也就是說，就婦女的遮蓋乃是權柄的表徵、順服的記號而言——這一點或許從希臘文抄本中可看得更清楚，那些抄本所載，正與希伯來文及迦勒底文的 rada 與 radat 二字極為吻合，而人們慣於將這些字解作順服之帕。因此我們幾乎無可懷疑：使徒在那裡所規定作為敬畏、羞恥與貞潔標記的遮蓋，本當為一切婦女所共有。故此，佩戴它的已婚婦人乃是丈夫的榮耀，而童貞女則是自身的榮耀。反之，倘若她們棄絕這外加的遮蓋，便是有違於自己、也有違於基督徒身分的體面了。
Namely, in so far as the woman's veil is a sign of power and a token of subjection, as is perhaps more clearly gathered from the Greek codices, which set it forth in such wise that the Hebrew and Chaldean words rada and radat correspond to it most exactly, and which they are wont to interpret of the veil of obedience. We can therefore scarcely doubt that the veil, prescribed there by the Apostle as an emblem of reverence, of shame, and of chastity, ought to be common to all women. So that on that account wives who use it are the glory of their husbands, and virgins the glory of themselves. But on the contrary, if they should reject the assumed veil, they would belie both their own and the seemliness of the Christian profession.
But if we were to inquire more curiously what form and how great an extent that veil ought to have, let us hear it from Tertullian. 「As much」 (he says) 「as loosened hair can occupy, so great is the region of the veil, so that the neck also may be surrounded. For those very (necks, namely) which it behooves to be subject — on account of which the power ought to be held over the head. The veil is their yoke.」 Since therefore this is the law of the assumed veil, this its end, this its purpose, it must by no means be judged that Christian women shrink from all these things, even if they cut off their hair for themselves — provided, however, that in cutting the hair they do not yield to vanity, luxury, and immodest adornment rather than to Christian moderation and humility;
or provided they do not resolve to attain to themselves anything depraved and repugnant to religion and faith — such as those women concerning whom action was taken in the canons of Gangra. We meanwhile do not here submit to examination those praised canons, which in the earlier dissertation of this year were already called to review by a certain distinguished and most learned theologian of this our Academy; especially since the reckoning of the time and the plan of our purpose do not permit it. But now I shall bring forward two other kinds of arguments, by which it will be established openly, and clearer than the very light, that by no law — whether divine, or ecclesiastical, or human — was it forbidden to women to cut their hair. The first can be drawn from the words of Deuteronomy.
For there God commanded the sons of Israel, who desired to take a captive woman in marriage, not to celebrate betrothal or nuptials unless first the hair of the captive to be betrothed were shorn, and her whole head of hair shaved off. 「If thou go forth… and see among the number of the captives a beautiful woman, and love her, and wish to have her to wife, thou shalt bring her into thy house, and she shall shave her head of hair, and pare her nails.」 Behold, then, the Lord's command concerning the shearing — nay, even the shaving off — of the whole woman's hair. If we diligently attend to the causes of this divine precept, and pursue them one by one, we shall affirm that there were indeed several. This they most fully and completely know who have surveyed the writings of the ancient philosophers.
From them we are taught that the shearing of the hair was sometimes a sign of servile condition and of captivity, as we also gather from various texts of the Scriptures. That the gentiles observed this rite Aristophanes proves, who, seized as it were with wonder, once said to a certain slave who was growing his hair: 「Being a slave, dost thou grow thy hair?」 The shearing of the hair was likewise a penalty for many or grave crimes, as the Apostle too writes, in verse 6 of the praised chapter: 「If a woman be not veiled, let her be shorn」 — as though, in penalty for the violated law concerning the wearing of the veil, the woman herself ought to be shorn and made bald.
But we gather that other crimes also underwent the same penalty of shaving, not only from various passages of the Scriptures, but from the civil laws in Ulpian, Justinian, and Tacitus. To this rite I think Juvenal wished to allude in Satire 5, who wrote: 「…He shall one day offer his head to be beaten with shaven crown, nor shall he fear to suffer the hard lash.」 But a third reason of that divine precept could be the disfigurement of natural beauty. Of this likewise the Apostle spoke in the same verse of the chapter: 「But if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her veil her head.」 But of this womanly shamefulness the holy Fathers especially discoursed more eloquently.
