Other Crowns.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 32, 7 August 1902, Page 1

Other Crowns.

1 he most remarkable crown in Europe at the present time is the historic Iron Crown of Lombardy (Italy). It is preserved in the treasury of ths famous old fourteenth-century Church of Monza, and consists of a handsome gold diadem within which is a ribbon of iron, which is said to have been forged from a nail of the cross on which the Saviour of the world hung on Calvary. It was used at the coronation of Charlemagne and many of his successors. It was also with this notable relic of the far-past day that Napoleon I was crowned King of Italy at Milan in ISOS.

The Pope, says Alzog, ' wears a triple crown to symbolise the Church militant, the Church suffering, and the Church triumphant.' The use of a crown by the Popes is probably as ancient as the temporal power itself. ' The whole history of the Papal tiara, or triple-crown,' says another writer ' is un certain. Nicholas I. (858-867) is said by some to have been the first to unite the princely crown with the mitre, though the Bollandists think that this was done before his time. The com mon statement that Boniface VIII. (about 1300) added the second crown is false, for Hefele shows that Innocent 111 is represented wearing a second crown in a painting older than the time of Boniface. Urban V. (1362-1370) is supposed to have added the thud crown. The tiara is placed on the Pope's head, at his coronation, by the second Cardinal-deacon in the loggia of St. Peter's, with the words : ' Receive the tiara adorned with three crowns, and know that thou art Father of princes and kings, Ruler of the World, Vicar of our Saviour Jesus Christ.' At ceremonies of a purely spiritual character the Pope wears the mitre, not the tiara.