the neck opening (see Plate I. fig. 2). This latter is the type used in the local Roman Church, which has been adopted in certain dioceses in South Germany and Switzerland, and of late years in the Roman Catholic churches in England, e.g. Westminster cathedral (see Plate I. figs. 3 and 5).
It has been widely held that the forked cross was a conscious imitation of the archiepiscopal pallium (F. Bock, Gesch. der liturg. Gewänder, ii. 107), and that the chasuble so decorated is proper to archbishops. Father Braun, however, makes it quite clear that this was not the case, and gives proof that this decoration was not even originally conceived as a cross at all, citing early instances of its having been worn by laymen and even by non-Christians (p. 210). It was not until the 13th century that the symbolical meaning of the cross began to be elaborated, and this was still further accentuated from the 14th century onward by the increasingly widespread custom of adding to it the figure of the crucified Christ and other symbols of the Passion. This, however, did not represent any definite rule; and the orphreys of chasubles were decorated with a great variety of pictorial subjects, scriptural or drawn from the stories of the saints, while the rest of the vestment was either left plain or, if embroidered, most usually decorated with arabesque patterns of foliage or animals. The local Roman Church, true to its ancient traditions, adhered to the simpler forms. The modern Roman chasuble pictured in Plate I. fig. 5, besides the conventional arabesque pattern, is decorated, according to rule, with the arms of the archbishop and his see.
The Eastern Church.—The original equivalent of the chasuble is the phelonion (φελόνιον, φελόνης, φαινόλιον, from paenula). It is a full vestment of the type of the Western bell chasuble; but, instead of being cut away at the sides, it is for convenience’ sake either gathered up or cut short in front. In the Armenian, Syrian, Chaldaean and Coptic rites it is cope-shaped. There is some difference of opinion as to the derivation of the vestment in the latter case; the Five Bishops (Report to Convocation, 1908) deriving it, like the cope, from the birrus, while Father Braun considers it, as well as the cope, to be a modification of the paenula.[1] The phelonion (Arm. shurtshar, Syr. phaina, Chald. maaphra or phaina, Copt, burnos, felonion, kuklion) is confined to the priests in the Armenian, Syrian, Chaldaean and Coptic rites; in the Greek rite it is worn also by the lectors. It is not in the East so specifically a eucharistic vestment as in the West, but is worn at other solemn functions besides the liturgy, e.g. marriages, processions, &c.
Until the 11th century the phelonion is always pictured as a perfectly plain dark robe, but at this period the custom arose of decorating the patriarchal phelonion with a number of crosses, whence its name of πολυσταύριον. By the 14th century the use of these polystauria had been extended to metropolitans and later still to all bishops. The purple or black phelonion, however, remained plain in all cases. The Greeks and Greek Melchite metropolitans now wear the sakkos instead of the phelonion; and in the Russian, Ruthenian, Bulgarian and Italo-Greek churches this vestment has superseded the phelonion in the case of all bishops (see Dalmatic and Vestments).
See J. Braun, S. J., Die liturgische Gewandung (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1907), pp. 149-247, and the bibliography to the article Vestments. (W. A. P.)
CHÂTEAU (from Lat. castellum, fortress, through O. Fr. chastel, chasteau), the French word for castle (q.v.). The development of the medieval castle, in the 15th and 16th centuries, into houses arranged rather for residence than defence led to a corresponding widening of the meaning of the term château, which came to be applied to any seigniorial residence and so generally to all houses, especially country houses, of any pretensions (cf. the Ger. Schloss). The French distinguish the fortified castle from the residential mansion by describing the former as the château fort, the latter as the château de plaisance. The development of the one into the other is admirably illustrated by surviving buildings in France, especially in the châteaux scattered along the Loire. Of these Langeais, still in perfect preservation, is a fine type of the château fort, with its 10th-century keep and 13th-century walls. Amboise (1490), Blois (1500–1540), Chambord (begun 1526), Chenonceaux (1515–1560), Azay-le-Rideau (1521), may be taken as typical examples of the château de plaisance of the transition period, all retaining in greater or less degree some of the architectural characteristics of the medieval castle. Some description of these is given under their several headings. In English the word château is often used to translate foreign words (e.g. Schloss) meaning country house or mansion.
For the Loire châteaux see Theodore Andrea Cook, Old Touraine (1892).
CHATEAUBRIAND, FRANÇOIS RENÉ, Vicomte de (1768–1848), French author, youngest son of René Auguste de Chateaubriand, comte de Combourg,[2] was born at St Malo on the 4th of September 1768. He was a brilliant representative of the reaction against the ideas of the French Revolution, and the most conspicuous figure in French literature during the First Empire. His naturally poetical temperament was fostered in childhood by picturesque influences, the mysterious reserve of his morose father, the ardent piety of his mother, the traditions of his ancient family, the legends and antiquated customs of the sequestered Breton district, above all, the vagueness and solemnity of the neighbouring ocean. His closest friend was his sister Lucile,[3] a passionate-hearted girl, divided between her devotion to him and to religion. François received his education at Dol and Rennes, where Jean Victor Moreau was among his fellow-students. From Rennes he proceeded to the College of Dinan, and passed some years in desultory study in preparation for the priesthood. He finally decided, after a year’s holiday at the family château of Combourg, that he had no vocation for the Church, and was on the point of proceeding to try his fortune in India when he received (1786) a commission in the army. After a short visit to Paris he joined his regiment at Cambrai, and early in the following year was presented at court. In 1788 he received the tonsure in order to enter the order of the Knights of Malta. In Paris (1787–1789) he made acquaintance with the Parisian men of letters. He met la Harpe, Évariste Parny, “Pindare” Lebrun, Nicolas Chamfort, Pierre Louis Ginguené, and others, of whom he has left portraits in his memoirs.
Chateaubriand was not unfavourable to the Revolution in its first stages, but he was disturbed by its early excesses; moreover, his regiment was disbanded, and his family belonged to the party of reaction. His political impartiality, he says, pleased no one. These causes and the restlessness of his spirit induced him to take part in a romantic scheme for the discovery of the North-West Passage, in pursuance of which he departed for America in the spring of 1791. The passage was not found or even attempted, but the adventurer returned enriched with the—to him—more important discovery of his own powers and vocation, conscious of his marvellous faculty for the delineation of nature, and stored with the new ideas and new imagery,
- ↑ The writer is indebted to the courtesy of Father Braun for the following note:—“That the Syrian phaina was formerly a closed mantle of the type of the bell chasuble is clearly proved by the evidence of the miniatures of a Syrian pontifical (dated 1239) in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris (cf. Bild 16, 112, 284, in Die liturgische Gewandung). The liturgical vestments of the Armenians are derived, like their rite, from the Greek rite; so that in this case also there can be no doubt that the shurtshar was originally closed. The Coptic rite is in the same relation to the Syrian. Moreover, it would be further necessary to prove that the birrus, in contradistinction to the paenula, was always open in front; whereas, per contra, the paenula, both as worn by soldiers and in ordinary life, was, like the modern Arab burnus, often slit up the front to the neck. For the rest, it is obvious that if the Syrian phaina was still quite closed in the 13th century, and was only provided with a slit since that time, the same is very probable in the case of the Armenian chasuble. The absence of the hood might also be taken as additional proof of the derivation of the phaina from the paenula, but I should not lay particular stress upon it. The question is settled by the above-mentioned miniatures.”
- ↑ For full details of the Chateaubriand family see R. Kerviler, Essai d’une bio-bibliographie de Chateaubriand et de sa famille (Vannes, 1895).
- ↑ Her Œuvres were edited in 1879, with a memoir, by Anatole France.