Among whom are Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, on whose testimonies Baronius rests in the Martyrology, on the 20th of September, when describing the martyrdom of the holy virgin Fausta. That shamefulness the profane writers also exaggerate, as may be seen in Apuleius, Statius, Virgil, and others; to whom Ovid, subscribing, thus sang: 「Base is a maimed beast, base is a field without grass, and a bush without leaf, and a head without hair.」 A fourth reason follows these preceding ones, which is drawn from penitence, mourning, and grief. For it ought to be most well known to all that both Jews and gentiles were accustomed to shear their hair for themselves in mourning and at the greatest funerals. For besides that which we read in Jeremiah VII:
「Cut off thy hair, and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on high」 — this is attested to us also from the words of Job and Micah. Concerning the same rite Herodotus, Statius, Virgil, and Seneca likewise discoursed; whose testimonies, since there is no need to bring them into the midst, let it suffice to have cited the writers. The last reason, finally, Clement of Alexandria supplies to us from the ancients, who asserted that the Law, in the passage of Deuteronomy praised above, commanded that the captive woman to be taken in marriage be shorn in order to curb and diminish the lust of the husband-to-be — because, namely, once the wife's head is disfigured, the ardor of carnal concupiscence more easily cools. Wherefore he added:
「For if the resolve still remains in him」 (he speaks of a Jew taking a captive woman) 「that he take her to wife, he will retain her, even though she have become unsightly.」 But that a woman renders herself less apt for kindling the enticements of the flesh by the shearing of her hair is evident from this: that nature has placed the hair, namely, in that part of the body which is more openly displayed, and which is more diligently arranged by women. Therefore, once that natural ornament is cut off — by which they strive to please and to shine more and more — they now grow accustomed to devote effort to humility, penitence, chastity, and the other virtues, provided, however, that they do not cast away the artificial veil. But —!
That for these causes women are pleasing to God, and violate no divine or apostolic precept, we have thus far demonstrated in this our rude discourse. It now remains that there is another kind of argument, by which, doubtless, we shall prove that women were still more pleasing to God when, for the sake of religion and of stricter discipline, they shear their hair for themselves. Especially famous, first of all, is that ancient command of the Lord, in which, addressing Moses in the Book of Numbers, He said: 「Speak to the sons of Israel: A man or a woman, when they shall have made a vow to be sanctified, and shall have wished to consecrate themselves to the Lord… during all the time of their separation, no razor shall pass over their head until the completion of the day on which they are consecrated to the Lord.」
From which words it clearly appears that the completion of the whole sanctification, both for men and for women who professed the Nazariteship only for a time, consisted in the shearing of the hair and the shaving of the whole head. But now that the Gospel had dawned, this law was not abrogated; nay, it was in fullest vigor when the same Paul wrote that Epistle to the Corinthians. For the Apostle himself, a little later, professed the same law of the Nazariteship. For the Epistle of which we now discourse he composed before he traversed Achaia and Macedonia, and it ought to be referred to the fifty-seventh year of the common era, which is the twenty-fourth from the death of Christ.
Namely, when the people of the Corinthians at Ephesus had sent Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus to visit the Apostle, as we are led to conclude from chapters IV, XI, and XVI of the same epistle. And yet the same Apostle, two years later, having completed various labors, shaved himself at Cenchrea on account of the vow of the Nazariteship, as is read in the Acts of the Apostles: where, having taken with him four men who had a vow upon themselves, he first commanded that they shave their heads, and on the following day, being purified with them, entered into the temple, announcing the fulfillment of the days of his purification. But that a law of this kind was common to women, the praised preceding words clearly reveal. There is therefore no reason why we should judge, on the strength of the Apostle Paul's rule, 「But if a woman grow her hair」
etc., judge that it was forbidden for women to sport with their hair. For Paul, before he uttered these words about a woman's hair and dress, had already set forth himself for the Corinthians to imitate, saying: 「Be ye imitators of me, as I also am of Christ.」 And indeed in our Church not only did those men and women strive to imitate Paul who, proposing to themselves to follow a more sacred life, with shorn heads decreed to inhabit forever the holy dwellings of monasteries; but also as many as, spurning the enticements of the world, longed to enroll themselves in the sacred assembly of clerics. But if it be objected to me that in this our tempest of the age women appear, both with shorn head and having cast away the ancient veil, in churches and public gatherings of men:
and that they have cast away the reins of humility and modesty together with their hair and the artificial veil — what indeed could I answer? Should I affirm that this is not to be reckoned a fault? Especially since, with new rites of vanity adopted by these same women, they strive to appear everywhere as it were with head wholly uncovered, with neck, throat, and shoulders bared, as though they were possessed of the fullest license? How sharply indeed does the ancient piety and modesty of Christians accuse them! But since it has not been granted me at present to perform the office either of preacher or of confessor, I shall bring into the midst that which Marcus Portius Cato once said in the public senate on behalf of the Oppian law: 「Our ancestors willed that women should transact no business, not even a private one, without a guardian;
that they be in the hand of parents, brothers, husbands. But we, if it please the gods, now even suffer them to take up public affairs, and to mingle also in the forum, in assemblies, and in the comitia.」 And a little after he adds: 「Loose the reins upon a nature that cannot control itself and upon an untamed creature, and then hope that they will themselves set a limit to their license, unless you set it!」 Thus far concerning women's hair and veil; but now, lest I seem to abuse my leisure and to distrust your erudition, I shall pursue the rest, which the two final chapters of my dissertation may treat.
