About the attire of women

The first book of the treatise “On Women's Jewelry” (202), which remained unfinished, is called “On the Dress of Women.” In it, Tertullian condemns women's passion for clothes and jewelry. It is fitting for a woman to mourn, since Eve fell, she raised the Son of God to the cross, and a curse lies on her and her generation. Women's jewelry is a demonic invention that fuels ambition and leads to debauchery. *The title of the essay in Latin is De habitu muliebri. If there were more faith on earth than the expected reward in heaven, then I am sure, my beloved sisters, that not one of you, having known God and thought about your own misfortune, would want to appear cheerful, much less proud, in your attire; but on the contrary, she would faithfully try to wear the coarsest and simplest clothes. In such an attire, everyone would recognize in you a saddened and repentant Eve, and with your modesty you could erase, on the one hand, the shame of the first crime brought upon you by your foremother, and on the other, the reproach made to your sex for being the cause of the death of the entire human race. Every wife cannot help but recognize in her person the archetype of Eve, because like her she gives birth to children in illness, endures the same torments, and is in the same dependence. The punishment of the first wife never ceases to fall on her entire field, which therefore seems to be unable to help but participate in her crime. What an unhappy wife! You were, so to speak, a door for the devil, you received from him a forbidden fruit for our destruction, you were the first to rebel against your Creator, you seduced the one whom the devil did not dare to attack, you blotted out the best features of the deity in man, finally, correcting your guilt cost the life of the Son of God Himself; and after all this you dream, you dare to decorate in every possible way that skin that was given to you solely to cover your shame (Gen. 3.21). If from the very beginning of the world the finest Milesian wool and cotton paper collected by the Scythians from the trees had been in use, if luxury had since established the value of the scarlet of Tire, Phrygian embroidery and Babylonian fabric, if people had since that time begun to add shine to clothes through the whiteness of pearls and the dazzling shine of precious stones, if human avarice had then extracted gold from hearts of the earth, if the curiosity of women had invented the use of a mirror to easily deceive the eyes with borrowed pleasures, if all this mixture of pride and vanity had been together in the world from its very beginning: then do you think, dear sisters, that your foremother Eve, burdened with the burden of her sin, expelled from the paradise of sweetness, from the abode of happiness, half-dead from both repentance and foreboding death she deserved, do you think, I say, that in this state she would take care of so many vain and magnificent decorations to cover her poor body and to avoid the shame caused by sin? And so, if you want to revive in yourself your foremother Eve, exhausted and repentant: then you do not need to look for and call for what she did not have and did not call during her life. All these vain decorations only lead to confusion of the wife, removed from grace and almost already condemned: she seems to serve nothing other than her funeral ceremony. The inventors of these decorations, I want to say, the imaginary sons of God, who left God to possess the daughters of men (Gen. 6.2), were condemned to death for this, and this also served to disgrace the wife. They or their descendants invented or discovered many things carefully hidden by nature, and learned many arts that it would be better not to know; They, I say, showed people how to look for metals in the interior of the earth, they discovered the power and quality of herbs; They were the first to produce spells, and dreamed of finding in the arrangement of the stars the science of knowing the future. Their main effort was to provide their wives with all those instruments of vanity with which they adorn themselves with such discernment: from their hands flowed the glitter of diamonds with which necklaces shine, all the gold on their wrists, a pleasant variety of colors of fabrics, in a word, all the various substances that wives use to embellish themselves and to hide their faces. The properties of all these things can be judged by the qualities of their inventors: he must be completely blind who does not see that sinners will never bring us to innocence, that seducing lovers will never teach us to maintain chastity, that these, so to speak, outrageous spirits, or their minions, will never instill in us the fear of that God whom they have abandoned. If their inventions were real sciences, then such unfit teachers cannot properly instruct in them; if these gifts are nothing more than a pledge of debauchery, then what could be more shameful? There is a legend that the seducers of the daughters of men, who are mentioned in the book of Genesis, were fallen, outcast angels, and that they, envious of the destiny promised to the wife to erase the head of the serpent, that is, Satan, decided not only, by seducing the said daughters, to harm this destiny, but also invented the best means for this, which consists in blinding them with magnificent decoration, so strongly inciting their innate curiosity. But whoever may be the seducers of the female sex, whoever may be the inventors of those arts and fabrics which give rise to vanity, especially in the hearts of women, let us try to examine the very nature and essence of these things, in order to know exactly what reasons prompt us to seek them with such diligence. By the word “women’s attire” I mean, firstly, their actual clothing, gold, silver, precious stones and other related adornments, and secondly, their extreme care to keep their hair in a variety of ways, maintain their corpulence, maintain freshness and complexion, and apply other parts of the body exposed to the gaze of people to a secular lifestyle. I believe that the first of these whims comes from vanity, and the second is real debauchery. I leave it to Christian wives, servants of God, to judge whether they can find here anything similar to humility, or anything consistent with chastity, which they made it their first duty to guard inviolably. What is gold and silver, which constitute the main substance of the splendor of secular people? Why is this substance, which is the same earth, more precious to them than the earth trampled under foot? Is it not because extracting it from the deep caves where it was created often costs the lives of those unfortunates who are condemned to extract it from there? Or is it because, having changed its appearance from fire, it takes on the name of metal, in order to serve such a use as the ambition of a person wishes to turn it into? I do not find in all this anything other than the same thing that happens with iron, copper and other products of the earth and ordinary metals; and therefore it is unreasonable to believe that these precious substances are endowed by nature with any superiority over other metals; but on the contrary, there is nothing more prudent than to prefer iron and copper to them, because from these latter we acquire much more benefits and services than from gold and silver, which are sometimes rightly used for the same use. Weren't iron rings and other metal utensils often found among