Around 1150, the theologian, composer, and abbess Hildegard of Bingen received a harsh letter from Tengswich, an abbess at another convent. Why, Tengswich wondered, did Hildegard’s nuns dress up in splendor on holy days? How could a holy person like Hildegard let the women under her care dress so immodestly, in bright white, with uncovered hair? Hildegard’s response turns the question of modesty on its head. Isn’t it only right, she says, for her nuns to wear “shining clothes” as an “illustrious sign” of their closeness with Christ? Clothing is no small thing, and sometimes a little extravagance is warranted.
Clothing was an important image for Hildegard, who highlighted its presence in myriad scriptural passages, from the dazzling white robes of Revelation to Joseph’s many-colored robe in Genesis. Clothing has the power to mark things as new, and there aren’t many examples better than Colossians 3. To understand what this epistle is saying here, we need a mind like Hildegard’s. A clothing metaphor lies at the root of this chapter. When the author advises readers to clothe themselves “with the new self,” the point is that our own transformation in Christ is like putting on new clothes.
Of course, in Hildegard’s day and in the early church, new clothes were no small matter. It was laborious to grow flax for linen or raise sheep for wool, laborious to spin yarn, to weave fabric, to sew. Colossae was an ancient hub for wool production, renowned for its extravagant deep-purple fabrics, which only the wealthiest people could afford. The Colossians receiving this letter knew firsthand how expensive and labor-intensive clothing was.
