Chapter 9
TERTULLIAN
because of men) the desire to please, the male sex also has its own peculiar trickeries for enhancing their appearance. for instance, cutting the beard a bit too sharply, trimming it too neatly, shaving around the mouth, arranging and dyeing our hair, darkening the first signs of gray hair, disguising the down on the whole body with some female ointments, smoothing off the rest of the body by means of some gritty powder, then always taking occasion to look in a mirror, gazing anxiously into it. Are not all of these things quite idle and hostile to modesty once we have known God, have put aside the desire to please others and foresworn all lascivious ness? (3) For, where God is there is modesty, where modesty is there is dignity, its assistant and companion. How shall we ever practise modesty if we do not make use of its normal means, that is, dignity? How shall we ever be able to make use of dignity in practising modesty unless we bear a certain seriousness in our countenance, in our dress, and in the appear ance of the entire man?
Chapter 9 (1) In the same manner, therefore, you must be intent on curtailing and rejecting all superfluous elegance in your clothing and the remaining lumber of your finery. For, what good does it do to wear on your face an appearance of propriety and temperance and a simplicity that is in accord ance with the divine teaching if the rest of the body is covered with a lot of frilly and foolish pomps and luxuries? (2) To be sure, there is no difficulty in recognizing how close the con nection is between these pomps and the business of lascivious ness and how they must interfere with the principles of
THE APPAREL OF WOMEN
modesty: such frills adjoined to fancy dress prostitute the grace of true beauty, so much so that, if they are not worn, natural beauty makes no impression and is hardly noticed as if disarmed and altogether ruined; on the other hand, if natural beauty is not present, the supporting aid of fancy dress supplies grace, as it were, of its own power. (3) Lastly, finery and elegant dress have a tendency to deprive of peace those periods of life which are already blessed with quiet and with drawn into the harbor of modesty, and to disturb their seriousness by stimulating desires which evidently try to com pensate for the coldness of age by the provocative charms of dress.
(4) First, then, blessed sisters, have nothing to do with the lewd and seductive tricks of dress and appearance. Secondly, if some of you, because of wealth or birth or former dignities, are forced to appear in public in overly elaborate dress, as if they had not yet acquired the good sense that is fitting to their age, take heed to temper the evil that is in this thing, lest under pretext of necessity you give rein to unbounded licence.
(5) For, how can you fulfill the precept of humility which we profess as Christians if you do not keep in check the use of wealth and finery which so encourage the pursuit of glory?
For, glory tends to exalt and not to humble.
(6) 'But,' you will say, 'may we not use what is ours?' Who is forbidding you to use what is yours? No one less than the Apostle who advises us to use this world as if we did not use it. He tells us: 'The fashion of this world is passing away.
And those who buy, let them act as though they possessed not.'1 And why? Because he had previously said: 'The time is growing short.'2 If, then, he plainly shows that even wives
1 1 Cor. 7.30,31.
2 1 Cor. 7.29.