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The Twelve Books of John Cassian on the Institutes of the Coenobia, and the Remedies for the Eight Principal Faults · Book I. Of the Dress of the Monks

Chapter IV

Page 273 of 1,144

Of the Tunics of the Egyptians.

They wear also linen tunics648 which scarcely reach to the elbows, and for the rest leave their hands bare, that the cutting off of the sleeves may suggest that they have cut off all the deeds and works of this world, and the garment of linen teach that they are dead to all earthly conversation, and that hereby they may hear the Apostle saying day by day to them: "Mortify your members which are upon the earth;" their very dress also declaring this: "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God;" and again: "And I live, yet now not I but Christ liveth in me. To me indeed the world is crucified, and I to the world."649

Notes

  1. 648

    Colobium (kolobion), a tunic with very short sleeves. Cf. Dorotheus (Migne, Patrol. Græca lxxxviii. 1631). To schema ho phoroumen kolobion esti, me hechon cheiridia, kai zone dermatine kai analabos kai koukoulion.

  2. 649

    , . ; . Cf. Sozomen l. c.: "They wore their tunics without sleeves in order to teach that the hands ought not to be ready to do evil."

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Volume 11, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (1890–1900). Public domain. Text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.