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Cistercian clothing
The following anecdote is recounted
by Walter Map c. 1181-93:
The lord king, Henry II, of late
was riding as usual at the head of all the great concourse of his
knights and clerks, talking with Dom Reric, a distinguished monk
and an honourable man. There was a high wind; and lo! A white monk
was making his way on foot along the street and looked around, and
made haste to get out of the way. He dashed his foot against a stone
and
fell in front of the feet of the kings horse, and
the wind blew his habit right over his neck so that the poor man
was candidly exposed to the unwilling eyes of the lord king and
Reric. The king, that treasure-house of all politeness, feigned
to see nothing, but Reric said sotto voce, A curse on this
bare-bottom piety. I heard the remark and was pained that
a holy thing was laughed at, though the wind had only intruded where
it was rightfully at home. However, if spare diet and rough clothing
and hard work cannot tame them, and they must have ventilation too
to keep Venus at bay, let them go without their breeches and feel
the draught. I know that our flesh worldly and not heavenly
though it be does not need such defences: with us Venus,
apart from Ceres and Baccus, is cold: but perhaps the Enemy attacks
those more fiercely whom he knows to be more stoutly fenced in.
Still, the monk who tumbled down would have got up again with more
dignity had he had his breeches on.
[Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium
- Courtiers’ Trifles,
ed. and tr. M. R. James, rev. C. N. L. Brooke
and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983), p. 103.]
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