- By the Right Rev. the Bishop of Salisbury. 225 
hand, the thumb and two fingers being upraised, and the third and 
fourth turned down. In his left hand, from which hangs the fanon 
or maniple, is a pastoral staff, the head of which in seven cases 
_out of nine is turned inwards towards his own left cheek.! The staff 
does not appear to have knobs upon it, and has a very plain head. 
The figure is vested in a chasuble with two vestments underneath— 
a dalmatic and an alb—hbetween which the ends of the stole some- 
times just appear. The vestments are generally very plain, though 
the dalmatic has some traces of embroidery in several cases, especially 
on the slits at the bottom of the skirts. Herbert Poor has a square 
brooch at the neck, which I suppose to be the “ rationale,” which 
Mr. Hope tells me was in use for about a century—1189 to 
1289— that is just for the period covered by our first class of seals. 
Robert de Bingham has one of a different shape, which is more 
decided in Walter de la Wyle’s. The word “rationale” is the vulgate 
rendering of the Greek Aoyetov in Exodus xxv. 7, xxvui. 4, &c., 
the high priest’s breastplate, but writers do not seem clear as to 
what it exactly was as a Christian pontifical vestment, some even 
identifying it with the pallium. This latter supposition, however 
seems decidedly wrong.? I may mention that Mr. John David 
Chambers, in his Divine Worship in England, published by B. M. 
Pickering in 1877, has two figures of bishops, which clearly exhibit 
the rationale (facing pp. 6 and 76). The first represents Thomas 
a’ Becket in his vestments, still preserved at Sens, where it might be 
worth while to look for this ornament. The second is entitled 
“« Benediction by an English Bishop, cirea 1190,” and is taken from 
Rock and Raine’s St. Cuthbert. Dr. J. C. Cox informs me that 
there is a very good example of one in the effigy of Bishop Hugo de 
Patteshull in Lichfield Cathedral, circa 1241, and I have recently 
1The change to the modern fashion of turning the staff with the crook away 
from the cheek is supposed to date, as a general custom, about A.D. 1260. Sol 
learn from Mr. Everitt. 
2 Mr. Hope writes: ‘‘ Outside the great north door at Rheims Cathedral Church 
T lately saw several episcopal figures, on which the rationale was a real ‘ Aaron’s 
breastplate’ of metal set with stones, suspended by two little chains. The pallium 
is a totally different thing.” 
