"Vicarius Filii Dei" Myth
Some Protestant groups, particularly associated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, claimed that Vicarius Filii Dei', "representative of the Son of God", is spelt out in jewels on the 1877 tiara. "Vicarius Filii Dei" is a title mentioned as a papal title in the forged mediaeval Donation of Constantine. Some Protestant groups claim it is a real papal title, a claim dismissed by the Roman Catholic Church as an "anti-Catholic myth".
All photographs of the tiara, including close-up photographs taken from all sides at the coronation of Pius XII in 1939 show that it actually contains no writing. None of the existing tiaras in the collection, the oldest of which is from the 16th century, contains the words Vicarius Filii Dei.
Read more about this topic: Palatine Tiara
Famous quotes containing the word myth:
“That, of course, was the thing about the fifties with all their patina of familial bliss: A lot of the memories were not happy, not mine, not my friends’. That’s probably why the myth so endures, because of the dissonance in our lives between what actually went on at home and what went on up there on those TV screens where we were allegedly seeing ourselves reflected back.”
—Anne Taylor Fleming (20th century)