For concerning this matter both the interpreters of sacred letters and the greatest theologians have long since discoursed, as may be seen in Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, or in William of Paris, the Angelic Doctor, Nicholas of Osimo, and the other writers on moral theology also; whose catalog would contribute nothing to our purpose. Therefore, in order that we may perspicuously understand whether it is ever permitted to women to take up a man's garment, the matter necessarily requires that we undertake to weigh the end and reason of this Mosaic precept: 「A woman shall not be clothed with a man's garment, nor shall a man use a woman's garment.」 Father Natalis Alexander first of all writes: 「The reason of this observance is manifold. The first, and that the chief, is the extermination of idolatry.」
For this interchange of garments was an idolatrous rite everywhere employed in the rites of the profane gentiles. To this exposition Father Calmet lends his support, not to mention Grotius, Münster, Fagius, and others, whose opinions I judge to be not far from the mark of error. I, however, would have acquiesced in this persuasion, if I had found it agreeable to the customs of the ancients, and if at the same time I could have conjectured from some firm and stable principle that Moses, in framing that law, had the design of taking away the crimes and superstitions which were committed in the festivals and rites of certain vain gods.
Then indeed it would be easy for me to infer that that precept of Deuteronomy, along with the other legal and ceremonial ones, was rendered void and of no effect when the new evangelical law dawned — namely, when the superstition of the heathen began to be abolished from every side. But that this opinion is to be rejected as dangerous, not only the Trullan Canons, but the decrees of the Council of Ancyra, the consultations and statutes of Martin of Tours and of Pope Zachary I, sufficiently evidently demonstrate. Furthermore, it is very uncertain that in Moses' time idolaters pursued this superstitious rite of exchanging garments.
For the Scriptures, which elsewhere commemorate one and another profane ceremony of the heathen, keep indeed a deep silence about the one of which we treat. But moreover, Servius, Julius Firmicus, Hesychius, Polyaenus, Plutarch, and other writers far later than Moses — whose testimonies are praised both by Father Natalis Alexander and by the critics of the sacred books — relate only what obtained in their own age among the Cyprians, Assyrians, Athenians, Romans, and other nations of the East and West. Nowhere, however, do they define the origin and antiquity of those rites. Nay, if it were permitted us to wander beyond the bounds of our undertaking, from the mosaics, statues, and reliefs of the idolaters,
and likewise from coins and from the signs on rings, we could prove that that promiscuous confusion of garments was introduced into the world long after the age of Moses. Perhaps the Cyprians were the first of all to devise it, when, a statue having been placed in the temple which signified Venus, to which men sacrificed in a woman's garb and women in a man's garment, as Servius relates. Concerning the priests of Isis likewise it was customary at Rome for them to be clothed in women's garments, as the Capitoline relief reveals, most learnedly illustrated by the most distinguished man George.
When the Bacchanalian festivals had likewise been introduced from Greece into Etruria, and especially into Italy, that promiscuous usurpation of garments among men and women became more frequent, and first befell at Rome in the five hundred and sixth year from the founding of the City, one hundred and eighty-nine years before the birth of Christ, as Titus Livius is the authority, and the tablets of the Roman consuls make plain. Concerning this matter certain monuments of antiquity still survive for us, which display images of emperors adorned in womanly form, or women themselves clad in manly arms, as the relief of Marcus Antonius published by Buonarotti reveals; or that ring bearing an armed Venus, which Julius Caesar used only in sealing matters of the greatest importance;
or finally, as becomes known from the signs of other rings and coins, which set before our eyes images of Hercules, Commodus, Mars, Nero, Ulpia Marcellina, and others, clothed in incongruous garments of a diverse nature. — All these things indeed prove that the most recent gentiles, who existed in the world a little before or a little after the birth of Christ, employed this kind of profane and promiscuous confusion of garments, especially when they performed sacred rites and festivals. It is not certain, however, that this usage obtained in Moses' time, or that Moses himself looked prophetically to that rite, in order to take away, namely, the crimes and superstitions which were committed in the worship of certain vain gods.
