[Ansteorra] Veiling

[John Atkinson]

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 1:51 PM, Maria Buchanan <scarlettmb at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> You MUST be talking about an Orthodox Catholic church.  I have never heard of a RC church in America denying communion to a woman who didn't have her hair covered.

It's not a rule for the Orthodox either.

> I probably should have mentioned that earlier.  I was raised RC not Orthodox.  They are different churches.  Also Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox and Ukranian Orthodox are all different churches - three different versions of the Orthodox church.

Pardon me while I ding about slightly. . . Different versions?  Only
if you are considering music and language issues.  Same-same
otherwise.

Speaking of which, let me address that for the Orthodox.  A lot
depends on precisely how conservative that particular parish
is--almost all the older women would have their hair covered, and many
of the younger do it as a personal expression of piety.  There's not,
at least in the parishes I attended, any pressure other than a little
peer pressure.  Of course, a Greek grandmother's idea of 'a little
peer pressure' can be a little .  . . unsubtle

However, to veer sharply back to a discussion of Period cultures, I
can pretty much say that for the East, the only time you see an adult
woman without a head covering depicted in art, would be:

Young women/girls
dancers/acrobats/actors/prostitutes (these categories blur
considerably in Byzantine urban culture)
Empresses (who wear crowns)
Depictions of rural peasant young women doing manual labor for which
head coverings would be impractical.

Our written evidence supports this conclusion pretty strongly as well.

Certainly at a formal event, to include a religious service, pre-1600,
any woman barring an Empress wearing a crown, would have their heads
covered anywhere in Eastern Europe.

Ioannes Dalassenos
-- 
"Thousands of Sarmatians, Thousands of Franks, we've slain them again
and again.  We're looking for thousands of Persians."
--Vita Aureliani