Clothes Are Only a Covering

So we are no more to provide ourselves with expensive clothing than with a variety of food. The Lord himself divides his instructions into what has to do with the body, what has to do with the soul, and third, what has to do with the things outside us. He tells us to provide the outside things for the body’s sake; he manages the body by the soul, and he disciplines the soul. This is what he says: “Do not worry about your soul, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will put on; for the soul is more than food, and the body more than clothing.” Then he adds a plain example to teach by: “Look at the ravens. They neither sow nor reap, they have no storehouse and no barn, and God feeds them.” “Are you not worth more than the birds?” So much for food. He gives the same instruction about clothing, which belongs to the third division, the things outside us: “Look at the lilies — they do not spin and they do not weave. But I tell you, not even Solomon was dressed like one of these.” And King Solomon prided himself enormously on his wealth. [a]

What, I ask, is more graceful or more brightly colored than flowers? What is more delightful than lilies or roses? “And if God so clothes the grass, which is in the field today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, you of little faith!” Here the little word what puts an end to variety in food, as the Scripture shows: “Do not worry about what you will eat or what you will drink.” To worry about such things is a mark of greed and luxury. Eating, taken simply in itself, is a sign of necessity — the filling, as we have said, of a want; but the “what” comes from excess, and what is excess, Scripture says, is from the devil. The words that follow make the meaning plain. After saying, “Do not look for what you will eat or what you will drink,” he added, “and do not be lifted up in mind.” Pride and luxury do lift a man up and leave him unsettled, away from the truth, and the self-indulgence that runs to extras leads away from the truth. That is why he says, so beautifully, “And all these things the nations of the world go after.” The nations are the dissolute and the foolish. And what are the things he means? Luxury, self-indulgence, rich cooking, dainty feeding, gluttony. These are the “what.” But of bare food, dry and liquid, as being necessities, he says, “Your Father knows you need these.” And if, in a word, we are seekers by nature, let us not destroy the faculty of seeking by pointing it at luxury; let us rouse it to the discovery of truth. For he says, “Seek the kingdom of God, and the things you need for food will be added to you.”

If, then, he takes away anxiety about clothes and food and extras in general as unnecessary, what are we to suppose should be said about the love of ornament? About dyed wool and a range of colors, fussiness over gems and exquisite goldwork? And still more about false hair and coiled curls, and beyond that about painted eyes and plucked hairs, rouge and white lead and dyed hair, and the whole wicked craft of such deceptions? May we not reasonably suspect that what was quoted just above about the grass was said about these unlovely lovers of loveliness? For the field is the world, and we, wet with the dew of God’s grace, are the grass; and though we are cut down we spring up again, as will be shown at greater length in the book On the Resurrection. But the hay stands for the common crowd, people attached to a pleasure that lasts a day, blooming for a little while, in love with ornament and in love with praise, everything but lovers of truth, and fit for nothing except to be burned with fire.

“There was a certain man,” said the Lord, telling the story, “who was very rich, and was dressed in purple and fine linen, and enjoyed himself splendidly every day.” This was the hay. “And a certain poor man named Lazarus was laid at the rich man’s gate, covered with sores, wanting to be filled with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table.” This is the grass. Well, the rich man was punished in Hades and got his share of the fire, while the other bloomed again in the Father’s embrace.

I admire that ancient city of the Spartans, which let only prostitutes wear flowered clothes and gold ornaments; it forbade respectable women the love of ornament and allowed the courtesans alone to deck themselves out. The chief magistrates of Athens, on the other hand, who went in for a polished way of life, forgot that they were men. They wore tunics down to their feet, and put their hair up in a krobylos — a kind of topknot — fastened with golden cicadas, to advertise, if you please, that they had sprung from their own soil; and the whole thing was a parade of loose living. Rivalry with these magistrates spread to the rest of the Ionians as well, whom Homer calls “trailing-robed,” to mark them out as soft. So people who are devoted to the image of beauty — that is, to the love of finery — and not to beauty itself, and who practice idolatry all over again under a respectable name, are to be sent far away from the truth. They only dream about what beauty is, going by opinion and not by knowledge, and so life here is nothing to them but a deep sleep of ignorance. We ought to shake ourselves awake out of it and hurry toward what is truly beautiful and fine, wanting to lay hold of that alone, leaving the world’s ornaments to the world and saying goodbye to them before we fall fast asleep.