triumphal decorations? Aren't copper vessels, which have become a precious rarity from antiquity, still preserved to this day? And don’t wedding rings, which are still made of iron, serve as proof that this metal is suitable for decoration, while they also testify to the moderation of our fathers? Let people who are attached to gold and silver show me what useful and necessary use can be made of them, like the use of iron and copper. Never was the land cultivated with gold, and ships were not built of silver. Never did a golden sword protect anyone's life, and silver walls did not serve as a stronghold for people either against bad weather or against enemy attacks. Finally, gold and silver were never used for the extraction and processing of iron, while they themselves are good for nothing without the help of iron. From all this I do not see that gold and silver receive from nature any advantage over other metals. Is it also possible to say anything better in favor of precious stones, which are revered more than gold and silver? Are they not of the same substance as flints and barren cartilage, which are nothing more than eruptions of the earth? It can already be said decisively about these precious stones that they do not bring any direct benefit. They cannot be used either for the foundations of houses, or for the construction of fortress walls, or for covering buildings, or for constructing terraces. They serve solely to satisfy the ambition of women and to increase their pride; and for this elegant use, they are polished with such difficulty to give them more shine, they are so skillfully trimmed so as to amaze the eye with their excellent composition and variety of colors, they are so carefully pierced to hang on the ears, they are so skillfully set with gold so that the mixture of this metal gives them a new beauty. But ambition is not content with these things extracted from the earth. He needs people to dive into the depths of the sea, and there they look for and scoop up new food for him from the smallest shells; and what is most surprising is that the so-called pearls are nothing more than a deficiency of these shells, like a painful growth that forms inside these animals. In general, there is nothing in the world that vanity does not take advantage of for its satisfaction: it even penetrates into the head of a dragon in order to find there a supposedly precious stone to decorate itself, as if it were not enough for a Christian woman that her ancestor learned from the serpent to disobey God, and as if she needed to borrow a substance from the animal that served as an instrument for our tempter to further ignite the fire in herself ambition in pride. Don't you think, dear sisters, that the best way to erase the head of the serpent is to value his eruptions so dearly? Isn’t this a clear sign that you silently submit to him when you wear these stones on your head, when you make it a point of glory to decorate your forehead with them? If the value of so many things you respect were recognized at least by the general consent and approval of all peoples, then I would think that you allowed yourself to be carried away by the powerful force of general opinion. But these substances, which you regard as precious, are despised in the lands from which they come, and are highly valued only where they are alien, that is, where their real price is unknown. The abundance of these things instills indifference to them; and among the Parthians, Medes and other peoples, rich in gold mines, chains are often forged from gold for slaves and criminals, so that these latter, burdened by what we call wealth, are the more unhappy the richer they are, and thereby prove the truth that gold can sometimes be an object of contempt. Among these peoples, precious stones are no more respected. We saw recently in Rome how they treat them with disdain. Our noblest ladies were ashamed to see what use these barbarian peoples put their best adornments to. The emeralds that dotted the curves of their belts, and the diamonds inserted into the sheaths of their swords, were carelessly hidden under the simplest clothes; and the pearls that covered their shoes were often themselves covered with mud. They wear jewelry only in places where they cannot be seen, as if they wanted to teach the Roman ladies that it is a shame for them to be proud of them. They are not content with dressing their slaves in expensive multi-colored fabrics, but usually cover the walls of their houses with them, considering them as if they were not worth being used by a person. They prefer clothes of a simple natural color to the purple one. I do not think that such a general contempt for these things can be condemned and considered barbaric. What other conclusion can be drawn from this supernatural mixture of colors and variety of fabrics than that God was not able to create such sheep on which the wool would be of the scarlet or other brilliant color in which it is now dyed? And, as it is known that He could have done this: then we must agree that He did not like it, because He did not do it; therefore, changing His will is nothing more than insolence. Thus, these things, which do not come from God, do not constitute good, but are the invention of His adversary, that is, the devil, who perverts everything natural. What is not from God comes from a rival to His glory; and this opponent is none other than the devil and his angels. But, you object, all these fabrics were not actually produced by the hands of God. - So be it. However, you do not use them in accordance with the will of God. It is as if you wanted to assure me that the pagan spectacles against which I wrote before, and idolatry itself, agree with the will of God, because God created the things that people use for these abominations. Therefore, if a Christian is not allowed to attend pagan spectacles, then he should not appropriate to himself the right to turn into his own favor gold and precious stones created by God solely for His glory. But how removed is this criminal and vain age from fulfilling the will of God! While God has distributed all things differently over different lands, so that they are mutually rare and alien where they are not born, we, instead of being content with the products that were actually provided to us by the will of God, are overwhelmed by the blind lust of novelty, and unfortunately we strive with our hearts and souls to possess such things that God has designated for the benefit of other nations. This damned passion has no boundaries, as soon as we submit to it, and the exorbitant desire for the possession of rare things, excited by ambition, so fills our hearts with vanity that it is almost impossible for us to curb it; the attraction to vanity, not based on good deeds, is supported solely by lust, the most dangerous disease of the human mind, which is more important the more inflamed it becomes. Lust becomes more insatiable the more extensive the possession of things. We see the ruin of the most noble families from the acquisition of some boxes and caskets; we see veils worth up to twenty-five thousand gold coins; we see the cost of entire forests and islands that adorn the delicate head; we see countless incomes hanging on the ears of an ambitious beauty; We see on our fingers the cost of several bags of gold. Is it possible to say after this that ambition should not triumph when such incredible costs are spent on women? You might be interested in: