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On the Apparel of Women

Chapter X.--Tertullian Refers Again to the Question of the Origin of All These Ornaments and Embellishments. ¹

It was God, no doubt, who showed the way to dye wools with the juices of herbs and the humours of conchs! It had escaped Him, when He was bidding the universe to come into being, ² to issue a command for (the production of) purple and scarlet sheep! It was God, too, who devised by careful thought the manufactures of those very garments which, light and thin (in themselves), were to be heavy in price alone; God who produced such grand implements of gold for confining or parting the hair; God who introduced (the fashion of) finely-cut wounds for the ears, and set so high a value upon the tormenting of His own work and the tortures of innocent infancy, learning to suffer with its earliest breath, in order that from those scars of the body--born for the steel!--should hang I know not what (precious) grains, which, as we may plainly see, the Parthians insert, in place of studs, upon their very shoes! And yet even the gold itself, the "glory" of which carries you away, serves a certain race (so Gentile literature tells us) for chains! So true is it that it is not intrinsic worth, ³ but rarity, which constitutes the goodness (of these things): the excessive labour, moreover, of working them with arts introduced by the means of the sinful angels, who were the revealers withal of the material substances themselves, joined with their rarity, excited their costliness, and hence a lust on the part of women to possess (that) costliness. But, if the self-same angels who disclosed both the material substances of this kind and their charms--of gold, I mean, and lustrous ⁴ stones--and taught men how to work them, and by and by instructed them, among their other (instructions), in (the virtues of) eyelid-powder and the dyeings of fleeces, have been condemned by God, as Enoch tells us, how shall we please God while we joy in the things of those (angels) who, on these accounts, have provoked the anger and the vengeance of God?

Now, granting that God did foresee these things; that God permitted them; that Esaias finds fault with no garment of purple, ⁵ represses no coil, ⁶ reprobates no crescent-shaped neck ornaments; ⁷ still let us not, as the Gentiles do, flatter ourselves with thinking that God is merely a Creator, not likewise a Downlooker on His own creatures. For how far more usefully and cautiously shall we act, if we hazard the presumption that all these things were indeed provided ⁸ at the beginning and placed in the world ⁹ by God, in order that there should now be means of putting to the proof the discipline of His servants, in order that the licence of using should be the means whereby the experimental trials of continence should be conducted? Do not wise heads of families purposely offer and permit some things to their servants ¹⁰ in order to try whether and how they will use the things thus permitted; whether (they will do so) with honesty, or with moderation? But how far more praiseworthy (the servant) who abstains entirely; who has a wholesome fear ¹¹ even of his lord's indulgence! Thus, therefore, the apostle too: "All things," says he, "are lawful, but not all are expedient." ¹² How much more easily will he fear ¹³ what is unlawful who has a reverent dread ¹⁴ of what is lawful?

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De Cultu Feminarum

X.

[1] Nimirum enim Deus monstrauit sucis herbarum et concharum saliuis incoquere lanas: exciderat illi, cum uniuersa nasci iuberet, purpureas et coccineas oues mandare! Deus et ipsarum uestium officinas commentus quae, leues et exiles, solo pretio graues essent. Deus et auri tanta opera produxit complectendis et distinguendis lapillis scrupulosa. Deus auribus uulnera intulit et tanti habuit uexationem operis sui et cruciatus infantiae innocentis tunc primum dolentis ut ex illis ad ferrum nati corporis cicatricibus grana nescio quae penderent quae plane Parthi per omnia quaeque sua bullarum uice inserunt. [2] Quamquam et aurum ipsum cuius uos gloria occupat cuidam genti ad uincula seruire referunt gentilium litterae. Adeo non ueritate bona sunt sed raritate. Per angelos autem peccatores demonstrata sunt, qui et ipsas materias prodiderunt, et operositas cum raritate commissa pretiositatem et ex ea libidinem possidendae pretiositatis feminarum excitauit. [3] Quod si idem angeli qui et materias eiusmodi et illecebras detexerunt, auri dico et lapidum illustrium, et operas eorum tradiderunt, etiam ipsum calliblepharum uellerumque tincturas inter cetera docuerunt damnati a Deo sunt, ut Enoch refert, quomodo placebimus Deo gaudentes rebus illorum qui iram et animaduersionem Dei propterea prouocauerunt?

[4] Nunc Deus ista prospexerit, Deus permiserit; nullam de conchylio uestem Esaias increpet, nullas lunulas reprobet, nullum botronatum retundat: tamen non ut gentiles ita nos quoque nobis adulemur, institutorem Deum solummodo existimantes, non etiam despectorem institutorum suorum. [5] Quanto enim melius et cautius egerimus, si praesumamus omnia quidem a Deo prouisa tunc et in saeculo posita uti nunc essent in quibus disciplina seruorum eius probaretur, uti per licentiam utendi continentiae experientia procederet. Nonne sapientes patres familiae de industria quaedam seruis suis offerunt atque permittunt ut experiantur an et qualiter permissis utantur, si probe, si modeste? [6] Quanto autem laudabilior qui abstinuerit in totum, qui timuerit etiam indulgentiam domini. Sic igitur et apostolus: «Omnia, inquit, licent, sed non omnia expediunt». Quanto facilius illicita timebit qui licita uerebitur.