Pallium

Uncommon card · No. 189682

The pallium (from Latin pallium, a cloak or mantle; plural pallia) is a liturgical vestment of the Latin Church, worn by the pope and by metropolitan archbishops. In its present form it is a narrow circular band of white wool that rests on the shoulders over the chasuble, with a strip hanging down the front and another down the back. It is marked with six black crosses and fastened with three pins. The 1983 Code of Canon Law states that the pallium signifies the power a metropolitan holds by law in his ecclesiastical province, in communion with the Roman Church, and he may wear it only within that province. The origins of the garment are obscure. The Liber Pontificalis places the first papal grant of the right to wear it in the fourth century, but the earliest datable grants to bishops are in the sixth century, when popes began to confer it on selected bishops, many of them metropolitans or papal vicars. From the eighth century onwards, the papacy increasingly expected western metropolitans...

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