Tertullian

ON FEMALE DRESS* Book I Chapter 1 [In this section Tertullian introduces his central theme: that Christian women should dress modestly in memory o f the introduction o f sin into the world through a woman, Eve. According to Tertullian, those objects which serve to glamorize a wom ans body would have been coveted by Eve; i f the women he addresses are to renounce this heritage, they must renounce these objects as well.] If there dwelt upon earth a faith as great as is the reward of faith which is expected in the heavens, no one of you at all, best beloved sisters, from the time that she had first ‘known the Lord’, and learned the truth concerning her own (that is, woman’s) condition, would have desired too gladsome (not to say too osten­tatious) a style of dress; so as not rather to go about in humble garb, and rather to affect meanness of appearance, walking about as Eve mourning and repentant, in order that by every garb of penitence she might the more fully expiate that which she derives from Eve - the ignominy, I mean, of the first sin, and the odium attaching to her as the cause of human perdition. ‘In pains and in anxieties dost thou bear children, woman; and toward thine husband is thy inclination, and he lords it over thee.’ And do you not know that you are each an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert - that is, death - even the Son of God had to die. And do you think about adorning yourself over and above your tunics of skins? Come, now; if from the beginning of the world the Milesians sheared sheep, and the Serians1 spun trees, and the

Tyrians dyed, and the Phrygians embroidered with the needle, and the Babylonians with the loom, and pearls gleamed, and onyx-stones flashed; if gold itself also had already issued, with the cupidity2 which accompanies it, from the ground; if the mirror, too, already had licence to lie so largely, Eve, expelled from paradise, Eve already dead, would also have coveted these things, I imagine! No more, then, ought she now to crave, or be acquainted with (if she desires to live again), what, when she was living, she had neither had nor known. Accordingly these things are all the baggage of woman in her condemned and dead state, instituted as if to swell the pomp of her funeral. Chapter 2 [In this section, Tertullian traces the origin o f female ornamentation back to the fallen angels, who he appears to conflate with the strange passage in Genesis 6 which describes the race of giants born from the couplings o f angels with some human women. According to Tertullian, it is these fallen angels who taught women to beautify their bodies.] For they, withal, who instituted them are assigned, under con­demnation, to the penalty of death - those angels, to wit, who rushed from heaven on the daughters of men; so that this igno­miny also attaches to woman. For when to an age much more ignorant than ours they had disclosed certain well-concealed material substances, and several not well revealed scientific arts - if it is true that they had laid bare the operations of metallurgy, and had divulged the natural properties of herbs, and had prom ­ulgated the powers of enchantments, and had traced out every curious art, even to the interpretation of the stars - they con­ferred properly and as it were peculiarly upon women that instrumental mean of womanly ostentation, the radiances of jewels wherewith necklaces are variegated, and the circlets of gold wherewith the arms are compressed, and the medicaments of orchil3 with which wools are coloured, and that black powder itself where with the eyelids and eyelashes are made prominent. What is the quality of these things may be declared meantime, even at this point, from the quality and condition of their teach­ers; in that sinners could never have either shown or supplied anything conducive to integrity, unlawful lovers anything condu­cive to chastity, renegade spirits anything conducive to the fear of God. If these things are to be called teachings, ill masters must of necessity have taught ill; if as wages o f lust, there is nothing base

of which the wages are honourable. But why was it of so much importance to show these things as well as to confer them? Was it that women, without material causes of splendour, and without ingenious contrivances of grace, could not please men, who, while still unadorned, and uncouth, and - so to say - crude and rude, had moved the mind of angels? Or was it that the lovers would appear sordid and - through gratuitous use - contumelious, if they had conferred no compensating gift on the women who had been enticed into connubial connection with them? But these questions admit of no calculation. Women who possessed angels as husbands could desire nothing more; they had, forsooth, made a grand match! Assuredly they who, of course, did some­times think whence they had fallen, and, after the heated impulses of their lusts, looked up toward heaven, thus requited that very excellence of women, natural beauty, as having proved a cause of evil, in order that their good fortune might profit them nothing; but that, being turned from simplicity and sincerity, they, together with the angels themselves, might become offen­sive to God. Sure they were that all ostentation, and ambition, and love of pleasing by carnal means, was displeasing to God. And these are the angels whom we are destined to judge: these are the angels whom in baptism we renounce: these, of course, are the reasons why they have deserved to be judged by man. What business, then, have their things with their judges? What com­merce have they who are to condemn with them who are to be condemned? The same, I take it, as Christ has with Belial.4 With what consistency do we m ount that future judgm ent-seat to pro­nounce sentence against those whose gifts we now seek after? For you too, women as you are, have the self-same angelic nature promised as your reward, the self-same sex as men: the self-same advancement to the dignity of judging, does the Lord promise you. Unless, then, we begin even here to prejudge, by pre­condemning their things, which we are hereafter to condemn in themselves, they will rather judge and condemn us. Chapter 4 [In this section, Tertullian equates female ornamentation with ambition and prostitution. These attitudes and activities are radically opposed to the qualities a Christian woman should foster - namely humility and chastity.] . . . Female habit carries with it a twofold idea - dress and orna­ment. By ‘dress’ we mean what they call ‘womanly gracing’; by

