Investiture with Rings

The estates and honors which composed the ecclesiastical temporalities were considered to partake of the nature of fiefs; and, therefore, to require similar investiture from the chief lord. Charlemagne is said to have introduced this practice and to have invested a newly consecrated bishop by placing a ring and crosier in his hands.

By a Concordat at Worms, Henry V. resigned for ever all pretence to invest bishops by the ring and crosier.

During the times of the early British kings, it was a rule for the monarch to invest archbishops and bishops, by delivery of a ring and the pastoral staff. Anselm was hurried into the presence of William Rufus, in order to be made Archbishop of Canterbury. He hesitated, because he was subject to Normandy, and the way in which the holy men around him acted, savors very much of a portion of the hurly-burly of a popular democratic election. When no argument could prevail, the bishops and others who were present clapped the pastoral staff into his hands, forced the ring upon his finger, shouted for his election and bore him by force into the church, where Te Deum was sung. This right of investiture became a serious matter of dispute in the time of Anselm.

Miracles have been attributed to Anselm. A Flemish nobleman was cured of a leprosy by drinking the water in which Auselm had washed his hands; and a ship, wherein he sailed, having a large hole in one of her planks, nevertheless took in no water so long as the holy man was on board.

From the reign of Charlemagne, sovereign princes took upon them to give the investiture of the greater benefices by the ring and pastoral staff. Gregory VII. was the first who endeavored to take from them this right, towards the end of the eleventh century.

Arnulph, immediately on his consecration as Bishop of Rochester, gave the attendant monks to understand how a dream about a ring had foretold this dignity. "Arnulph being received by the monks with all marks of respect, said to us, on the very day of his election: 'Brethren, I had assurance given me a few days ago that, unworthy as I am, I should soon be raised to the dignity now conferred upon me. For as I slept one night, Gundulphus' (who had been Bishop of Rochester) 'appeared to me, offering me a ring of great weight; which being too heavy for me, I refused to accept it but he, chiding me for my stupidity in rejecting his present, obliged me to receive it, and then disappeared.'This he related to us; and we were convinced it was no fantastical illusion which the holy man had seen in his sleep, since, being made Bishop of Rochester, he received that very ring, which Bishop Gundulphus, when alive, had given to Ralph, then an abbot, but afterwards bishop."

Symbols of ring, staff, mitre and gloves are not used at the present day in the consecration of archbishops and bishops of the Church of England. The delivery of the pastoral staff in the Roman pontificate was preceded by its consecration, and followed by the consecration and putting on of a ring in token of his marriage to the church; and of a mitre, as an helmet of strength and salvation, that his face being adorned, and his head (as it were) armed with the horns of both Testaments, may appear terrible to the adversaries of the truth, as also in imitation of the ornaments of Moses and Aaron; and of gloves, in token of clean hands and breast to be preserved by him.

The episcopal ring, and which is thus esteemed a pledge of the spiritual marriage between the bishop and his church, was used at a remote period. The fourth Council of Toledo, held in 633, appoints that a bishop condemned by one council and found afterwards innocent by a second should be restored by giving him the ring, staff, etc.

From bishops, the custom of the ring has passed to cardinals, who are to pay a large sum for the right to use a ring as such. Perhaps this arises from the fact that cardinals and prelates do not, strictly, belong to the hierarchy.

A bishop, like a pope, receives a gold ring, set with a green gem. Sometimes an abbot of a convent is invested with a ring, but this is said only to occur when he possesses a bishop's powers.

Solid gold rings are frequently found in tombs of abbots and bishops.

In a description of the finger-ring found in the grave of the venerable Bede, it is said, that no priest, during the reign of Catholicity in England, was buried or enshrined without his ring. This, however, has been questioned.