Ecclesiastical heraldry is the tradition of heraldry developed by Christian clergy. Initially used to mark documents, ecclesiastical heraldry evolved as a system for identifying people and dioceses. It is most formalized within the Roman Catholic Church, where most bishops, including the Pope, have a personal coat of arms. Similar customs are followed by clergy in the Anglican Church, the Lutheran Church, the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches, and the Orthodox Churches. Institutions such as schools and dioceses bear arms called impersonal or corporate arms. Ecclesiastical heraldry differs notably from other heraldry in the use of special symbols around the shield to indicate rank in a church or denomination. The most prominent of these symbols is the ecclesiastical hat, commonly the Roman galero or Geneva bonnet. The color and ornamentation of this hat carry a precise meaning. Cardinals are famous for the "red hat", but other offices are assigned a distinctive hat color. The hat is ornamented with tassels in a quantity commensurate with the office. Other symbols include the cross, the mitre and the crozier. Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastical_heraldry _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1859: Constantin von Tischendorf found the Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th-century uncial manuscript of the New Testament, in a monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Sinaiticus) 1862: Bacardi, one of the world's largest rum producers, was founded as a small distillery in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacardi) 1899: The Philippine-American War broke out. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine-American_War) 1945: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin met at the Yalta Conference. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference) 1957: USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, logged her 60,000th nautical mile, matching the endurance of the fictional Nautilus described in Jules Verne's novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nautilus_(SSN-571)) _____________________ Wikiquote of the day: Men weren't really the enemy — they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill. -- Betty Friedan (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Betty_Friedan)