‘ornam ent’, what is suitable should be called ‘womanly disgrac­ing’. The former is accounted to consist in gold, and silver, and gems, and garments; the latter in care of the hair, and of the skin, and of those parts of the body which attract the eye. Against the one we lay the charge of ambition, against the other of prostitu­tion; so that even from this early stage of our discussion you may look forward and see what, out of all these, is suitable, handmaid of God, to your discipline, inasmuch as you are assessed on differ­ent principles from other women - those, namely, of humility and chastity. Book II Chapter 1 [Here, Tertullian argues that it is not enough to avoid actual sexual impropriety. There is no defence in saying that one’s conduct has been correct, i f one dresses as a woman o f ill-repute! Moreover, it is important not to incite carnal lust in others. Woman is thus described as responsible fo r the reactions o f others.] Handmaids of the living God, my fellow-servants and sisters, the right which I enjoy with you - I, the most meanest in that right of fellow-servantship and brotherhood - emboldens me to address to you a discourse, not, of course, of affection, but paving the way for affection in the cause of your salvation. That salvation-and not the salvation of women only, but likewise of men - consists in the exhibition principally of modesty. For since, by the introduction into and appropriation in us of the Holy Spirit, we are all ‘the temple of God’, Modesty is the sacristan^5 and priestess of that temple, who is to suffer nothing unclean or profane to be introduced into it, for fear that the God who inhabits it should be offended, and quite forsake the polluted abode. But on the present occasion we are to speak not about modesty, for the enjoining and exacting of which the divine precepts which press upon us on every side are sufficient; but about the matters which pertain to it, that is, the m anner in which it behoves you to walk. For most women (which very thing I trust God may permit me, with a view, of course, to my own personal censure, to censure in all), either from simple ignorance or else from dissimulation, have the hardihood so to walk as if modesty consisted only in the bare integrity of the flesh, and in turning away from actual fornication; and there were no need for anything extrinsic to boot - in the matter

(I mean) of the arrangem ent of dress and ornament, the studied graces of form and brilliance - wearing in their gait the self-same appearance as the women of the nations, from whom the sense of true modesty is absent, because in those who know not God, the Guardian and Master of truth, there is nothing true. For if any modesty can be believed to exist in Gentiles, it is plain that it must be imperfect and undisciplined to such a degree that, although it be actively tenacious of itself in the mind up to a certain point, it yet allows itself to relax into licentious ex­travagances of attire; just in accordance with Gentile perversity, in craving after that of which it carefully shuns the effect. How many a one, in short, is there who does not earnestly desire even to look pleasing to strangers? Who does not on that very account take care to have herself painted out, and denies that she has ever been an object of carnal appetite? And yet, granting that even this is a practice familiar to Gentile modesty - namely, not actually to commit the sin, but still to be willing to do so; or even not to be willing, yet still not quite to refuse - what wonder? For all things which are not God’s are perverse. Let those women therefore look to it, who, by not holding fast the whole good, easily mingle with evil even what they do hold fast. Necessary it is that you turn aside from them, as in all other things, so also in your gait; since you ought to be ‘perfect, as is your Father who is in the heavens’. Chapter 2 [Tertullian continues the theme o f the previous chapter. It is important that a Christian woman refrains from dressing in a manner which will incite lust in others. She must abstain not only from sin, but from leading others into temptation. This leads Tertullian not only to the rejection o f those things which beautify women artificially; he argues that even natural beauty’ must be concealed in order that others (that is, m en) are not led astray.] You must know that in the eye of perfect, that is, Christian, modesty, carnal desire of one’s self on the part of others is not only not to be desired, but even execrated, but you: first, because the study of making personal grace (which we know to be natu­rally the inviter of lust) a mean of pleasing does not spring from a sound conscience: why therefore excite toward yourself that evil passion? Why invite that to which you profess yourself a stranger? Secondly, because we ought not to open a way

