Annotation XXXIII

”Be not made sad, like the hypocrites.” — Matthew 6:16

On the dress of monks.

Augustine, in the second book On the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, chapter 19, writes some things which St. Thomas, in the Secunda Secundae, question 187, cites as spoken in the character of those who disparage the cheap and abject dress of the monastic profession. And these are they: “In this chapter it must most especially be observed that there can be boasting not only in the mere splendor and pomp of corporeal things, but also in their mournful squalor itself — and [boasting] the more dangerous, in that it deceives under the name of the service of God.” To these words of Augustine he [Aquinas] adds the testimonies of Jerome and Strabo; of whom the former [Jerome], writing to Nepotian, says: “Dark [drab] garments are to be shunned equally with white; finery and squalor are to be avoided in like manner, because the one [because] the one [drab garb] smacks of self-indulgence, the other [white] of vainglory. And Strabo, on that [verse] from the sixth chapter of the Apocalypse, “Behold a pale horse,” etc., says: “The devil, seeing that he can profit neither by open tribulations nor by open heresies, sends ahead false brethren, who under the habit of religion take on the nature of the black and red horse by perverting the faith.” St. Thomas says that by these authors the poor, unadorned, and lowly dress of monks — and of other pious men, who use abject clothing for the exercise of humility and penance, out of contempt of worldly glory, and that by their example they may turn others from the vanity of the age — is not disapproved; but that the hypocrisy, pride, and iniquity of those is condemned who delight in the filth and squalor of their garments, either to draw upon themselves the eyes and mouths of all, or to cover a wolfish mind under sheep’s clothing, to the ruin of those whom they desire to deceive.