The lay sisters of the community under consideration wear a blue habit and a white cap with flaps. Some orders, in addition to the white cap, wear a plain band round the forehead over it, which is called a frontal, and is seen in the dress of Henry II’s time. (See Figures [131] and [133].)
Professed sisters wear a wedding ring on the third finger of their right hand. The white outdoor stiffened hoods often stand right up from the head in a very striking way, and sometimes no veils are worn. Some of the caps, which are made in one piece with the collar, are fastened under the chin by two strings, and the goffered edges of the collar recall the bands of the Stuart period.
[XXI]
SUNDAY CLOTHES
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SUNDAY CLOTHES—THE WEARING OF HATS IN CHURCH BY LADIES
Sunday clothes are a time-honoured institution, though it is a sign of the times that many now make no difference between their weekday costume and that which they wear on the day of rest, or if they do, they only put on garments which are appropriate to the relaxations in which they are accustomed to indulge. St. Jerome and St. Clement both exhorted the early Christian worshippers to wear a special dress for worship, and the Jews in their synagogues put on a vestment called a talith, which is used by the whole of the congregation as well as by the officiating minister.
We quote the following passage from St. Clement[29] because it deals with the question of women having their heads covered while at church: “The wife and the husband should take their way unto the church, in seemly apparel, with unaffected gait, and speech refrained; having love unfeigned; pure in body and pure in heart; fitly decked for prayer to God. And this further let the woman have: let her wholly cover her head (unless perchance she be at home), for so dressed she will have respect and be withdrawn from gazing eyes. And if thus with modesty, and with a veil, she covereth her own eyes, she shall neither be misled herself, nor shall she draw others, by the exposure of her face, into the dangerous path of sin. For this willeth the Word; seeing that it is meet for the woman that she pray with covered head.... But then so as they, who are joined to Christ, adorn themselves, in a more solemn fashion, for assemblies of the church, even such should they ever be, even so be fashioned, all the days of their life. ‘To be, not seem to be,’ let that be their watchword; gentle, reverent, full of holy love, at one time not less than at another.
“But it is not so, indeed. Somehow doth it come about, that, with change of place, they change both their habit and their manners; even as the polypus is said to change each one his colour to the semblance of the rock whereby he dwells.”