I say, then, that a person needs clothes for nothing but the covering of the body — for protection against extreme cold and fierce heat, so that rough weather does not harm us. And if that is what clothing is for, see that one kind is not assigned to men and another to women. Being covered is common to both, as eating and drinking are. The need being common, we judge that the provision ought to be alike. As it is common to both to need things to cover them, so their coverings ought to be alike — though a woman’s covering should also be such as is needed to cover her eyes. If women, being weaker, want more, the blame belongs to the habit of that bad training under which men, brought up in bad habits, often turn out softer than women. But it must not be given in to. And if some allowance is to be made, they may be permitted softer clothes, provided they get rid of fabrics that are foolishly thin and cunningly woven, and say goodbye to gold embroidery, to Indian silks, and to the elaborate bombykes. The bombyx starts as a worm; out of it comes a hairy caterpillar; then the creature goes through another change into a third form, which they call a larva, and from that a long filament is produced, as a spider’s thread is produced from the spider. These extravagant, see-through materials are proof of a feeble mind: with a thin veil they pander the body’s shame. Luxurious clothing that cannot hide the shape of the body is no longer a covering at all. Falling close to the body, it takes the body’s form the more easily; clinging to the flesh, it picks up its shape and draws the woman’s figure, so that anyone watching can see the whole build of her body without seeing the body itself.

Dyed clothes are to be rejected too. They are far from necessity and far from truth, and on top of that a bad name in manners comes out of them. Colors do no good: they are no help against cold, and for covering they have nothing more than other clothing has — nothing except the disgrace. The pleasantness of the color hurts greedy eyes and inflames them to a senseless blindness. But for people who are white and unstained within, white and simple clothes are the fitting thing. That is why Daniel the prophet says it clearly and plainly: “Thrones were set, and on them sat one like the Ancient of Days, and his clothing was white as snow.” In his vision he sees the Lord dressed in such a robe. And the Revelation says, “I saw under the altar the souls of those who had borne witness, and a white robe was given to each of them.” And if it were necessary to look for any other color, the natural color of truth should be enough.

But clothes like flower beds are to be left to the follies of Bacchus and to the rites of initiation, along with purple and silver plate — as the comic poet says:

And our life ought to be anything but a stage show. So the dye of Sardis, and another the color of olives, and another green, and rose, and scarlet, and countless other dyes have been worked out with much trouble for the sake of a mischievous self-indulgence. Clothing like that is for looking at, not for covering. Garments shot through with gold, and purple ones, and that piece of luxury that takes its name from the animals figured on it, and the saffron robe soaked in perfume, and those expensive many-colored garments of glaring gauze — we are to say goodbye to all of them, and to the craft itself. “For what sensible thing can these women ever have done,” says the comedy,

The Instructor warns us in so many words: “Do not boast about the clothing you wear, and do not be puffed up in any glory, for it does not last.” And so, mocking people dressed in luxurious clothes, he says in the Gospel: “Look — those who live in gorgeous clothing and luxury are in earthly palaces.” He says earthly, that is, perishable, palaces, where you find love of display, love of popularity, flattery and deceit. But those who wait at the court of heaven around the King of all make holy the undefiled clothing of the soul — that is, the flesh — and so they put on incorruptibility.

The unmarried woman devotes herself to God alone, and her care is not divided; the chaste married woman divides her life between God and her husband; and the woman who is otherwise inclined is given over entirely to marriage, that is, to passion. In the same way, I think, the chaste wife serves God honestly when she devotes herself to her husband; but when she grows fond of finery she falls away from God and from chaste marriage, trading her husband for the world, in the manner of that Argive courtesan — I mean Eriphyle,

That is why I admire the sophist from Ceos, who drew fitting likenesses of Virtue and of Vice. Virtue he set standing simply, dressed in white and pure, with nothing to adorn her but modesty — and that is what faith ought to be, virtuous with modesty. Vice he brings on in the opposite dress: overdone, brightened up with a color not her own, her walk and her look carefully arranged to give pleasure — a sketch of wanton women.