But granted freely that this profane worship prevailed in Moses' time — what then? Are we to believe that Moses, in order to set a limit to licenses of this kind, framed that law about not confounding garments? An utterly absurd consequence. For, in the first place, the law of Deuteronomy was given to the Jews, not indeed to the heathen. Among the former, women were perpetually barred from sacred rites according to the Lord's command. Nor was it easy for men to slip into a crime of this kind, because in the books of Exodus and Leviticus not only are the several kinds of sacrifices described, but the ornaments, offices, prerogatives, and endowments of the Levites and priests are clearly delineated; and finally the burden of sacrificing had been reserved to the male sons of Levi alone.
If therefore Moses, led forth by the divine Spirit, with such and so great zeal described and defined in the two praised books the manner, time, ornaments, method, and ceremonies of the sacred rites and festivals — so that the Hebrews, namely, might have nothing in common with the heathen — who, moreover, could suspect that the law of Deuteronomy of which we treat was issued primarily to exterminate idolatrous rites? For in that chapter Moses uttered not one word about ceremonial precepts. More deeply, therefore, are the motives and reasons of this Mosaic precept to be sought; nor from any rule other than from the institutes of natural reason, looking to which Moses defined in writing what had been sanctioned by the common law of all nations.
For every people, even of a most savage and barbarous nation, before Moses committed that precept to writing, had in use a diversity of garments corresponding to persons and to sex, especially that males might be distinguished from females. Wherefore we deservedly judge that the praised Mosaic precept is to be referred to the safeguard of justice and truth, to the banishment of error and falsehood, and finally to the tranquillity and good of public affairs and of private households. Since therefore these three advantages of human life — to be equaled by no others in this light — direct and compose the morals and institutions of souls, it can scarcely be doubted that that precept is moral, and that by it Christians are most greatly bound.
Is not that to be called moral which proceeds from nature, and which cannot be violated except with nature reluctant? Ambrose is a witness, writing: 「Why dost thou feign thyself a woman — or thou, woman, a man? Nature has clothed each with its own sex's garments; diverse to each is the use, color, motion, gait, strength; diverse is the voice in man and woman.」 Such a witness is Seneca, thus addressing Lucilius: 「Do they not seem to you to live against nature, who exchange garments with women?」 A witness is Diogenes Laertius, saying: 「The distribution of law is twofold: one written, the other unwritten.」 And, with a few things interposed, he adds:
「But that which is apart from writing proceeds from nature and usage, such as that one ought not to walk naked in the forum, or to use a woman's garment.」 The penalty therefore — I will not say of the laws, which they often break through, but of that very baseness which is most bitter — our women do not perceive, who together with their garments put off their shame, in order to use men's ornaments. For in that promiscuous confusion of garments there comes about a certain false interchange of the sexes, called by the Greeks (as Grotius observes) [by a name] which is repugnant to all the offices of nature.
Therefore, just as the authority and majesty of men is injured if they should wish to do womanly works, as Clement of Alexandria once noted, so a woman by an unjust right of arrogance and audacity exalts herself when in motion, in garments, in gait, and in other works she strives to imitate and to counterfeit men. To this manner of acting and living, moreover, pardon, justice, and honesty are repugnant. If they are repugnant, the rights of nature are injured, the Creator of all things is arrogantly contemned, and whatever is holy and seemly, prescribed by divine and human laws, is altogether cast away and trodden down.
It is base, therefore, to lie; baser to deceive; but basest of all to furnish to oneself and to others an occasion of incontinence and lust, and to open a window to disgraceful deeds. Wherefore Cicero, led by the light of reason alone, could never persuade himself that it could befall a good man to lie for the sake of his own advantage, to accuse falsely, to snatch away, to deceive, because all these things are repugnant to nature. Therefore the ancient Romans shuddered at that, as at the utmost crime committed by Clodius — namely, that he, clothed in a woman's garb, had entered the college of the Good Goddess, in order to violate a chaste matron by seduction. And indeed evils of this kind, or certain others even graver, can arise from that promiscuous interchange of garments;
therefore, having regarded the sounder manner of reasoning, we judge that the precept of Deuteronomy was given not primarily to exterminate idolatrous rites, but to moderate human morals. And indeed, on Ambrose's authority, the morals of men are always base and abominable where they are directed by a zeal for concealing and hiding the sex: 「A lie is base even in words, much more in dress.」 Cyprian also reproaches both men and women who indulge in these abuses, as adulterers: 「They do violence to God, since they contend to reform that which He formed.」 To whom Saint Augustine agrees, in Book II of the Soliloquies, chapter 16. It is pleasing, therefore, to close this kind of proof with the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who wrote thus to our point:
「That a woman be clothed with a man's garment, or the reverse, is an incentive to concupiscence, and furnishes an occasion for lust.」 There are, however, also other mystical expositions of this Mosaic precept, repugnant to the words of our Vulgate, which we prefer to bury in silence rather than to refute with arguments. Of which kind is either that which Josephus, the writer of Jewish affairs, brings forward: 「The vessels or instruments of a man shall not be upon a woman」 — which the codices of the Chaldeans also present, and which Maimonides, Münster, Fagius Clarus, Sanctes Pagnini, and others weigh, and which they follow.
