A square cap with three ridges or peaks on its upper surface, worn by clerics of all grades from cardinals downwards. The use of such a cap is prescribed by the rubrics both at solemn Mass and in other ecclesiastical functions. Etymologically, the word biretta is Italian in origin and would more correctly be written beretta (cf. however the French barette and the Spanish bireta). It probably comes from birrus, a rough cloak with a hood, from the Greek pyrros, flame-coloured, and the birretum may originally have meant the hood. We hear of the birettum in the tenth century, but, like most other questions of costume, the history is extremely perplexed. The wearing of any head-covering, other than hood or cowl, on state occasions within doors seems to have originally been a distinction reserved for the privileged few. The constitutions of Cardinal Ottoboni issued by him for England in 1268 forbid the wearing of caps vulgarly called "coyphae" (cf. the coif of the serjeant-at-law) to clerics, except when on journey. In church and when in the presence of their superiors their heads are to remain uncovered. From the law the higher graduates of the universities were excepted, thus Giovanni d'Andrea, in his gloss on the Clementine Decretals, declares (c. 1320) that at Bologna the insignia of the Doctorate were the cathedra (chair) and the birettum.
At first the birettum was a kind of skull-cap with a small tuft, but it developed into a soft round cap easily indented by the fingers in putting it on and off, and it acquired in this way the rudimentary outline of its present three peaks. We may find such a cap delineated in many drawings of the fifteenth century, one of which, representing university dignitaries at the Council of Constance, who are described in the accompanying text as birrectati, is here reproduced. The same kind of cap is worn by the cardinals sitting in conclave and depicted in the same contemporary series of drawings, as also by preachers addressing the assembly. The privilege of wearing some such head-dress was extended in the course of the sixteenth century to the lower grades of the clergy, and after a while the chief distinction became one of colour, the cardinals always wearing red birettas, and bishops violet. The shape during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was everywhere considerably modified, and, though the question is very complicated, there seems no good reason to reject the identification, proposed by several modern writers, of the old doctor's birettum with the square college cap, popularly known as the "mortar-board", of the modern English universities. The college cap and ecclesiastical biretta have probably developed from the same original, but along different lines. Even at the present day birettas vary considerably in shape. Those worn by the French, German, and Spanish clergy as a rule have four peaks instead of three; while Roman custom prescribes that a cardinal's biretta should have no tassel. As regards usage in wearing the biretta, the reader must be referred for details to some of the works mentioned in the bibliography. It may be said in general that the biretta is worn in processions and when seated, as also when the priest is performing any act of jurisdiction, e.g. reconciling a convert. It was formerly the rule that a priest should always wear it in giving absolution in confession, and it is probable that the ancient usage which requires an English judge assume the "black cap" in pronouncing sentence of death is of identical origin.
BIRETTA (http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Biretta) (Ital. berretta, Med. Lat. biretum, birettum, dim. of birrus, " a hooded cloak"; from the Fr. form barrette is derived the Eng. "Barret-cap"), a cap worn by the Catholic clergy. It is square and stiff, being made of a framework of cardboard covered with cloth or silk; on the top, along the sutures of the stuff, are three or four raised, board-like, arched ridges, at the junction of which in the centre is a knob or tassel (floccus). Its colour varies with the rank of the wearer, that of the pope being white, of the cardinals red, of bishops purple, and of the lower clergy black. It is not in the strictest sense a liturgical head-dress, its use not being confined to liturgical functions. In these functions, moreover, its use is strictly limited; e.g. it is worn at low masses by the priest only when he goes to and from the altar, at high masses also when the celebrant sits during the singing of the Kyrie, Gloria and Creed, and at processions when these take place outside the church and are not sacramental, and so on.
