a word often mentioned in our old historians. Durandus tells us, that it is a garment made of white wool, after the following manner, viz. The nuns of St Agnes, every year, on the feast day of their saint, offer two white lambs on the altar of their church, during the time they sing Agnus Dei, in a solemn mass; which lambs are afterwards taken by two of the canons of the Lateran church, and by them given to the Pope's subdeacons, who send them to pasture till shearing time, and then they are shorn, and the pall is made of their wool mixed with other white wool. The pall being thus made, is carried to the Lateran church, and there placed on the high altar, by the deacons of that church, on the bodies of St Peter and St Paul; and after an usual watching, it is carried away in the night, and delivered to the subdeacons, who lay it up safe. And because it was taken from the body of St Peter, it signifies the plenitude of ecclesiastical power; and therefore it was the prerogative of popes, who pretend to be the immediate successors of that saint, to invest other prelates with it; which at first was done nowhere but at Rome, though afterwards at other places.

in antiquity, an upper garment or mantle worn by the Greeks, as the toga was by the Romans. Each of these were so peculiar to the respective nations, that Pallatus is used to signify a Greek, and Togatus a Roman.