Thursday, July 16, 2009

Immodest dress and the Vatican enforcers...


Funny!

Nowhere on the planet today is modest dress enforced anymore - or at least not to this degree.

Arrive at St. Peter's Basilica or the Sistine Chapel and you will see the enforcers - they are young male employees who instruct the women to cover up before they can enter. Some ladies buy scarves and this is the scene.

In the Divine Comedy as Dante makes his way in Canto XXIII of Purgatory we read of Forese who inveighs bitterly against the immodest dress of their countrywomen of Florence:

"When from the pulpit shall be loudly warn'd
The unblushing dames of Florence, lest they bare
Unkerchief'd bosoms to the common gaze,
What savage women hath the world e'er seen,
What Saracens, for whom there needed scourge
Of spiritual or other discipline."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,
I really enjoy your blog. I just started my own blog. Could you add me to your blog-roll as I'm doing some promo?

I just completed my first degree in Theology. My dissertation was on the Eucharistic theology of Ratzinger. I'm starting an MA in September. Good luck with your studies.
Dan
http://apostolate-of-the-laity.blogspot.com/

Hilary Jane Margaret White said...

Other places do too. The Benedictine Abbey at Mission BC has a sign on the door that says no shorts, no halter tops or tank tops on women and no t-shirts on men.

Not bad for an otherwise quite "liberal" establishment.