would have picked up on the subtext of these costumes as an exaggerated caricature of priests giving these passion plays an anti-catholic clergy Vibe along with the anti-Semitism these costumes and other elements of the Amaral Passion Play came under heavy criticism as anti-semitic by the 1980s and the costumes were abolished by the 21st century the miter has also been a target of anti-catholic imagery for

example check out this political cartoon which was published in Harper's Weekly in 1871 the cartoon depicts Catholic Bishops as crocodiles crawling out of the water and advancing toward the United States represented as a public school a Protestant Minister Shields terrified school kids from the voracious crocodilian creatures this cartoon was a piece of anti-catholic propaganda criticizing the perceived influence of the Catholic Church on education Catholics at the time were pulling their kids out of largely Protestant influenced public schools and forming their own Catholic schools this sparked a surge of anti-catholic sentiment as Protestant Americans criticize these

parochial schools as unamerican so the shape of the miter doesn't have any connection with fish nor with a fish God as an aside the Syrian God deeon was not a fish God at all that idea is completely fabricated you can learn more about this in a video by The Scholar Dan mlen but the history of the demonstrates how Christian art and culture can sometimes have multiple and shifting meanings what started as a positive metaphorical translation in late Antiquity became a physical headdress a symbolic representation of Christian Authority and an occasional Target of anti-catholic misinformation being

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