to temptations, which, by their instancy, sometimes achieve a wickedness which God expels from them who are His; or, at all events, put the spirit into a thorough tum ult by presenting a stumbling block to it. . . .. . . Since, therefore, both our own interest and that of others is implicated in the studious pursuit of most perilous outward comeliness, it is time for you to know that not merely must the pageantry of fictitious and elaborate beauty be rejected by you; but that of even natural grace must be obliterated by concealment and negligence, as equally dangerous to the glances of the beholder’s eyes. . . . Chapter 5 [Tertullian develops his theme by outlining the theological implications o f those actions which some women undertake to beautify themselves. He argues that such steps suggest a dissatisfaction with that which God ( ‘the Divine Artificer) has given us. Indeed, he argues that trying to perfect the work o f God is an outrageous act o f rebellion which puts one in league with the devil.] These suggestions are not made to you, of course, to be devel­oped into an entire crudity and wildness of appearance; nor are we seeking to persuade you of the good of squalor and slovenli­ness; but of the limit and norm and just measure of cultivation of the person. There must be no overstepping of that line to which simple and sufficient refinements limit their desires - that line which is pleasing to God. For they who rub their skin with medicaments, stain their cheeks with rouge, make their eyes prom inent with antimony, sin against Him. To them, I suppose, the plastic skill of God is displeasing! In their own persons, I suppose, they convict, they censure, the Artificer of all things! For censure they do when they amend, when they add to, His work; taking these their additions, of course, from the adversary artifi­cer. That adversary artificer is the devil. For who would show the way to change the body, but he who by wickedness transfigured m an’s spirit? He it is, undoubtedly, who adapted ingenious devices of this kind; that in your own persons it may be apparent that you do, in a certain sense, do violence to God. Whatever is born is the work of God. Whatever, then, is plastered on that, is the devil’s work. To super induce on a divine work Satan’s ingenuities, how criminal is it! O ur servants borrow nothing from our personal enemies: soldiers eagerly desire nothing from the

foes of their own general; for, to dem and for your own use anything from the adversary of him in whose hand you are, is a transgression. Shall a Christian be assisted in anything by that evil one? If he do, I know not whether this name of ‘Christian’ will continue to belong to him; for he will be his in whose lore he eagerly desires to be instructed. But how alien from your schoolings and professions are these things, how unworthy the Christian name, to wear a fictitious face, you, on whom simplicity in every form is enjoined! To lie in your appearance, you, to whom lying with the tongue is not lawful! To seek after what is another’s, you, to whom is delivered the precept of abstinence from what is another’s! To practise adultery in your mien, you, who make modesty your study! Think, blessed sisters, how will you keep God’s precepts if you shall not keep in your own persons His lineaments? Chapter 13 [Tertullian rejects the argument that i f God knows us to be chaste, it does not matter what others think. It is not enough to be chaste; we must seem to be chaste to others. Writing at a time o f persecution fo r the Christian Church, Tertullian is also concerned that the love o f riches and a luxurious lifestyle will not prepare Christians fo r the possible hardships ahead of them.] Perhaps some woman will say: ‘To me it is not necessary to be approved by men; for I do not require the testimony of men: God is the inspector of the heart.’ That we all know; provided, however, we remember what the same God has said through the apostle: ‘Let your probity appear before men.’ For what purpose, except that malice may have no access at all to you, or that you may be an example and testimony to the evil? Else, what is that: ‘Let your works shine?’ Why, moreover, does the Lord call us the light of the world; why has He compared us to a city built upon a mountain; if we do not shine in the midst of darkness, and stand eminent amid them who are sunk down? If you hide your lamp beneath a bushel, you must necessarily be left quite in darkness, and be run against by many. The things which make us luminaries of the world are these - our good works. What is good, moreover, provided it be true and full, loves not darkness: it joys in being seen, and exults over the very pointings which are made at it. To Christian modesty it is not enough to be so but to seem so too. For so great ought its plenitude to be, that it may flow out from the mind to the garb, and burst out from the conscience to

the outward appearance; so that even from the outside it may gaze, as it were, upon its own furniture - a furniture such as to be suited to retain faith as its inmate perpetually. For such delicacies as tend by their softness and effeminacy to unm an the manliness of faith are to be discarded. Otherwise, I know not whether the wrist that has been wont to be surrounded with the palm leaf-like bracelet will endure till it grow into the numb hardness of its own chain! I know not whether the leg that has rejoiced in the anklet will suffer itself to be squeezed into the gyve!6 I fear the neck, beset with pearl and emerald nooses, will give no room to the broadsword! W herefore, blessed sisters, let us meditate on hard­ships, and we shall not feel them; let us abandon luxuries, and we shall not regret them. Let us stand ready to endure every vio­lence, having nothing which we may fear to leave behind. It is these things which are the bonds which retard our hope. Let us cast away earthly ornaments if we desire heavenly. Love not gold; in which one substance are branded all the sins of the people of Israel. You ought to hate what ruined your fathers; what was adored by them who were forsaking God. Even then we find gold is food for the fire. But Christians always, and now more than ever, pass their times not in gold but in iron; the stoles of m artyr­dom are now preparing: the angels who are to carry us are now being awaited! Do you go forth to meet them already arrayed in the cosmetics and ornaments of prophets and apostles; drawing your whiteness from simplicity, your ruddy hue from modesty; painting your eyes with bashfulness, and your mouth with silence; implanting in your ears the words of God; fitting on your necks the yoke of Christ. Submit your head to your husbands, and you will be enough adorned. Busy your hands with spinning; keep your feet at home; and you will ‘please’ better than by arraying yourselves in gold. Clothe yourselves with the silk of uprightness, the fine linen of holiness, the purple of modesty. Thus painted, you will have God as your Lover!