But the man who follows the Word will not give himself over to any low pleasure, and so in the matter of dress it is what is useful that he prefers. And when the Word, speaking through David about the Lord, sings, “The daughters of kings gladdened you with honor; the queen stood at your right hand, dressed in cloth of gold, wrapped in golden fringes,” it is not luxurious clothing he is pointing to. He is showing the immortal adornment, woven out of faith, of those who have found mercy — that is, the church, in which Jesus, who has no guile in him, shines out like gold, and the chosen are the golden tassels. And if we must relax the rule somewhat for women’s sake, let us weave clothing that is pleasant and soft to the touch, not flowered like a painting to delight the eye. The picture fades with time anyway, and the washing and the soaking in the dyer’s biting liquors wear away the wool and leave the cloth weak — which is no help to thrift. It is the height of foolish showing off to be in a flutter about peploi and xystides and ephaptides, about “cloaks” and “tunics” and “what covers a man’s shame,” as Homer puts it. To tell the truth, I am ashamed when I see so much wealth poured out on the covering of nakedness. The first man in paradise made a covering for his shame out of branches and leaves; and now that sheep have been made for us, let us not be as silly as sheep. Let us be trained by the Word instead, and condemn extravagance in clothing, saying, “You are sheep’s wool.” Miletus may boast and Italy may be praised, and the wool everyone raves about may be kept under skins — we are still not to set our hearts on it.

The blessed John thought sheep’s fleece smacked of luxury, and chose “camel’s hair” and dressed in that, making himself an example of thrift and of a simple life. He also “ate locusts and wild honey” — sweet food, and food of the spirit — since he was the one preparing the Lord’s lowly and chaste roads. How could a man have worn a purple robe who turned his back on the display of the cities and went off into the emptiness of the desert, to live quietly with God, far from every frivolous pursuit, from every false show of good, from everything mean? Elijah used a sheepskin cloak, and fastened the sheepskin with a belt made of hair. Isaiah, another prophet, went naked and barefoot, and often wore sackcloth, the dress of humility. And if you call Jeremiah, he had nothing but “a linen belt.”

Well-fed bodies show their strength more plainly when they are stripped, and in the same way beauty of character shows its greatness of soul when it is not wrapped up in showy nonsense. But to drag your clothes along, letting them down to the soles of your feet, is the last word in foppery: it gets in the way of walking, and the garment sweeps the surface dirt off the ground like a broom. Even those unmanned creatures the dancers, who carry their mute and shameless indecency onto the stage, do not look down on a dress that flows away into such indignity; their curious costumes and hanging fringes and elaborate posturings show the trailing of a sordid softness.

If someone brings forward the Lord’s garment that reached down to his feet, that many-flowered coat shows the flowers of wisdom — the varied and unfading Scriptures, the sayings of the Lord, blazing with the rays of truth. It was in another robe like it that the Spirit dressed the Lord through David, when he sang: “You were clothed with confession and beauty, putting on light like a garment.”

So, just as we must keep clear of anything outlandish in the cut of our clothes, we must watch out for extravagance in the way we wear them. It is not decent for clothes to stop above the knee, as they say was the case with the unmarried girls of Sparta, and it is not proper for any part of a woman to be exposed. Though you may very properly use the words that were once addressed to a man who said, “Your arm is beautiful.” “Yes — but it is not for the public to gaze at.” “Your thighs are beautiful.” “Yes, but for my husband alone.” “And your face is lovely.” “Yes — but only for the man who married me.” Still, I do not want chaste women to give occasion for compliments like that to men who use compliments to hunt for something to blame. It is not only that showing the ankle is forbidden; it has also been laid down that the head is to be veiled and the face covered, for it is a wicked thing for beauty to become a trap for men.

Nor is it decent for a woman to want to make herself conspicuous by wearing a purple veil. If only purple could be abolished from dress altogether, so that the eyes of onlookers were not turned on the face of the woman wearing it! But women have made everything else they wear purple too, and so they set cravings alight. And in truth, the women who are crazy about these stupid, luxurious purples have been seized by “purple death,” as the poet’s line says. It is for the sake of this purple that Tyre and Sidon and the waters off Sparta are so much wanted, and that their dyers and their purple-fishers, and the purple shellfish themselves, are held in such high esteem, because their blood produces the purple. But scheming women and soft men, who work these deceiving dyes into delicate fabrics, push their crazed appetites past every limit: they no longer import their fine linens from Egypt only, but other kinds as well from the land of the Hebrews and from the Cilicians. I say nothing of the linens of Amorgos and the byssus. Luxury has outrun the names for it.

In my judgment the covering ought to show that what it covers is better than itself — as the statue is better than the temple that houses it, the soul better than the body, and the body better than the clothes. But now it is exactly the other way around. The bodies of these ladies, if they were put up for sale, would never fetch a thousand Attic drachmas; and by buying a single dress at the price of ten thousand talents they prove themselves less useful and less valuable than cloth. Why in the world do you go after what is rare and costly rather than what is at hand and cheap? Because you do not know what is really beautiful and what is really good, and so, instead of realities, appearances are what is chased after among fools, who, like men out of their wits, take white for black.