RATIONAL (LITURGY). - I. A liturgical ornament, used in the Middle Ages, called superhumerale, Logion, which was worn by bishops over the chasuble at Mass, like a pallium but without the meaning that the latter had.
The bishops of Halberstadt received this privilege
(from J. Braun, Die liturgische Gesandung. Freiburg 1867, fig. 211) RATIONAL - 16th-century embroidered R. - Munich, National Museum.
from Pope Agapitus II (946-55); Adalbero II, bishop of Metz (984-1005), obtained it from Hilduard of Halberstadt; Poppo, patriarch of Aquileia, wore it by concession of Pope John XIX in 1027; in the Middle Ages it was worn by several other German bishops: the bishops of Minden, Paderborn, Naumburg, Eichstätt, Würzburg, Regensburg, Speyer, Prague, Olmütz, Kraków, Liège, Toul. Today it is used only by the bishops of Paderborn and Eichstätt in Germany, of Toul and Nancy in France, of Kraków in Poland, episcopal sees belonging to the German Empire. In Rome it was never in use. J. Braun distinguishes 3 types: a) one in the shape of the Y-shaped pallium, used in Eichstätt, Regensburg and Würzburg, until the 17th century; b) one in the shape of the circular pallium, which instead of one appendage had two short ones at the two sides of the breast and on the back (used in Kraków, in Toul and also in Eichstätt and Regensburg); c) a collar of rectangular cloth, as wide as the shoulders, hanging down over the breast and the back for about 20 cm., with two longer bands on either side, used in the Middle Ages in Bamberg and Liège. Unlike the pallium, the r. was always very ornate with embroideries or with symbolic inscriptions, and of a purple color.
II. A variant of the r. was a silver or gold plaque (in place of the cloth one) of the type of the ephod of the Jewish high priest (Ex. 28, 2-4), with little chains or clasps, attached to the amice, mentioned in the 12th century by Ivo of Chartres and Honorius; Sicard of Cremona (v.) also lists it among the pontifical ornaments; in use at Reims (still at the beginning of the 16th century), at Münster and at Mainz. It did not have much diffusion. The origin of the r. is explained as an imitation of the Jewish ephod, or as a substitute for the pallium for non-metropolitan bishops (Braun). Because it is a distinction of the see, and not of the person, it is not placed in the tomb together with the bishop.
Bibliography4 works
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