STANDARD (Signum, Vexillum; vessillo, gonfalone). - In ecclesiastical usage, mentioned in the Roman Ritual (tit. X, ch. 1, no. 5), they are banners in which the cloth hangs from a horizontal crossbar attached to the vertical pole, which is surmounted by a cross.
(Int. Alimari)
The cloth is adorned with painted or embroidered holy images ("sacris imaginibus insignitum," Rit. Rom.), sometimes only with modest ecclesiastical ornaments bordered and fringed; those of military or triangular shape are excluded. As for the fabric (silk, linen, velvet), color and ornament, there are no binding prescriptions: they are blessed (Rit. Rom., tit. IX, ch. 8, no. 3) and are used in the Church as ornaments, especially in processions; they follow the processional Cross ("Praeferatur Crux, et ubi viget consuetudo, vexillum"; Rit. Rom.).
They originate from the processional Cross, carried on a vertical pole to which an ornamental cloth was attached. They were not in use in the first millennium; they appear for the first time in a miniature of the Troparium of the Abbey of Prüm from the late 10th century (Paris, Bibl. nat. lat., 9448), as an ornament of the altar, and in a fresco of St. Clement in Rome from the 11th century in a solemn procession of the translation of holy relics. They are then mentioned many times by liturgists, and medieval ecclesiastical inventories enumerate many of them; every confraternity had its own standard, often richly adorned with painting or embroidery. The standard is the symbol of the triumph of the Lord (Honorius, Gemma animae, I, 72; Durandus, Rationale, bk. VI, ch. 102); Christ descended into limbo or risen is represented with the standard in hand; likewise the Lamb of the Apocalypse. The standard is also the emblem of the Church triumphant, and of the virtues of hope and fortitude.
Bibliography
Pietro Siffrin