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Or that other exposition of a certain jurisconsult Albericus, who, following an excessive lust for philosophizing, supposes that Moses by that command wished to remove a certain most wicked crime from the Jews. Let it suffice me to have condemned these as inventions devised by the expositors, like hard commentaries, lest I abuse further the reckoning of the time and your clemency.
Meanwhile, merely for the sake of most briefly dispatching the third chapter of our dissertation, let me be permitted to observe that we are born under such laws that we hold those principles of nature which we ought to obey and always to follow, so that our own advantage may be the common advantage. Since therefore to conceal the sex sometimes — when it is a question of one's own life, or of the fatherland, of virginity, of religion to be preserved — some precept urges, it is better to devote oneself to the common glory and advantage than to indulge one's own pursuits; hence, led by weighty reason, I persuade myself that women, when some one of these circumstances presses, can shear their hair, take up a man's garment — especially the monastic one — and counterfeit themselves as men.
But to do this for the cause of piety alone can by no means be permitted, unless a grave necessity of nature also, or a particular reason of good, urge and impel. But if anyone should now object to me the canons of Gangra, in which under the penalty of anathema it is provided against women's shearing their hair, and using men's garments, and entering monasteries, I could already easily extricate this from the cause, place, and time of the praised council. For the cause was the heresy of the Manichaeans, which — Eustathius teaching — execrated ecclesiastical marriages and wedlock. Therefore by those canons only those women are harassed who, insisting on the doctrines of the heretics, dared to condemn marriages, wedlock, and the procreation of children;
and who, with dress changed and hair cast off — which is the token of subjection — attempted sometimes even to penetrate the cloisters of monks. But that this yielded not to the honor of nature, not to the safeguard of religion, not finally to the good of the common advantage, but to the vice of baseness, the ruin of piety, and the detriment of the commonwealth — who does not understand, or who can be ignorant? Augustine indeed in the Soliloquies carps at and reproaches as infamous those who, led only by private zeal, display themselves in a woman's garb. 「Whom I know not」 (he says) 「whether I should better call false women or false men. Yet true actors and truly infamous ones we can without doubt call them.」
But, on the authority of the same Augustine in that very place, those men would incur no mark of infamy who, roused by longing to free their fatherland and by ardour to secure the common good, should clothe themselves in women's garments. Nay rather, their names ought to be celebrated by all their fellow-citizens with the highest applause of honour, and the authors of such great deeds ought to obtain from the commonwealth itself the better rewards of virtue. Now such rewards of the virtues are still more due to men and women when, out of zeal to protect virginity and religion, they take up garments not corresponding to their sex. Of this matter Ambrose sets forth two most celebrated examples, treating of the Christian virgin of Antioch. For when persecution was pressing hard against the Christians,
a holy virgin was seized, whom the impious tyrant ordered to be led to a brothel or else to sacrifice to the gods. But when she was already being held in the brothel, she had no hesitation at all about her religion, yet she trembled for her chastity. Therefore she said to herself: What shall we do this day? either a martyr, or a virgin? Meanwhile, having turned to God in prayer: Behold, a man terrible in the guise of a soldier burst in, who, having entered as though an adulterer, was suddenly changed and showed and proved himself the defender of her virginity. And that he might accomplish this more happily, and deceive all who had then come to the brothel to violate the virgin, the soldier clothed himself in women's garments; and the virgin, taking from the soldier the manly and military attire, flew forth from the snares.
The whole history of this affair, which had occurred rather recently in his own age, Ambrose illustrates in most learned commentaries, to which we refer our most wise readers. We nevertheless wished to advise our readers of Baronius, who, in his notes on the Martyrology at the twenty-eighth of April, was led by grave suspicion to judge that she was Theodora, a virgin of Alexandria, and that an error had crept into the manuscripts of Ambrose, and that in place of Alexandria the word Antioch had been substituted through the ignorance of scribes. Concerning which slip we have not dared to affirm anything, giving credence rather to the most eminent Cardinal Baronius, who compiled that Martyrology with the utmost zeal and labour.