www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Looking for an article about Veils

Veils were NEVER worn in the among the Slavic peoples until they came to North America and copied the custom from the Latins.

Traditionally, in the Central Slavic lands and East Europe, an un-married girl was permitted to wear her hair braided and then covered with a mini-crown of coins, a wreath of flowers and coins or a wreath of yarn with coins attached. These all symbolized that she was a young girl who was elegible for marriage. It also showed the part of the dowery she was bringing with her and the shinyness was thought to reflect the evil glances of jealous girls in the village and to ward off evil.

On her wedding day, as part of the reception, her god-mother, along with her grandmothers and aunts removed this headpiece and braided her hair into a single plait which was then wound into a bun at the base of her head. Her mother then place one her head a "wedding cap" which signified that she was now an ADULT member of the community and was no longer a girl or a child. She never left her home without this "cap".

Depending on the locale, the women would cover this "cap" with various other styles of bonnets, kerchiefs, or wrappings which showed to visitors and other people in the village or town, exactly what her position in the village was: married, married with children, grandmother or widow.

I'm sure that Alice can tell us some of the customs from Greece concerning wedding traditions and traditional Greek dress for women.

I do have in my folk dress collection, a number of head coverings from various areas of Eastern Europe for the different stages in a woman's life. I also numerous photographs from the turn of the century showing women and young girls with these various head coverings. I recently acquired a wedding photo of a bride and groom from the village of JASYNA, circa 1932, in what was then Czecho-Slovakia but today is Ukraine. The bride is wearing a crow of fresh flowers studded with coins.

I have been researching traditional folk dress from Eastern Europe for over 25 years so I know a thing or 2 about the topic. I also work with a nationally and internationally know folk group that is dedicated to perpetuating the traditional folk culure of the Slavic peoples through music, song and dance.

You might also like to know that the idea of "lace veil" was limited to the countries of Italy, Spain and Portugal and was part of the traditional dress of the MARRIED women of these countries...

It was NOT "adopted" by the rest of the world until the late 1950's & 1960's.

mark

Dear Mark,

Thank you for the VERY interesting post!

I really don't have all that much knowledge about Greek costumes to share here.

I do know that the thick black veil worn by monastic women in Greek Orthodoxy was (and still is--in remote villages) also worn by widows...

In Christ,
Alice

Thanks Vie!

I think I will wear hats to church-- I also love pretty little victorian looking hats. I have a little velvet beret sort of thing.. bought it to wear for the March For Life trip in D.C. a couple of years ago. I always feel self-conscious with any type of hat, so maybe I should just get used to wearing them. Need to realize that it's not calling as much attention as I think it is.

A handful of women wear hats at my church, so I won't stand out and be distracting. But NO ONE wears a mantilla or babushka!

Thank you Mark...

apparently the whole idea of covering a woman's head is more of a cultural thing than Liturgical in both the east and west, but as the cultural connections died away, the Liturgical in the west lingered to die a slow death...

I had a specific article in mind when I started this quest and in that article I was looking for a specific point, but in reading the links and posts and articles that everyone has posted here, and the articles that other friends have sent me over the weeks, I have learned that we might have lost more to radical feminism and this quest for equality, than we were supposed to gain.

A friend wrote me that it used to be a big day in a young girl's life when she got to appear in public for the first time with her head covered...it was the public display of her transition from being a little girl to being a woman, from being a child to being an adult. It told the world that no longer would she need to be 'taken care of', but now she would be able to 'take care of others'. In first reading her letter I immediately thought of young boys going from shorts to long pants and laughed...

Then I read thru it again and with a bit of shock realized that young girls in most culturals today, but especially ours here, don't really go thru any type of transistion from chld to woman...there is no 'special dress code' any longer, I have seen even the littlest ones in tight little jeans, belly shirts and little stick on decorations that make it look like their navels are pierced. The old ways let people, especially males, know that now this girl could be looked at thru different eyes, as an object of love and desire with the purpose being marriage(no, I am not being naive and discounting lustful eyes that may have looked, but that's a different can of worms)...I have walked thru the halls of a middle school under construction while the kids were attending, and been sickened by the sight of construction workers stopping to stare at sixth graders, babies, dressed in heels and mini-skirts...the average sixth grader is about 11, 12...in some cultures, in some centuries, the age to be married, but the girls were raised in such a way that they were mature at that age(or should have been)...our average 11 and 12 year olds might dress the part and even talk the part, but they aren't ready to live the part.

How sad what we have lost...you can't close the barn door after the horses have escaped...in my search for the article I have come across sites by Christian women who have gone back to the old ways and are raising their daughters that way, and I commend them, but when a few generations have lost a tradition, a custom, especially one like that, how much can a few isolated families really do. The Amish women still keep the tradition and I believe the Mennonite as well...Orthodox and Hasid Jewish women do as well and of course Moslem women...but see how they are viewed...

Anyway...thank you all again for help,...I am waxing maudlin here...I look lousy in hats, as much as I love them, and terrible in babuska type coverings so I would be the first to balk if someone tried to bring it all back again. On the other hand, if all women had to wear them, I wouldn't look as funny... :rolleyes:

Vie

Dear Vie,

Thank you for your thoughts and your post!

(and for the record babushkas don't really look nice on many women, save, maybe, for some young girls!
AND...they are very uncomfortable...take it from someone who has to wear one when she visits a nearby monastery. I even felt like I had lost my hearing! )

Your sister in Christ,
Alice

Okay, I understand the explanation of women being vessels of life, but what about those who are to old to bear children or can'thave children. Why should they cover their heads?

Interestingly enough,The tradition of unmarried women not wearing veils but married women doing so sounds like it is based on Jewish traditions.

Indigo

Indigo,
there is more to being a 'vessel of life' than the actual bearing of a child. What of those who can't have children? Are they incapable of nuturing life, of cherishing life? Those who are past the age of childbearing? What of the life they might have borne, the life they continue to nuture in their grandchildren, or in the lives of those around them. There are the children of the womb, but there are also the children of the Heart and these children are held just as dear, for all that they weren't borne for nine months.

While you are right and the custom much resembles that which many sects of Judaism still practice to this day, I think the custom is one that has grown up in many cultures, independantly of each other. In India, the Arab countries, in Africa, even in North, Central and South America, history of the cultures shows that there has always been some custom that marks the ages of a woman's life differently. Most cultures a head covering seems to be the norm. Other cultures have body marks or types of jewelry.

Vie

Fascinating theme; thank you. There is a Gaelic Church in Scotland where all the women "have" to wear hats. Also the Amish and the modern sect of the Bruderhof have their women cover their heads.

Hi,
Vie, I agree with you about 'vessels of life" not always being biological. I recently read an article in the paper about veil wearing and the reason given was the "vessel of light" idea that I've always heard.

This morning I happened to attend a Tridentine Mass and most of the women wore nice veils, and the little girls were dressed like little girls with bows and ribbons in their hair, dresses and tights. I beleive they wear veils as a symbol of submission to Christ.

Peace,
Indigo

Yes; submission to Jesus. When we take our Vows ( I am a Nun) we talk of "being Veiled".