Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/99

 g* s. viii. JULY 27, i9oi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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what he, misled by the identity of the first four letters, had no doubt often stated before, that a crosier was an archiepiscopal cross, and many good men accepted his authority without question. Hook, in his 'Church Dictionary,' Webb writing in 1848,* Parker (1850) and Shipley (1872), t Mrs. Jamieson (1850), Boutell (1864), Smith and Cheet- ham (1880), and Lee (1889), all use crosier for an archbishop's cross, giving no authority for such use. Rock, writing in 1849, never, I think, uses the word, certainly not in his chapter on crosses.

F. G. L., indeed, writing in your paper, says that croyser was anciently used for a cross, but he produces no evidence at all of this, giving only an instance of Caxton's use of the word to signify quite another thing viz., a cross-bearer, Lat. crocer. See Du Cange, s.v. Gambucarius, and 'Piers Plow- man,' yi. 13.

A bishop's staff of office is no doubt fully and properly described by the phrase pastoral staff (baculus pastoralis and episcopates, also virga pastor- oft*), but it had also other names /erw/a, pedum, capuita, cambuca, or cambuta, and their variants ; and yet another name, which Pugin himself quotes, and which might have led him to doubt the correct- ness of his views. That name is crocia, which Du Cange renders by pedum, baculits pastoralis, baculus episcopates, and which may very well have helped the corruption of croce or croos, the older English name for the pastoral staff, into crosier. Crossa is a variant of it, and marks the immediate derivation from the French crosse. This, as we can see in Cotgrave, as well as in every modern French dictionary, means a staff crooked at the head. Thus Cotgrave (1611) has " Crosse : a crosier, or Bishop's staffe also the crooked staffe where- with boyes play at cricket. Evesque d'or crosse de bois, crosse d'or Evesque de bois " ; and Spiers (1850), " Crosse (of Bishops) : crosier." Your readers do not need to be told that croix, and not crosse, is the French for cross.

Du Cange interprets crossa, above mentioned, as "Lituus Pontificalia, Pedum, Baculus pastoralis," and crossare as "baculo recurvo pileum propellere" i.e., to play cricket or hockey or golf with the curved stick then used.

Crucia, a variant of crocia, points to crux, and to an original kinship between croix and crosse, between cross and crosier; and croca ("baculus incurvus" D.) with its variant croca ("Gallice crosse," D.) brings crook into the same family ; but they are only distant relations.

uroceus also and crossulus are both rendered by Du Cange, " Fulcrum subalare in modum crucis superne effictum "; but the former is glossed " vulgo potence," the latter " vulgo crosse."

Thus the cross, crook, and crosier are all crooked in the head, all akin, but not to be identified one with the other. Croos (pronounced cros : it is spelt croce in 1380) came unquestionably not from the French croix, but from the French crosse, and was perhaps varied into crosier by assimilation to the Latin crocia.

The distinction between cross and crosier (or croos) is clearly shown in Du Cange's rendering of

'probably better informed afterwards, as I have letters from him about archiepiscopal crosses, and in them he certainly does not use the word crosier.
 * This was in his early years. Mr. Webb was

t Parker and Shipley use the word for a pastoral staff as well as for a cross,

crucifer and crocifer. Crucifer is " Qui crucem ante Papam," but crocifer is " Qui pedum seu crociam ante episcopum vel abbatem defert."

Also in the ' Pilgrimage of the Lyf of the Man- hode ' (c. 1430), Book I. ch. xcv., " He was tormented for sinneres, and on the crosse doon," answering to the French version of about the same date, en la croix mis ; and Book III. ch. vi., " Of bishopes croos he made his howwe [hoe] and his pikoyse. Pikoise was the sharpe ende, and howwe the krookede ende," corresponding to " Ola croce dun evesque dont il faisoit beche et houueste ; beche en estoit le bout aigu, et houueste le bout crossu " [houel (= mattock) and crochu, in the original poem, c. 1330].

I add a few instances of the use of the word and its like in the last five centuries :

1380. ' Piers Plowman.'" Dobest bere sholde the Bisshopes croce, and halye with the croked ende ille men to goode."

1440. ' Promptorium Parvulorum.' " Croce of a bysshope : Pedum."

1460. Capgrave, 'Chronicle.' "Came prelatis with here crosses and erases."

1525. Tyndale. " That shepherds hook the bishops croce."

1563. Bp. Pilkington." Because they have not the cruche and mitre as the old Bisshops had."

1576. Lambarde, ' Perambulation,' 223. "Not for the crosse (for that is the Archbishop's warre), but for the crosier of the Bishop of Rochester."

1593. ' Rites of Durham.' " A crosier or pastorall staffe in his lefte hande."

1660. Roger Coke, 'Elements.' "Bishopricks

were originally donative per traditionem baculi

(viz., the crosier) et annuli."

1704. Cocker calls both the archbishop's and the bishop's pastoral staff crosier, and so also in 1819 does Rees (' Cyclopaedia').

1789. Minute Book Soc. Antiq. " Holding his Pontifical cross in his left hand, the crosier only being appropriate to Bishops and Abbots."

1854. Ecclesiologist. "A crosier for the Bishop of Grahamstown."

So that I find but one instance in all that time (from 1380 to 1819), and that one not from the pen of an expert, of the use of the word crosier to denote a cross ; and therefore, until some proof is adduced to the contrary, I must maintain that the only proper meaning of the word is a pastoral staff, and that when it has been otherwise employed it has been through lack of examination and consideration.

HENRY H. GIBBS.

Aldenham, October 21, 1890.

P.S. F. G. L. has been misinformed as to the Archbishop of Canterbury's cross. I saw it at Truro, and remember well that it was a well-pro- portioned cross, having no crook nor any indication 3f one. Fearing that my memory might be in fault, I wrote to his Grace's chaplain to inquire, and he ully confirms what I say.

Sm, Will Dr. F. G. Lee either (1) produce any one quotation earlier than 1840 in which an arch- bishop's cross is called a "crosier," or (2) admit that tie is advocating a modern nomenclature solely on its own merits ? J. T. FOWLER.

Bishop Hatfield's Hall, Durham.

May I add a postscript to my long letter on this subject? It is called for by MR. PAGE'S acceptance of J)r. F. G- Lee's mistake.