Though the form of the biretta, devised in the 17th century, is peculiar to the Roman Church, it is but a variant of the original biretum, which developed in various countries into head-coverings of different shapes and significance. At the outset there was little to distinguish the biretum from the pileus or pileolus (skull-cap), a non-liturgical cap worn by dignitaries of the Church under the mitre and even under the biretta. When the word biretum first appears in the 13th century, it practically means no more than "cap," and is used as a synonym of pileus. As an ecclesiastical vestment the cap can be traced, under the name of pileus, to the 12th century; under that of infula, to the end of the ioth. It would seem to have been worn by the cantors as a protection against cold. The same utilitarian reason led to its introduction among the clergy generally. Thus in 1243 Pope Innocent IV. granted leave to the Benedictines of St. Augustine's at Canterbury, and to those of Winchester, to wear the pileus in choir. With the extension of its use, too, the custom grew up (c. 1300) of investing clerks with the biretum as the symbol of the transfer of a benefice, a custom which survives, in Roman Catholic countries, in the solemn delivery of the red biretta by the head of the state to newly created cardinals, who afterwards go to Rome to receive the red hat. This red biretta is called the zucchetto. This use of the biretum as a symbol of office or dignity was not confined to the clergy. With various modifications of form it was worn by all persons of standing, e.g. barons, judges, and doctors and masters of the universities. The biretum was also used in the investiture of laymen with office, e.g. a duke or the prefect of the city of Rome (Du Cange, Gloss. s.v. birretum). The "cap of maintenance" still borne before the English sovereign on state occasions is a barret-cap of the type of the 14th and 15th centuries; it symbolized the cherished feudal right of maintaining a personal armed following. By the i 6th century the barret-cap had become the common head-gear of all people of substance, men and women. It was flat, square or round, sometimes with edges that could be turned up or down according to convenience, and was often elaborately decorated. By the 17th century it had given place in ordinary civil life to the brimmed hat; but in various shapes it still survives as official head-gear in many European countries: the Barett, worn in church by the Lutheran clergy, in the courts by German lawyers, and by the deans and rectors of the universities, the barrette of French judges and barristers, the "black cap" of the English judge, and the "college cap" familiar in English and American universities, and vulgarly known as the "mortar-board." Meanwhile the ecclesiastical developments of the biretum are not without interest and significance. Originally this had been a round cap, low or moderately high, slightly bulging out at the top, and ornamented with a round knob. By the 16th century, both in England and on the continent, a tendency had begun to emphasize the ridges of the sutures and thus produce a square shape. Henceforth the evolution followed different lines. In England, in the 17th century, the square flat top began to be enlarged, forming a rim of thick stuff projecting beyond the close-fitting cap. This was the "square cap" so virulently denounced by the Puritans as a symbol of High Church Erastianism. With the triumph of High Church principles at the Restoration it was natural that a loyal clergy should desire to emphasize this squareness, and the consequent exaggeration of the square top of the cap necessitated a further stiffening. In the 18th century, accordingly, the top began to be made of a board of wood or card covered with cloth, the close-fitting cap proper retired farther from the edges, the knob developed into a long tassel, and the evolution of the modern "college cap" was complete (see fig. 1).
On the continent, meanwhile, in the Roman Catholic Church, the biretum had also developed into its present characteristic form, and by a very similar process. By the end a h - a of the 16th century the square shape was everywhere prevalent; at the beginning of the 17th century cardboard was introduced to stiffen the sides and emphasize the squareness, and the actual form of the biretta, as described above, had be come fixed (see fig. 2). Only in Spain has the biretta continued to be worn without the raised ridges.
The use of the Roman biretta has been introduced by a certain number of the clergy into the Anglican Church. It is clear that there is no historical justification for this; for though both college cap and biretta are developed from the same "square cap," the biretta in its actual shape is strictly associated with the postReformation Roman Church, and its actual ceremonial use is of late growth. Braun (Liturgische Gewandung, p. 513) thinks that the symbolism of the cross may have had some influence in fixing and propagating the square shape, and he quotes a decree of the synod of Aix (1585) ordering the J g h clergy to wear a biretta sewn in the form of a cross (biretum in modum crucis consuturn, ut ecclesiasticos homines decet). So far as the legality of the use of the biretta in the Church of England is concerned, this was pronounced by Sir R. Phillimore in the Court of Arches (Elphinstone v. Purchas, 1870) to be legal "as a protection to the head when needed," but this decision was reversed on appeal by the judicial committee of the privy council (Hebbert v. Purchas, 1871). Of late years the old square cap of soft padded cloth or velvet has been revived in the Anglican Church by some dignitaries.
See J. Braun, S.J., Die liturgische Gewandung (Freiburg-i-B., 1907); Hierurgica Anglicana, part ii. (London, 1903); H. Druitt, Costume on Brasses (London, 1906). (W. A. P.)