Bonds of Wool:
The Pallium and Papal Power in the Middle Ages

by steven a. schoenig, s.j.
catholic university of america, 544 pages, $75

Each year on the Feast of St. Agnes, a curious ritual takes place in Rome: Two young lambs are brought to the Church of St. Agnes Outside the Walls, where they are adorned with garland crowns, placed in decorated baskets, and carried to the Vatican to be blessed by the pope. These lambs are later shorn to provide the wool used to make the pallia, slender bands of fabric given by the pope to metropolitan archbishops as a sign of their office. This tradition raises a provocative question: How do the archbishops who receive the pallia resemble the lambs whose wool they wear?

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