1813: A Sermon upon the Masculine Soul of the Church: A Tract In Favour of Excessive Ornament
By Right Reverend Lord John Mallard, Bishop of Ducks-on-Ponds
My beloved flock—such a charming expression, for it implies both innocence and shearing—today I propose to preach on the sacred importance of finery. The text, I think, is from the newly published book by my dear friend (and sometime rival in the matter of millinery), Canon Hildebrand Vellacourt: On the Masculine Soul of the Church: A Tract in Favour of Excessive Ornament. A book which I consider neither excessive nor masculine enough, though it glitters with promising indiscretions. The Canon writes, “The Almighty is a decorator, for He framed the lilies and feathered the heron.” To which I add, He also gilded the peacock’s derrière and invented pomegranates merely to prove that velvet exists in nature. Who are we to be less flamboyant than creation itself?
Now, there are those among you—and I see them, with buttons polished to Protestant severity—who mutter that ornament enfeebles the Church. They say the cassock must hang plain as a pauper’s conscience, that the altar must blush no brighter than the blood of Christ, and that only poverty of style is piety of spirit. But I say unto you: the true sin lies not in the mirror, but in refusing to look into one. For you see, dignity and decoration are not adversaries but identical twins, only ever confused by those who cannot tell a chasuble from a bedsheet.
Saint Paul may have admonished women to cover their heads in church, but he gave not one prescription for the sleeves of bishops. And rightly so. For faith, my friends, requires the sleeve to be as capacious as the imagination. One cannot lift the Host with a cuff undistinguished by lace; one cannot, in good conscience, interpret the ineffable without a little shimmer. The soul trembles at simplicity—it only truly sings when clothed.
I recall the late Bishop of Bath, that glorious dandy of devotion, proclaiming at Salisbury in ’07 that “the plain cassock is the devil’s apron.” He wore, you may remember, the famous cope designed by Miss Lucasta Vane of Brighton, embroidered with silver grapes and real mother-of-pearl Jesuses. A chronic offence to the Puritans, and yet the only sermon he ever gave that I remember word for word. One must look splendid to be memorable; it is theological physics.
It is often argued that Jesus wore rags. True enough, but let me remind you, my dear brethren, that His heavenly wardrobe quite outdoes ours all. Consider Revelation 1: “His head and His hairs were white like wool, His eyes were as flame of fire, and His voice as the sound of many waters.” This is not the description of a minimalist. Our Lord is dressed for the opera eternal, and the angels but His stagehands.
As I walked the streets this week—sooty, enterprising London, always polishing its vices—I saw the shopmnan of Messrs. Needham & Wicks unpacking golden braids for military uniforms. I asked him, “For which regiment are these?” He replied, “For the 58th, my lord, going to Portugal.” I sighed, “So men will die gorgeously.” If a soldier may perish in glory, the least we clergy can do is live ornamentally.
The critics say ornament corrupts virtue. I counter that ornament contains virtue, arrests it, displays it, flatters it into visibility. Strip away the splendour, and you have but an undershirt of belief—useful, perhaps, but miserable to parade in. Even the lilies of the field, that sermonette of natural modesty, were not content to remain merely green: they blossom with a kind of botanical impertinence, each one shouting, “Observe me, or I shall wither unappreciated!”
My friend, Lady Aspasia Fanshawe—author of Ecclesiastical Embroidery as a Spiritual Exercise—declares that every stitch is a prayer. I have no proof to the contrary. When one threads a needle with gold, does it not gleam like grace? We pretend humility is in the heart, but in truth it is in the hem.
If the Church is to retain her charm, she must become what she denies: a theatre of salvation. Religion is not a science but an art, and art requires costume. The saints understood this. St. Sebastian, that loveliest martyr of muscle and arrow, understood exposure as prophecy. St. Teresa swooned because she knew ecstasy demands choreography. Even dear Thomas More wore his conscience like a brooch.
Ah, my listeners, if only reformers would learn the arithmetic of attraction! A gilded altar wins more souls than a sermon on economy. A polished chalice reflects Heaven far better than any pamphlet. Even Voltaire admitted (I think he was jesting, though it was one of his better jests) that “faith is an agreement between the perfume and the pulse.”
There is no gracelessness like austerity. We are not called to be simple—we are called to be sublime. I want the Church to dazzle, to intoxicate, to make the sceptic’s eye water with envy. Let every cope be a catechism; let every procession be a parade of Paradise. When next you enter this cathedral, I wish you to imagine it not as the vestibule of repentance, but as the drawing-room of God, upholstered forever in light.
And if any dour-faced reformer complains that your bishop has mistaken piety for peacocking, tell him this: the Lord who made the rainbow has already forgiven me my taste.
Now, beloved flock, my sermon draws to its close, as do my patience and my powder. Go forth, therefore, and love excess. Remember Canon Vellacourt’s doctrine: “To embellish is to believe twice.” Believe devotedly, and please—dress for the occasion.
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