The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the First Epistle to the Corinthians
It should be noticed that, although Theodosius (Codex Theod. lib. 27, de Epis. et Cler.) forbade virgins to be shorn in the West, that is to say, younger women not living within the walls of a monastery, but wishing to profess a religious life of chastity in the world, his reason was to prevent scandal, which would be caused if, as sometimes was the case, they happened to fall away into the ordinary secular life. This actually happened in the very same year that this law was passed by Theodosius, as Baronius has well pointed out ( Annals , a.d. 390). Sozomen, too (lib. vii. c. 26), gives the same reason for its being passed. A young matron at Constantinople , and of noble birth, and a deaconness, had been, it would seem, seduced by a deacon ; and when, according to custom, by the order of her confessor she was making a public confession of certain sins, she proceeded to confess also this sin of fornication to the great scandal of the people ; and because of this Nectarius abolished public confession and the office of public penitentiary. Still it has ever been the common practice of the Church that virgins, when taking vows of religion, should be shorn. S. Jerome (Ep. 48) says that in Egypt and Syria women who had dedicated themselves to God were accustomed to cut off their hair. He says: “ It is the custom of the monasteries in Egypt and Syria , that both virgin and widow who have vowed themselves to God , and have renounced and trodden under foot all the delights of the world, should offer their hair to be cut off, and afterwards live , not with head uncovered , which is forbidden by the Apostle , but with their heads both tied round and veiled.” Palladius (in Lausiaca) is our authority for saying that the Tabennesiotae, an order of sacred virgins founded by S. Pachomius in obedience to the command of an angel, did the same. Moreover, S. Basil (in Reg. Monach. ) prescribes, that at the very beginning of the monastic life the head should be shaven, for he says that this well becomes him who is mourning for his sins.
Ver. 7. — For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, inasmuch as he is the image and glory of God. This is a hendiadys, for man is the image of the glory of God, or the glorious image of God, in whom the majesty and power of God shine forth most clearly. He is placed on the topmost step in nature, and is as it were God’s vicegerent, ruling everything. This is the major of a syllogism of which the minor is : but the glory of God must be manifested, the glory of man hidden. Therefore, since woman is the glory of the man, the man of God, it follows that woman should be veiled, that the man should not. S. Anicetus (Ep. ad Episc. Gallia) takes this verse of the Apostle chiefly of men in the ranks of the clergy, and of priests in particular, who, in obedience to S. Paul, ought not only to have their heads uncovered, but also a tonsure in the shape of a crown, as S. Peter had (Bede, Hist. Ang. lib. v. c. 23, and Greg, of Tours, de Glor. Conf. c. xxvii.), to represent Christ’s crown of thorns and the contumely endured by S. Peter and his fellow-Apostles, from which they expect a crown of glory in the heavens.
It should be remarked that in the Old Testament the high-priest offered sacrifices with bare feet and covered head, i.e., wearing his mitre (Exod. xxviii. 37), but in the New Testament the priests offer the sacrifice of the Mass with their feet shod and with uncovered head. Epiphanius says (Hæres. 80) that, in the New Testament, Christ, who is our Head, is conspicuous and manifest to us, but was veiled and hidden from the Jews in the Old Law. However, the Apostle is evidently referring here to all men in general, not to the clergy only.
It is not contrary to this precept of the Apostle for our priests, when they celebrate, to use the amice among the other vestments, for they do not cover the head with it while sacrificing, but only use it round the opening in the chasuble (Rupert, de Div . Off. lib. i. c. 10). The amice is not used, then, to cover the head, but to represent the ephod of the high-priest under the Old Law, as Alcuin and Rabanus say, or to signify the veil with which the Jews bound the eyes of Christ (S. Matt. xxvi. 67). Cf. Horn. Soto, lib. iv. dist. 13, qu. 2, art. 4, and Hugh Vict. de Sacr. lib. ii. c. 4.
