What is the origin of the bishop's mitre?

Answer 1

In around the year 300, the Roman Catholic church was trying to get pagans to join the Catholic Church and become Catholics. One thing they did to try to make this happen was that they took some pagan traditions and tried to "Christianize" them by making them a part of the Roman Catholic religion and associating them with Christian "saints" instead of pagan gods. There was a pagan god worshipped at that time whose name was Dagon. His symbol was a hat shaped like a fish's mouth with a long piece of cloth that draped down over the back of the wearer, which was painted or embroidered to look like the body of a fish. You can see pictures relating to all of this in the Related Links section below. The Roman Catholic church made this hat a part of the attire of their bishops. At first, they even kept the spots on either side of the "fish head" which represented the fish's eyes. This design has been modified down through the ages and now only subtily resembles the fish head.