One of the great monarchs of Christendom was the pious King of France, St. Louis IX. Reigning from 1226 until his death in 1270 during the Eighth Crusade, St. Louis was a model of Christian chivalry whose virtuous reign set the standard for Christian kingship in the 13th century.
It is not Louis’s reign we are concerned with here, however, but his observations on the matter of propriety of dress as it relates to one’s station in life. It seems that Catholics are perpetually disputing about dress: what is appropriate for Mass, what is modest attire for various occasions, pants vs. dresses for women, and much more. The secular world seems equally confused. Nobody seems to have any propriety in appropriate dress. We see the most debauched rappers loaded down in ostentatious displays of gold while billionaires go about in casual wear trying to convince everyone they are “just one of the boys.”
There is an interesting anecdote from St. Louis’s life that offers us helpful guidance on this matter, especially relating to how much is too much when it comes to dress. We read in Jean de Joinville’s Life of St. Louis that at Whitsunday the saintly French king happened to be feasting with his knights at Corbeil. A dispute arose between Joinville, the king’s chief steward, and some other knights over a matter of the propriety of certain kinds of dress. Joinville relates that a knight chastised him for being dressed more richly than the king himself. Joinville relates:
One Whitsunday the saintly king happened to be at Corbeil, where all the knights had assembled. He had come down after dinner in the court below the chapel, and was standing at the doorway talking to the Count of Bretagne, when Master Robert de Sorbon came to look for me, and taking a hold of the hem of my mantle, led me towards the king. So I said to Master Robert: “My good sir, what do you want with me?” He replied: “I wish to ask you whether, if the king were seated in this court and you went and sat down at a bench, at a higher place than he, you ought to be severely blamed for doing so?” I told him I ought to be. “Then,” he said, “you certainly deserve a reprimand for being more richly dressed than the king, since you are wearing a fur-trimmed mantle of fine green cloth, and he wears no such thing.”
Robert’s gripe was no mere hypothetical; to dress better than the king could be taken as a grave insult to the royal dignity. Joinville, however, protests his right to dress richly:
“Master Robert,” I answered him, “I am, if you’ll allow me to say so, doing nothing worthy of blame in wearing green cloth and fur, for I inherited the right to such dress from my father and mother. But you, on the other hand, are much to blame, for though both your parents were commoners, you have abandoned their style of dress, and are now wearing finer woolen cloth than the king himself.” Then I took hold of the skirt of his surcoat and of the surcoat worn by the king, and said to Master Robert, “See if I am not speaking the truth.”
At this point the King St. Louis himself got involved in the dispute, along with his two sons, taking first one side, then the other, in a discussion about the propriety of clothing, especially among men of authority and high rank and how much is too much and what is dignified versus what is just gaudy. In the end, St. Louis eventually takes the side of Joinville, admitting that it is right for a man of rank to dress according to his rank, and that it is not fitting for him to dress lower than his station out of some misguided sense of humility. He concludes with this advice:
As the Seneschal [Joinville] rightly says, you ought to dress well, and in a manner suited to your condition, so that your wives will love you all the more and your men have more respect for you. For, as a wise philosopher has said, our clothing and our armor ought to be of such a kind that men of mature experience will not say that we have spent too much on them, nor younger men say that we have spent too little.
St. Louis is advocating moderation in clothing, neither spending too much money on clothing that it is ostentatious nor spending so little that one looks meager. But notice that moderation for St. Louis is governed by station in life. Always dress with moderation, but “in a manner suited to your condition.” A prince or prelate or person in authority does not exercise moderation by abandoning the dress and symbolic vesture of that authority. A man must dress according to his station, “so that your wives will love you all the more and your men have more respect for you.” This is a statement about respect; the implication is that respect is diminished when a man does not dress according to his station.
Moderation must always be exercised, but St. Louis’ point is that moderation looks different for those in different stations in life. Louis does not insist on an absolute universal standard of dress; he insists on moderation relative to station in life. It is proper for a wealthy man to display his wealth through his clothing. It is proper for a laborer to go about in the clothing befitting a laborer. Louis’s statement that “men of mature experience will not say that we have spent too much on them, nor younger men say that we have spent too little” displays exceptional wisdom—men of maturity are experienced enough to see through facades, and we must therefore be aware that ostentation will be quickly (and disapprovingly) spotted by the wise. The young, on the other hand, are easily impressed by appearances; in moderating our dress, we should not go so far that the young despise our appearance.
If virtue is the mean between extremes as the ancient philosophers teach, then St. Louis wisely locates the virtue of moderation in dress as the mean between the value judgments of the young and the old, as representative of the balance between greatness and humility.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
