The Veil and the Hair

The first letter to the Corinthians asks that, in the assembly at prayer, the woman have her head veiled and the man his head uncovered, with an appeal to the length of the hair. The passage is puzzling because it rests on the customs of a vanished world. To understand it, one must first know what these signs meant at the time.

The veil and the shaved head

In Corinth, the veil was the sign of the honourable woman. A respected woman covered her head in public; to appear unveiled in the assembly placed her, in everyone’s eyes, among women of ill repute. The shaved head, for its part, was a mark of infamy: slaves were shaved, and shearing branded the dishonour of the adulterous woman.

It is on this custom that the reasoning of the letter rests. A woman who prays unveiled places herself at the level of the one who has been shorn in shame; and since a shorn woman is dishonoured, let her rather cover her head: “If a woman will not veil herself, let her be shorn; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her wear a veil.” 1 Corinthians 11:6 The veil thus asked for is a sign of dignity, the very one that set apart the honourable woman.

The text then grounds this sign in nature itself, which already sets the man and the woman apart down to the hair: “Does not nature itself teach you that it is a disgrace for a man to wear long hair, but that it is a glory for a woman, for her hair is given to her as a covering?” 1 Corinthians 11:14-15 Long hair is the woman’s adornment and her natural veil; for the man, it was held to be a disgrace. Since nature already veils the woman with her hair, the veil she wears in worship prolongs that sign.

The image and the glory

The custom receives a deeper foundation, drawn from creation: “The head of every man is Christ, the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God.” 1 Corinthians 11:3 The Greek word rendered here as “head”, kephalē (κεφαλή), means first the head of the body, and through it the source: like the source of a river, it speaks of origin. The man is called the origin of the woman, because at the beginning Eve was taken from Adam. This order leaves intact the equal dignity of the two, for the text applies it also to God: the head of Christ is God, the Son receiving from the Father his eternal origin while being fully equal to him.

From this comes the word about glory: “A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man.” 1 Corinthians 11:7 “Glory” here means what manifests and makes shine forth: the man, created in the image of God, manifests God; the woman, taken from the man, manifests the man. In the assembly turned toward God, the man prays with head bare, because he bears directly the image of God; the woman veils the human glory of which she is the radiance, so that in prayer the glory of God alone may appear. The veil expresses this effacing of every human splendour before the Creator.

The text at once restores the balance with a word of reciprocity: “In the Lord, the woman is not without the man, nor the man without the woman; for as the woman was taken from the man, so the man is born through the woman, and all things come from God.” 1 Corinthians 11:11-12 Each is in turn the origin of the other, and both are equally made in the image of God.

A sign of authority, before the angels

The text finally names the veil with a surprising word: “A woman ought to have on her head a sign of authority, because of the angels.” 1 Corinthians 11:10 The Greek word rendered here as “sign of authority”, exousia (ἐξουσία), means power: literally, she bears an authority on her head. This authority is her own: the veil is the sign of the power granted to her to pray and to prophesy in the assembly. The text has recalled it above: the woman prays and prophesies there; the veil marks her dignity as one who takes part in worship, who stands and speaks before God in the midst of all.

There remains the most enigmatic motive: because of the angels. The angels attend the prayer of the Church, where the liturgy of earth joins that of heaven. Guardians of the order God has established in his creation, they are the witnesses of the assembly at prayer, and before them the bearing of worship honours that order: what men do in prayer unfolds under the gaze of heaven.

The principle and the custom

With these signs clarified, one can distinguish what remains from what passes away. The concrete form, the veil, the head covered or bare, the length of the hair, belonged to the usages of a time and a place: it then expressed dignity, modesty and the order received from God. These usages have changed, and the Church no longer imposes the veil as a law. The text itself did not make it an absolute rule: “If anyone is disposed to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the Churches of God.” 1 Corinthians 11:16

What the passage asks us to keep crosses the centuries: to honour God down to the body and its bearing, to receive the difference of man and woman as a gift of the Creator, and to hold them together turned toward Christ, in whom “there is neither male nor female, for you are all one.” Galatians 3:28