The Imperial Purple of Rome
Purple is now made synthetically, but the original source was a gastropod, Murex brandaris, which has a shell with many spines and a gland secreting a purple dye. This was extremely expensive, so the use of purple carried enormous prestige. It was used during antiquity to symbolise high rank.
The best known use of purple as a symbol is the Imperial purple of Rome. It has been imitated by kings and rulers ever since, and they have used purple as a symbol of their majesty. But few people know that the tradition of The Imperial purple of Rome is still alive in an essentially unbroken succession!
I view a field of blood
And Tiber rotting with purple flood
(Dryden)
Purple is part of the colours of the Pope, the sovereign pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. This is no mere coincidence, and it is no imitation of the imperial custom. To understand this, we may have to take a look at history. First we must remember that one of the major titles of the Pope (in Latin) is "Pontifex Maximus". This has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity as such. So let us see what it really is.
In ancient Rome, Pontifex was the title of a member of the Supreme College of priests, the so called Pontifical College, which controlled, regulated and administered the Roman religion, along with branches of the laws, calendars, and some other matters. The college received its first formal recognition in 300 B.C. (lex Ogulnia), but it had been well-established long before that.
The High Priest of the Roman religion, the head of the college, was called "Pontifex Maximus". This was one of the most important offices of Rome, and in early days it might very well have been the most important. Since Augustus in 12 B.C. became Pontifex Maximus, the office was a part of the imperial authority and office, until Gratian in 379 A.D. rejected it.
This period was chaotic. Rome was divided, Christianity had won, but everything was still shaky and there were many conflicts. The bishop of Rome was now the head of the new Roman religion. The pontificate belonged to him, he was the Pontifex.
Later the Popes used their prerogative as the spiritual sovereign of "Rome" when they created The Holy Roman Empire, later called The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, symbolically manifested in their crowning of the emperors (initially taking place in Rome).
Essentially this empire began when the pope crowned Charlemagne to Imperator Augustus in 800, and came to an end in 1806, when Napoleon I dissolved it.
Yet, the pope's sovereignty as the head of the Roman religion is still intact today. He carries the Imperial purple in that very capacity, as Pontifex Maximus.
Since Constantinople was once the capital of the Roman Empire, and later of the Eastern part of it, would its patriarch have the same successional right as the pope to the spiritual sovereignty of the Roman Empire?
There would be some logic in that, but to my knowledge, the title Pontifex Maximus had no significance in the East after the triumph of Christianity. The purple, however, is part of the patriarchal garments - just as it was an important part of Byzantine symbolism. Byzantine princes-of-the-blood where born in the purple chamber, a room decorated with porphyry; hence they got the appellation "Porphyrogennetos", or "Porphyrogenitus", the purple-born. To be "born in the purple" gave precedence to the throne.
The Roman Empire was officially divided in 395 A.D., and the Western Empire collapsed in the year 476 A.D., when the emperor (of the West), Romulus Augustulus was deposed. It later continued as the Holy Roman Empire, as outlined above.
The Eastern Empire, which had had its own emperor since 395 A.D., survived in what later came to be called the Byzantine Empire, which lasted until 1453 A.D., when it succumbed to the Ottoman Turks.
When the Christian church was formally divided in 1054 A.D. (when the pope, Leo IX, and the patriarch, Michael Kerularios, excommunicated each other), the Constantinopolitanean patriarch, no doubt, held the spiritual sovereignty of the Byzantine Empire and continues to do so to this day, even though the Byzantine Empire does not exist any longer. It might be possible to derive a spiritual sovereignty of the Roman Empire from that, but it is quite far-fetched, especially compared to the pope's much stronger claims in that respect.
But what about the purple of the pope, the real imperial purple still used in unbroken succession; is it genuine?
No. What the pope and the cardinals use is not a colour made of shellfish; since 1464 they use cochineal instead. That is an insect providing the colour carmine.
Purple Before the Romans
We began this overview with the Imperial purple of Rome, but were the Romans first? No, in no way. It was called Tyrian purple, because the Phoenicians of Tyre would have been the first to produce and use it. Yet it is possible that it is older than that; there are indications of that the Minoans of Crete had it even earlier. Since the Minoan culture was in many ways an offspring of ancient Egypt, the question arises whether purple was used there too. There is no indication of that it was used in Egypt before the Ptolemaic dynasty (305-30 BC); I think we can dismiss Egypt as the origin of purple.
Mythologically, the discovery of purple has been attributed to Herakles, whose dog should have got his mouth purple-coloured by eating "snails". This story was related by Julius Pollux in Onomasticon, written some time during the 2nd century AD. It is a late mythologisation without known support in older sources. [The emperor during Julius Pollux' time was Commodus, who identified himself strongly with Herakles. I think anyone can guess what that might imply.]
Another culture deriving much from Egypt, is the Hebrew one. They produced an indigo-like colour called "tekhelet" [Hebrew: תכלת ] from a sea snail relate to Murex brandaris (from which purple was made). Tekhelet was used in ritual garments.
One idea is to base a colour system on the tabernacle and its colours: blue, purple, red, white. They relate to the four elements: air, fire, water, earth. Black and green are added too, standing for "total negation" and "non-perfection".
These four; blue, purple, red, white; can be followed from the Hebrews into Christianity, and its art as far ahead as the Renaissance. Joannes Richter identifies "purple" as a pair: the red being a woman, the blue a man, interwoven they would make purple. (Joannes Richter; Another Etymology for Purple, 2010.) He relates how icons were painted mainly in red and blue, and how Medieval art used mainly these three colours. This would, he suggests, with good justification, be derived from Exodus 39, whose five first verses I quote from the Jewish Tanach (also part of the Bible), Jewish Publication translation, 1917:
1. And of the blue, and purple, and scarlet, they made plaited garments, for ministering in the holy place, and made the holy garments for Aaron, as the Lord commanded Moses.
2. And he made the ephod of gold, blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen.
3. And they did beat the gold into thin plates, and cut it into threads, to work it in the blue, and in the purple, and in the scarlet, and in the fine linen, the work of the skilful workman.
4. They made shoulder pieces for it, joined together; at the two ends was it joined together.
5. And the skilfully woven band, that was upon it, wherewith to gird it on, was of the same piece and like the work thereof: of gold, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, as the Lord commanded Moses.
Twined linen was interpreted as white, which some translators of the Bible actually wrote.
Richter takes this even further and interprets purple as androgynous, as being mixed red and blue - even the androgynous Adam, before he was divided into a male and a female being - or a creator god. Ultimately, he also sees it as symbolic for a married couple.
He also wants to prove that purple was known before the later so expensive pigment was used to produce it - but that it was obtained by weaving thin threads of red and blue together. His proof consists in garments of a Celtic king from about 530 BC.
Richter's thoughts are a bit off the mainstream, but they are interesting and well worthy of serious consideration.
Whatever its origin, purple is a colour retaining great power over imagination - a symbol with a life of its own.
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Very interesting... I knew the meaning of that purple color and why emperors and popes only could use it but I didn't know about the previous uses and origin. Curiously again my first article here on Read.cash was called "The fifth element" and I mention the four elements too.