Galero

The Hat, Its Ceremony and Its Suspension Over Tombs

The galero is defined by scale and by tassels: a large, broad-brimmed hat worn by clergy in the Roman Catholic Church, with tassels as part of its form. Over the centuries its use narrowed. What clergy more generally had worn became eventually limited to individual cardinals, as a crown symbolising the title Prince of the Church, and the bestowal was ceremonial: when creating a cardinal, the Pope would crown the candidate with a scarlet galero in consistory. That use ended in 1969, when a papal decree following the Second Vatican Council ended the use of the galero as an act of humbling the Church hierarchy, on the reasoning that by removing such elaborate regalia, the people could better identify with their pastoral leaders. Today, only the scarlet zucchetto and biretta are placed over the heads of cardinals in consistory. The hat itself did not disappear entirely. Some cardinals continue to obtain galeros privately so that the ceremony of its suspension over their tombs may be observed. In that ceremony the galero is hung over the congregants of a cathedral, where it remains until it is reduced to dust, symbolising how all earthly glory is passing. Three cathedral churches in the United States hang the galeros of past cardinals on their ceilings: Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, Illinois, the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis in Saint Louis, Missouri, and the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C.

The Galero in Ecclesiastical Heraldry

The galero's continuing life is heraldic. The galero, or ecclesiastical hat, is still in use today in ecclesiastical heraldry as part of the achievement of the coat of arms of an armigerous Roman Catholic cleric, where it replaces the helmet and crest because those were considered too warlike for the clerical state. Within that system, colour and tassel count form a precise code of rank. A bishop's galero is green with six tassels. An archbishop's galero is also green but has ten tassels. Both patriarchs and cardinals have a galero with fifteen tassels, but the patriarch's is green while the cardinal's is red or scarlet. Even a priest uses the galero in his arms, but uses a simple black hat with two tassels, and priests who hold additional offices, such as vicar general or abbot, or additional honours such as Chaplain of His Holiness, gain additional tassels and different coloured hats. Popes do not use a galero in their personal arms; the Papal Tiara and Keys of Saint Peter are used instead. The tassels themselves are sometimes termed houppes or fiocci. Depiction allows the artist some freedom: typically the top of the hat is flat and the brim is very wide, but the brim can also be rendered much narrower and the top domed, and such variants can look like a cappello romano with tassels while in heraldry still counting as a galero.

Read together, the galero's two surviving settings make a matched pair. Over a cardinal's tomb, the physical hat hangs until it is reduced to dust, a statement about earthly glory passing. In a coat of arms, the drawn hat does the opposite work, recording rank permanently through a settled code of colour and tassels — green for bishops and archbishops at six and ten tassels, fifteen tassels for patriarchs in green and cardinals in red or scarlet, black with two tassels for a priest. The same broad brim and tassels serve both messages, which is why the galero remains worth defining carefully long after its ceremonial use ended in 1969: it is at once a former piece of clerical dress, a tomb memorial still observed by some cardinals, and a living heraldic device whose details can be read at a glance by anyone who knows the code.