On this occasion my mistress was in her customary good humour as she reached St Sophia's. Passing through the line of penitents in the vestibule, who are cut off" from the Eucharist and may approach no nearer, she climbed the stairs and sat down next to the Lady Chrysomallo, in the front row of the gallery-seats, which were reserved for women. She leaned over the carved sill and began signalling merrily to her male friends in the nave below; for a great deal of intimate information can be exchanged thus with the aid of hand and kerchief. At St Sophia's, as at most fashionable churches, the sacred nature of the service is not taken overseriously: clothes and gossip provide the greatest interest in the gallery, and a buzz of political or religious argument from the nave invariably drowns the reading of the Scriptures. However, the singing of the eunuch choirmen is usually listened to with some respect, and nearly everyone joins in the chanting of the General Confession and other prayers; and if the sermon is being preached by an energetic preacher it is often greeted with appreciative clapping and laughter or with earnest hissing. The Eucharist is dispensed at the conclusion, and then the blessing spoken, and out we go again.' Against such civilized and sociable Christian functions it would be foolish to bear any grudge,' my mistress used to say – 'they are merely a quiet variety of the Theatre performances.'
The preacher on that day was a bishop whom we had not heard before, but who was known to be greatly admired as a theologian by Justinian. He held some Italian sec or other, and was good-looking in rather a foppish way. He took for his text the verses in the first epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, which lay down that men should wear their hair short and not pray with their heads covered; but that women should wear their hair long and not pray with their heads uncovered. He dwelt most gravely on the verse:' For if a woman be not covered, let her also be shorn'; which was to say that if a woman attended service in a church without a head-covering she should be punished by having her hair clipped close to her head. The audience settled down to an entertaining homily, though not without nervous looks on many faces, male and female. For there was many a woman there whose head-covering consisted of no more than a spray of jewels, and many a man whose hair was cut in the Hunnish mode then fashionable – clipping the front part off as far back as the temples and leaving the back hair to grow down the shoulders. What if the Emperor or Empress should be persuaded by this bishop to take severe steps against the law-breakers? Nevertheless, it was not these people whom the Bishop intended to denounce: for the sermon, most illogically, was directed against women who wore wigs. As though a wig were not a head-covering of the most complicated and effective sort!
He started gently in a musical voice with general thoughts on the subject of women's hair, appreciatively quoting the pagan poets of both languages – to make it quite clear to us that he was a man of polite education, not an ignorant, narrow-minded, monastery-bred preacher. He cited Ovid as having said this, and Meleager that, in praise of a fine head of hair. Nor were these praises anti-scriptural, he pointed out: for the Apostle Paul himself, in the very passage from which the text was derived, had written: 'If a woman have long hair it is a glory to her.' And in praising length the Apostle no doubt meant to praise strength and glossiness, for no hair that is not strong or glossy can grow to commendable length. 'But,' he said, putting tremendous emphasis on the word, 'But, during any religious ceremony and on any but the most intimate private occasions, this long, strong, glossy, beautiful hair must be decently covered, out of respect for the angels.'
