The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-07-22

wells, whether to cover the head only,
like the Spanish "mantilla, or the
face as well, like the modern Egyptian
"burka," was not general among either
the Greek or the Roman women of
those days. Roman priestesses, GER
tainly those of Vesta, wore wells, but
so, too, did their priests, as witness the
famous bronze head of Julius Caesar
in his character of POntifeX MaXimus.
The Greek women seem to have worl
anything that struck them as becom-
ing; but they usually went bareheaded.
In the Metropolitan museum there Is
a pretty terra Gotta ffgurine, showing
an Athenian woman with a very be-
coming broad-brimmed, untrimmed hal
But the idea that to appear in public
with the head unveiled is unwomaniy
seems to have been imported from Asia.
This Oriental sentiment was fostered
by Mohammed, and is, apparently,
stronger in the East to-day than it
was in st. Pauls time. One traveller
Russell-tellS of woman at Aleppo
who could not be induced to let male
physician examine her head for the
purpose of diagnosis, thereby affording
another strong argument in favor of
women physicians as missionaries in
East. But the women partisans of hat
less attendance at churc1 have this
much in their favor. looking at the
question from a woman'S-right stand
point-that, both from the drift of that
obnoxious chapter in First Corinthians,
and also from what can be gathered of
later primitive Christian tendencies,
this regulation about feminine head
covering was unquestionably part OF a
system intended to keep the fair sex
in a subordinate position, and not
merely an effort to enforce Oriental
ideas of delicacy.
The makers of King James Author
lied Version, being of the first gener-
alton of a married clergy in their coun-
try, very wisely shrouded the real, the
hideously arrogant assumption OF mas
culine superiority in l. Corinthlans, XII,
10, in unintelligible language. TO nave
power on her head" really means to
carry on her head the symbol OF au-
thority." The veil, which was the sign
of a husbands authority over MS VINE,
as appears in the Latin idtom, Dy winch,
when Balba married Caius she "donned
the yeir' for him, while Caius was said
to lead Balba"-into subsection, of
course. Small wonder that the Ebion-
ties of a later generation accused the
writer of the epistle of having become
an enemy to the female sex through
the daughter of a high priest at Jeru-
salem, whose rejection of his addresses
led to his abandoning Judaism for
Christianity, as he had formerly ADAM
doned Hellenism for Judaism. But this
is an incredible and malicious but OF
anti-Apostolic gossip.
The truth, undoubtedly is that Chris
tianity came upon the Roman world at
a time when the Romen women OF the
upper classes had attained degree or
freedom and no mean measure of So
cial if not political rights. They went
where they pleased, with faces, If not
heads, uncovered, in Rome at least
they were mistresses of their own prop
erty; they studied philosophy as deeply
and as freely as the men did; they even
kept up a woman's debating club on
scale of magnificence never approached
by our Sorosis, until a scene between
two ladies of the imperial family, which
took place at one OF the meetings,
obliged the emperor to suppress the
senate of women Such golngs-on
probably shocked the primitive follow
ers of the new creed, which, be IT al
WAYS remembered. came from the East,
and. as a natural consequence, the
teachers of this creed tended more TO
the extreme theory of female subordl-
nation, as against the equality OF the
sexes.
an Oriental by birth or education,
though his see was in Egypt-lays
down rules for the conduct of Christian
women which would aggravate any
American woman of these days be-
yond endurance. Clement was not
an exceptionally severe anti-gynae-
cist; he only reflected and form
ulated the current Christian dis
cipline of his day when he de-
clared that a woman must never go
away from home except to church, or,
in her husbands company. to visit the
sick, and never without her veil. ms
was mild in comparison with some of
the TRADES of Tertullian, the famous
apologist; he addresses the sex directly,
tells them collectively, we are the
devils gateway" and as good as says
that he fails to understand why they,
as a sex, are permitted to exist.
But there was reaction against this
violence. Contemporary with Tertui-
liam were the sect of the Quintilliani,
who were called, also derisively, the
Bread-and-C Cheese Heretics, because
they added cheese to bread in their
celebration of the eucharist. The
Quintilliani represent the gynaecist re-
action of those days at its greatest ex-
IRENE Among them women held the
office of priest, and even of bishop; it
was their custom to have the gospel
expounded at their services by a band
of seven virgins, carrying torches: they
gave special thanks in their public
prayers for Miriam the sister of Moses,
and for Eve, who, according to Tertul-
han, was the greatest bane of the hui
man race.
The action and reaction about this
point seem to have settled down after
those primitive days of persecution in
the rapidly growing cult of the Blessed
Virgin Mary and the institution of chiv-
airy. But in relation to this question
of the covered or uncovered head of
woman in a church, it is worth noting
that neither statue nor picture of the
Virgin with her head uncovered ap-
peared anywhere until the days of
Rafael, and then the uncovering of the
head-as in the Madonna della Sedia-
is more or less modified. And during
all this time, while Christianity grew
and took stronger hold upon Europe,
the use of the veil among women ap-
pears to have spread with 1t from
East to West. This is curiously and in
terestingly shown in any such series Of
costume-plates as that of Rohrbacher.
There it appears that. while the more
primitive veil became something very
like a cap or a Scotch "mutch," in
western Europe as early as the 18th
and 14th centuries, nothing like the
II 1t