The church, following the principle laid down by St. Paul, strongly opposed mixed marriages with the heathen; and the Fathers denounced them as dangerous and immoral. Cyprian regards them as a prostitution of the members of Christ.[803] Tertullian also designates them spiritual adultery.[804] Where conversion occurred after marriage, the Christian partner was exhorted, in the spirit of the apostolic counsel, to strive by gentleness and love to win the unbelieving companion to Christ. Thus Monica, the mother of Augustine, and Clotildis, the wife of Clovis, both brought their heathen husbands to embrace Christianity.
The rites and benedictions of the church were early invoked to give sanction to Christian marriage;[805] and doubtless in the dim recesses of the Catacombs, and surrounded by the holy dead, youthful hearts must have plighted their troth, and been the more firmly knit together by the common perils and persecutions they must share. Here, too, the wedded pair may have paced the silent galleries, by holy converse inspired with stronger faith and more fervent love. How sweet must discourse of heaven have been in those sunless
depths of earth! How thrilling those partings when before another meeting each might win a martyr’s crown.
When the church emerged from the Catacombs the marriage rites assumed a more festive character, and were frequently attended with nuptial processions, songs, music, and feasting. Some of the gilded glasses previously described seem to commemorate these occasions. Thus we occasionally find representations of the man and woman standing with clasped hands before the marriage altar, while Christ crowns the newly wedded pair. Sometimes the glass used in the marriage rite was immediately broken, as if to denote the transient nature of even the highest human bliss. The innocent festivities of these occasions gradually degenerated into convivial excesses; and, in conformity to heathen usages, were contaminated by licentiousness of speech and action unbecoming to Christian modesty. These abuses called for the strong denunciations of the Fathers and the early councils, and at length the clergy were forbidden to attend such festivals. The early Christians were required, in all their entertainments and festivals, by temperance,[806] by purity, by piety, to adorn the doctrines of the Gospel. Prayer hallowed their daily lives, and every act was done to the glory of God.
In their apparel and households the primitive believers were patterns of sobriety and godliness. The pomps and vanities of the world were renounced at their baptism. They eschewed all sumptuous and gaudy clothing as unbecoming the gravity and simplicity of the Christian character. Although many by
social rank were entitled to wear the flowing Roman toga, yet by most it was regarded as too ostentatious in appearance; and, disdaining all assumption of worldly honour, they wore instead the common pallium or cloak. They rejected also, as the epicurean enticements of a world the fashion whereof was passing away, the luxurious draperies, the costly cabinets and couches, the golden vessels and marble statuary that adorned the abodes of the wealthy heathen.
The strong instinct of the female mind to personal adornment was suppressed by religious convictions and ecclesiastical discipline; and Christian women cultivated rather the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit than the meretricious attractions of the heathen. “Let your comeliness be the goodly garment of the soul,” says Tertullian. “Be arrayed in the ornaments of the apostles and prophets, drawing your whiteness from simplicity, your ruddy hue from modesty, painting your eyes with bashfulness, your mouth with silence, implanting in your ears the word of God, fitting on your neck the yoke of Christ. Clothe yourself with the silk of uprightness, the fine linen of holiness, the purple of modesty, and you shall have God himself for your lover and spouse.”[807]
“Let woman breathe the odour of the true royal ointment, that of Christ, and not of unguents and scented powders,” writes Clement of Alexandria, warning the faithful against another heathen practice. “Let her be anointed with the ambrosial chrism of industry, and find delight in the holy unguent of the Spirit, and offer spiritual fragrance. She may not crown the living
image of God as the heathen do dead idols. Her fair crown is one of amaranth, which groweth not on earth, but in the skies.”[808] The simple and modest garb of the Christian matron is exhibited in many of the representations of oranti, or praying figures, in the chambers of the Catacombs. See one beautiful example from a sarcophagus in [Fig. 88].
With the corruption of the church and decay of piety under the post-Constantinian emperors came the development of luxury and an increased sumptuousness of apparel. The refined classic taste was lost, and barbaric pomp and splendour were the only expression of opulence. The mosaics in the vestibules of the more ancient basilicas, and an occasional representation from the Catacombs of the period of their latest occupation, illustrate the increased luxury of dress. The primitive simplicity has given place to many-coloured and embroidered robes. The hair, often false, was tortured into unnatural forms, and raised in a towering mass on the head, not unlike certain modern fashionable modes, and was frequently artificially dyed. The person was bedizened with jewelry—pendents in the ears, pearls on the neck, bracelets and a profusion of rings on the arms and fingers. St. Jerome inveighs with peculiar vehemence against the attempt to beautify the complexion with pigments. “What business have rouge and paint on a Christian cheek?” he asks. “Who can weep for her sins when her tears wash bare furrows on her skin? With what trust can faces be lifted to heaven which the Maker cannot recognize as his workmanship?”[809] The mosaic portrait of St. Agnes is richly