In Late Antiquity, as today, women’s veiling was a contentious topic. Early Christian churchmen wrote about it at length, exhorting women to cover and criticizing those they considered were not veiling appropriately. According to these writers, veils were an essential garment tied to Christian modesty and religious ideas about female submission to male authority. Modern scholarship has tended to side with these clergymen, often claiming that with the rise of Christianity came the social expectation that adult women cover their heads. However, veiling had been a part of life in the Mediterranean for centuries, and the frustration and frequency with which churchmen urged women to veil suggests that contemporary practices often diverged significantly from their expectations. This article examines veiling and head-covering as a complex social practice shaped by numerous intersectional and situational factors beyond religion, including status, practicality, fashion and social context. It explores a wide range of visual and material culture to illuminate the diversity of veiling beyond the diatribes of churchmen. Throughout, how we understand veiling in the past is brought into dialogue with scholarship on modern Islamic veiling to address biases towards veiled women and to find new ways of centring women’s experiences and everyday practices.

中文翻译：

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古代晚期的头巾与蒙头：意识形态、审美与实用之间

在古代晚期，就像今天一样，女性的头巾是一个有争议的话题。早期的基督教牧师对此进行了详细的论述，劝告女性遮盖面纱，并批评那些她们认为戴面纱不恰当的人。根据这些作家的说法，面纱是一种必不可少的服装，与基督教的谦虚和女性服从男性权威的宗教观念联系在一起。现代学术界倾向于支持这些神职人员，经常声称随着基督教的兴起，社会期望成年女性遮住头部。然而，几个世纪以来，戴面纱一直是地中海地区生活的一部分，而神职人员敦促妇女戴面纱的挫败感和频繁程度表明，当代的做法往往与他们的期望大相径庭。本文将头巾和头罩视为一种复杂的社会实践，由宗教以外的众多交叉和情境因素塑造，包括地位、实用性、时尚和社会背景。它探索了广泛的视觉和物质文化，以阐明超越牧师谩骂的面纱的多样性。自始至终，我们如何理解过去的头巾与现代伊斯兰头巾的学术对话，以解决对戴头巾妇女的偏见，并找到集中妇女经验和日常实践的新方法。