Easter had come and gone in flurries of snow.

These eggs remind me of Creena’s Easter Eggs. My sister & brother all have some of mum’s painted eggs: fine as any by Faberge but made with much more love

In my teenage days often on TV at this time of year they played that classic film musical Easter Parade – full of wonderful Irving Berlin songs; with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire giving two wonderfully elegant performances, full of style and joie de vivre.  Though my personal favourite sequence is the couple of swells it is the parade of women in hats on Easter Day on Fifth Avenue for which the film is most famously remembered  Berlin’s lyric for the accompanying song runs:

Simnel Cake, named for Lambert Simnel, Easter Day speciality made with love by my dearest friend John Dalton – cake-maker by royal appointment….

In your easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it,
You’ll be the grandest lady in the easter parade.
I’ll be all in clover and when they look you over,
I’ll be the proudest fellow in the easter parade.
On the avenue, fifth avenue, the photographers will snap us,
And you’ll find that you’re in the rotogravure.
Oh, I could write a sonnet about your easter bonnet,
And of the girl I’m taking to the easter parade.

I am not sure there was a London equivalent to the Fifth Avenue ‘parade’. I do remember in the 1960’s women  were still wearing  new Easter bonnets to Mass on Easter on Sunday. But like the ubiquitous gloves and pearls, hats disappeared in the late 1960’s. Easter bonnets were a tradition that just went on its way. By the 1970’s its time and been and gone.

Millinery is a cruel sport….

Since those days hats have been relegated to weddings and racecourses. Even so the incapable heads of the House of Windsor (Princesses Beatrice & Eugenie) ensured that this last resort of millinery was not safe. The harsh judgement of fashion’s committee of public safety was well deserved for the monstrosities the two princesses of York wore at the royal wedding and for which they were lucky not to lose their heads to Madame Guillotine.Since their unsuccessful foray into fashion, millinery has been routinely reduced to the wispy gauze of the ‘fascinator’  now so beloved racegoers at Ascot.

With the Grand National almost upon us; in this bleak mid-Easter; suffering from the disappointment of not selling the house; our April thoughts have turned from home to abroad. Like for the men and women of Chaucer’s time April appears even in this cold season to be the time –

We – that is my sister, Richard and some friends and me –  are talking about going on Pilgrimage, not to Canterbury, but to Santiago de Compostela. The idea came up first last year over a summer lunch on a wet June day, only one amongst so many undistinguished wet summer’s days last year. Since summer bloomed for all of us our circumstances are now changed.  My sister is retired. She and I are both cancer survivors; Richard too a survivor from a terminal illness –  so, what better to mark our thanks than going together on pilgrimage. I think to spend quality time with those I love dearly would be the perfect thing to do to mark this turn into the last quarter of my time here on earth.

The traditional Pilgrims’ hat – complete with cockle shell

By tradition pilgrims wore a broad brimmed hat or galero to which they pinned some sign of their ultimate destination – in the case of Compostella it was a large cockel shell. The same shell is also an emblem of Spain and the spanish monarchy. This is the same cockle shell referred to in the nursery rhyme about dear old Mary I (Tudor)  –

Philip & Mary shortly after their marriage in Winchester Cathedral by Bishop Stephen Gardiner on St James’s Day, 1554

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.

The pilgrim’s galero was similar in kind to the hat worn by all the clerical estate (i.e. churchmen). The galero was a distinctive part of medieval dress and it is this hat, with its cords and tassels, that becomes the distinctive part of of ecclesiastical coats of arms of Roman Catholic clergy. It is this galero and not the biretta with its pom-pom that is the cardinal’s hat of old. The scarlet galero was given to cardinals to mark their entry into the sacred college from the the 13th century. It was Pope Innocent IV who made scarlet the colour for cardinalatial clobber – even their gloves were scarlet.

From that time forward all the clerical orders used a galero. Various colors and forms were adopted and became the standard heraldic achievement in the arms of bishops from the 16th century. By the 19th century the galero was viewed heraldically as specifically Roman Catholic but the Public Register of Arms in Scotland also shows Presbyterian (Church of Scotland) and Episcopalian clergy ornamented by the wide brimmed, low crowned hat.

The galero was tied with two cords. These were adorned with tassels (also called houppes or fiocchi) which gradually came indicate a cleric’s position in the church hierarchy:  the greater the number of tassels, the higher ranking the ecclesiastic. A priest’s galero is black; as is that of all members of the regular clergy, except Norbertines (white canons) who wear a white galero. A priest is permitted a single tassel either side; a vicar two; a canon three; a general of an order 6; a mitred abbot 6 with a gold staff; a papal chaplain black galero has 6 purple tassels either side.

The galero worn by members of the papal household and court – who all also have the title of Monsignor

Other members of the papal household above chaplains, officials in papal curia otr court, get to wear a violet galero. Honorary prelates within the curia have purple tassels, 6 on each side of their hat; whilst an apostolic protonotary has a purple galero and scarlet tassels, 6 on each side; and a full papal prelate a purple galero and 10 scarlet tassels on each side of the hat.

A bishop’s galero is green with six tassels on each side; the color originated in Spain where bishops had worn green hats from the tenth century. A territorial abbot, like the abbot of St Albans for example, was equivalent to a bishop and also used a green galero. An archbishop’s galero is also green but had ten tassels on each side. The Swiss bishops were also allowed ten tassels like an archbishop

an archbishop’s galero, with its legate’s double-cross & also a crown to signify a prince-bishop

because they were under the immediate jurisdiction of the Holy See and not part of an archiepiscopal province. Both patriarchs and cardinals have galeros with fifteen tassels. A cardinal’s hat, as noted above, is red or scarlet;  whilst the galero of a patriarch who is not also a cardinal is green. The patriarch’s tassels are interwoven with gold, except in Venice where the patriarch is allowed scarlet tassels. Certain primates or metropolitans were allowed to use the same external ornaments as patriarchs. The depiction of the galero in a coat of arms  varies according to the design of the heraldic artist. The top of the hat may be shown flat or round. Sometimes the brim is shown to be narrower; sometimes the domed crown appears more like the cappello romano word by popes. The tassels may also be represented as knotted cords.

 

A bishop’s galero with its 6 tassels and the episcopal cross behind the shield

 

The bishop of Hong kong uses a violet galero and not the green hat of the cuckold!

 

Norbertine Canons – white galero of mitred abbot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So there we have it…..some way from Easter bonnets…but hats off to the clergy….