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. 1 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 — between 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 Xoyelov in Exodus xxv. 7, xxviii. 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. 3 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, circa 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 



1 The 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. So I 

 learn from Mr. Everitt. 



2 Mr. Hope writes : ' ' Outside the great north door at Rheims Cathedral Churoh 

 I 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." 



