BAYLE'S DICTIONARY.

DRESS.

(Female tenacity, in regard to.)

THOMAS CONECTE, a monk of the order of the Carmelites, born in Britanny, was burnt at Rome for a Heretic, in the year 1434, after he had been followed by the people as the greatest preacher of his time. Having been much admired in his own country, he left the convent of Rennes, and went into Flanders. He acquired such a reputation there by his preaching, that one cannot sufficiently express the honour that was done him in all the places that he went through, nor the concourse of people that came to his sermons. He declaimed vehemently against the vices of the clergy, and against the luxury of women, especially against their head-dresses, which were of such a prodigious height, that the highest top-knots now are but dwarfs to them. In those days women wore a rich high ornament on the head, which they called "hennins," and the women of the Netherlands dressed themselves with it. Mr. John Juvenal des Ursins (who lived in those times) says that, notwithstanding the wars of France (he speaks of the time of Charles VI) the ladies were excessive in their dress, and wore wonderfully high and broad horns, having on each side ears so large, that it was impossible for them to come

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through a door; which I believe were the hennins of Flanders; for those superfluities are quickly spread all over the world among women. They were about an ell long, and as sharp as steeples, with long crapes, set off with rich fringes, hanging down behind their backs like standards. This preacher was so angry with these head-dresses, that he used to inveigh most bitterly against them, abusing the ladies at a strange rate for wearing those hennins as he called them; and to make them more odious to the people, he gave some small presents to little children, wherever he preached, to cry out and hoot at them. The little children were so well taught, that whenever any women came to hear the sermons of brother Thomas, they cried out against their hennins as loud as ever they could, till they pulled them off, or went away; and then, they would run after and hoot at them; nay, some would throw stones at them, which occasioned a great deal of disorder; for some great ladies were very much abused by these children, to whom the preacher granted many pardons for their hootings, pretending to have a power to do so. This annoyance lasted so long, that the ladies durst not appear in public, and were forced to come to brother Thomas's sermons in a disguise, with a linen bead dress, as ordinary women. He reformed this excess, and obliged the ladies to dress themselves modestly; but it was not so much by the force of the reasons wherewith he represented the evangelical duties to them, as by exhorting the boys to insult the women that would not reform themselves, and therefore, as soon as he left the country, they put on their head-dresses again, with higher toppings than ever, as it were to make themselves amends for their lost time. It may be said, that they only bowed down their heads like a bulrush, which is the emblem of a repentance that lasts no longer than a day that is designed for an ordinary fast. But Paradin made use of another comparison, that seems

yet more proper to me. These are his words: "No more hennins were to be seen, wherever brother Thomas went, such was his hatred against them. This was useful for some time, till that preacher went away from the before mentioned countries. But after his departure, the ladies lifted up their horns again, and did like the snails, which when they hear any noise, pull in their horns, but when the noise is over, suddenly lift them again higher than before. So did the ladies; for the hennins were never larger, more pompous, and magnificent, than after the departure of brother Thomas. Thus we see what it is to be obstinate against the obstinacy of some persons.

Whilst this is printing,* the gazettes inform us, that at the court of France, a little word spoken incidentally by the king, has been more effectual against the extraordinary height of head-dresses, than all the eloquence of the preachers. They have, for the space of twelve or fifteen years, cried out in vain against that part of women's luxury; they have attacked that colossus with all the figures of rhetoric, supported by the most solid arguments of religion, and instead of overthrowing it, or at least breaking some part of it, they have seen it increase monthly. They saw a new kind of amphitheatre round about their pulpits, which would have been very regular, if women of the same condition had sat down in the same ranks, and if the ranks had been less distant from the preacher, according as the top-knots exceeded each other; but, because places are not distributed according to that proportion, the amphitheatre had no symmetry. It is therefore better to compare this with a wood of lofty trees, wherein those that reach nearer the clouds are mixed with those that do not reach so high. However it be, the preachers did not fight absent enemies; they had a full sight of them, and though they approached to

* In the beginning of October, 1699.

the very mouth of their cannon, and in the very face. of their thunder-bolts, yet they increased and multiplied. Their two-edged sword struck and cut, but the effect it produced was like the labour of a gardener that prunes a tree; his strokes made it greater and fairer; whereas the efficacy of the royal word has been so quick and powerful, that it has almost in one day levelled those proud mountains even with the ground. Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus Nigræ feraci frondis in Algido, Per damna, per cædes, ab ipso Ducit opes animumque ferro.

HORAT. Od. IV. lib. IV. ver. 57, et seq. As soon as the women heard, I will not say a prohibition or some threatening, but only a hint of dislike, they laboured all night on that reformation, and the next day they appeared before the monarch in another dress. The reformation made a surprising progress; it passed from the court to the city; and because it would be, they say, like rusticity and meanness not to conform to it, there is good reason to believe that, in a few months, there will remain no footsteps of the fashion that has lasted so long. This shews that, if crowned heads knew their strength in that respect, or if they would make use of it, they would do more with a word, than all the preachers and confessors with a multitude of words.

To return to Thomas Conecte; he burnt superfluous clothes, tables, dice, cards, &c.; and let nobody see him but in the pulpit. It was a prudent thing; for he might perhaps have forgotten himself in familiar discourses, which would have lessened the great opinion people had of him. Having made a sufficient stay in the Netherlands, he went into Italy, and reformed the order of the Carmelites, at Mantua, not without meeting with some opposition. From Mantua he went to Venice, where he was very much taken notice of; for the ambassadors of the republic