FANONE. - In its present form it is an ornament proper to the Supreme Pontiff alone, which he assumes when he celebrates solemnly, after the canonical hour of terce. It consists of a double mozzetta of the finest silk and gold, woven in perpendicular stripes, one white, the other gold, joined to each other by a third, smaller one of amaranth color: a small gold braid borders its upper and lower edge; the outer mozzetta furthermore has embroidered on it a gold cross with rays. These two mozzette are sewn together in the part that surrounds the neck, being fastened with a button at the openings corresponding to the shoulders; now no longer, because Pius X, for convenience, had them separated. In pontifical Masses, when the pope has taken the succinctorium and the pectoral cross, the ministering cardinal deacon imposes on him the first mozzetta of the f., then the stole, the dalmatic, the chasuble, and over it the second mozzetta: lastly the pallium.
It is very difficult to trace the origins of this ornament. Perhaps confused at first with the maniple, or with the amice (anabolagium), or with the oralia, a kind of handkerchiefs or napkins, which served to wipe the sweat from the head and were therefore worn around the neck, it passed into its present form around the 13th century. Previously it served to cover the head in the manner of a hood, and the mitre was placed over it. It was used not only in the functions liturgical, but also on profane occasions, as at solemn banquets, in the distribution of the presbytery. In an old missal, whose date is unknown, of the church of St. Damian in Assisi it is said that the pope places the f. on his head without the mitre for the washing of the feet on Holy Thursday; and that on Good Friday he does not use the f. Peter Amelio, sacristan of Urban V in 1562, in his Cerinoniolo romano says that the pope ate in public with the red mantle and with the f. or orale on his head under the mitre. Of Boniface VIII we know that he wore the f. under the mitre, and that he was buried with it; the same may be said of Clement IV, who died in 1268. Innocent III (in De mysteriis Missae, l. I, ch. 13) speaks explicitly of this ornament, which he calls orale: we are therefore at the beginning of the 13th century. Some authors would like to see the f. in the figure carved on the bronze door in the chapel of St. John the Evangelist at the Lateran, representing Celestine III.
Various authors hold that the custom of the Greek bishops of covering their heads with a veil, when they have assumed the principal ornaments, gave origin to the pope's f.; but this is uncertain. Others, on the other hand, and with them Innocent III himself, intend to derive the f. from the ephod of the Jewish high priest, also woven of strips of gold and colonate, but of a different form.
With this word there was formerly designated a veil hanging from a pole like a banner, called precisely gonfalon, standard, ensign; or, according to ecclesiastical etymology, the veil hanging from the arm of the sacred ministers, called maniple, sudarium, orale.
Enrico Dante