The sacring of the English kings : a paper read before the Royal Archaeological Institute : at Westminster Abbey on Wednesday, July 12th, 1893.
- John Wickham Legg
- Date:
- 1894
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The sacring of the English kings : a paper read before the Royal Archaeological Institute : at Westminster Abbey on Wednesday, July 12th, 1893. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
18/46 page 12
![the last coronation, and the spurs were delivered to the Queen, but forthwith sent back to the altar. The next ornament at the last coronation was the armilla; it is a stole, worn after the fashion of a deacon. It is arranged in this way in the picture of “ The Queen receiving the Holy Sacrament,” which is now in the gallery at Windsor, and familiar to many of us through the engraving which may be seen in so many English houses. (See plate i.) The stole in most Western dioceses is now put on immediately after the alb, and before the tunicle or dalmatic. In the coronation service it may be noticed that it is put on after the tunicle or dalmatic, even in the earlier books. The deacon still wears the stole outside the dalmatic in the Ambrosian liturgy at Milan, and the Greek andRussian deacon wears his also outside the tunic. This appears to have been the ancient custom; for at a council held at Braga in 561 deacons were ordered not to wear their stoles under the tunic, so that they seem to differ nothing from sub-deacons1; but according to Hefele, the custom of wearing the stole under the tunic only came in with the twelfth century.2 Thus our kings in their coronation ceremonies have preserved an ancient custom which the churchmen have lost. With the armilla there can be no doubt that already in the middle ages some confusion had arisen. Armilla means a bracelet, and bracelets were put upon the arms of Richard II. at this place in the coronation service, with the prayer beginning “ Accipe armillas.”3 Bracelets are found in the catalogue of the regalia of Sporley, made about 1450,4 and they are spoken of among Henry VIII.’s jewels,6 and in Edward VI.’s6 and Queen Mary Tudor’s7 co- ronation. Garters were put upon Queen Elizabeth’s hands immediately before the crown was put upon the Queen’s 1 [Labbc] Acta Conciliorum, Parisiis, 6 MS. Soc. Antiq. Lond. 129, fo. 7, 1714, t. iii. col. 351. verso. 2 C. J. Hefele, Beitrdge zur Kirchen- 6 MS. Soc. Antiq. Lond. 123, in third geschichte, u.s.w. Tubingen, 1864. Bd. collection, folio marked 344 in cotem- ii. p. 191. porary hand ; 41 in pencil. 3 Thornfe Walsingham Historia Ang- 7 J. R. Planche, Regal Records, Lond., licana, Rolls series, 1863, ed. H. T. 1838, p. 20, from MSS. College of Arms, Riley, vol. i. p. 335. 1, 7, and W. Y. 4 British Museum MS. Claudius A. viii.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24992021_0018.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