But S. Paul wishes to abolish the heathen custom, first instituted, say Plutarch and Servius, by Æneas, of sacrificing and making supplication to their gods with veiled head. Tertullian (in Apol.) remarked this distinction between Christians and heathen, and Varro (de Ling. Lat. lib. iv.) records that the Roman women, when sacrificing , had their heads veiled in the same way.
But the woman is the glory of the man. Woman was made of man to his glory, as his workmanship and image; therefore she is subject to him, and should be veiled, in token of her subordination.
The woman, that is the wife, is the glory of the man, his glorious image, because God formed Eve out of the man, in his likeness, so that the image might represent the man, as a copy the model. This image is seen in the mind and reason, inasmuch as the woman, like the man, is endowed with a rational soul, with intellect, will, memory, liberty, and is, equally with the man, capable of every degree of wisdom, grace, and glory. The woman, therefore, is the image of the man, but only improperly ; for the woman, as regards the rational soul, is man’s equal, and both man and woman have been made in the image of God ; but the woman was made from the man, after him, and is inferior to him, and created like him merely.
Hence the Apostle does not say that “ the woman is the image of the man,” but only “the woman is the glory of the man.” The reason is no doubt the one that Salmeron has pointed out, that woman is a notable ornament of man, as given to him for a means to propagate children and govern his family, and as the material over which he may exercise his jurisdiction and dominion. For man’s dominion not only extends to inanimate things and brute animals, but also to rational beings, viz., to women and wives.
Vers. 8, 9. — For the man is not of the woman . . . but the woman for the man. By two reasons he proves that the woman is the glory of man as her head — (1.) that woman is of later date than man, produced from him, and consequently man is the source and principle from which woman sprang. (2.) She was created to be a help to the man, the sharer of his life, and the mother of his children. As, then, man is the beginning from which, so is he the end for which woman was made. Hence the woman is the glory of the man, and not vice versa .
Ver. 10. — For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels . There is no good authority for reading “ veil ” instead of “power,” as some do. We should observe : (1.) Power denotes here the authority, right, or rule of the man over the woman, not of the woman herself. The reference is to Gen. iii. 16. (2.) Power , by metonymy, signifies here the symbol of the man’s power, the veil which the woman wears on her head to signify her subjection to her husband’s power, and to denote that the man, as it were, is enthroned upon and holds dominion over her head. Power here, then, is used with an active meaning with regard to the man, with a passive in regard to the woman ; for a veil is worn by one who reverences the power of another. As a bare and unconstrained head is a sign of power and dominion, so when veiled it is a sign that this power of his is as it were veiled, fettered, and subdued to another. Hence Tertullian (de Cor. Mil. c. xiv.) calls this covering , “The burden of their humility,” and (de Vel. Virg. c. xvii.) “their yoke.” S. Chrysostom calls it “The sign of subjection;” the Council of Gangra (sess. xvii.), “The memorial of subjection.” (3.) From this covering it was that, by the Latins, women are said nubere , that is, caput obnubere , when they pass into the power of a husband. On the other hand, in the case of a man, a cap was the badge of the freedman, as Livy says at the end of lib . 45. Hence slaves who were to be enrolled as liable to military service, were said to be called “ to the cap,” that is, to liberty.
Because of the angels . 1. The literal sense is that women ought to have a covering on the head out of reverence to the angels ; not because angels have a body, and can be provoked to lust, as Justin, Clement, and Tertullian thought — this is an error I exposed in the notes to Gen. vi. — but because angels are witnesses of the honest modesty or the immodesty of women, as also of their obedience or disobedience. So Chrysostom, Theophylact, Theodoret, S. Thomas, Anselm.
2. Clement ( Hypotypos , lib. ii.) understands by “angels,” good and holy men.
3. Ambrose, Anselm, and S. Thomas take it to mean priests and Bishops, who, in Rev. ii., are called angels, and who might be provoked to lust by the beauty of women with uncovered heads. Hence Clement of Alexandria (Pæd. lib. ii. c. 10) thinks that this bids them cover, not merely their heads, but also their forehead and face, as we see the more honourable do in church. But the first meaning is the most literal and pertinent.