these _Studies_.

Even during the Christian era the impulse to adopt nudity, often
with the feeling that it was an especially sacred practice, has
persisted. The Adamites of the second century, who read and
prayed naked, and celebrated the sacrament naked, according to
the statement quoted by St. Augustine, seem to have caused little
scandal so long as they only practiced nudity in their sacred
ceremonies. The German Brethren of the Free Spirit, in the
thirteenth century, combined so much chastity with promiscuous
nakedness that orthodox Catholics believed they were assisted by
the Devil. The French Picards, at a much later date, insisted on
public nakedness, believing that God had sent their leader into
the world as a new Adam to reestablish the law of Nature; they
were persecuted and were finally exterminated by the Hussites.

In daily life, however, a considerable degree of nakedness was
tolerated during mediaeval times. This was notably so in the
public baths, frequented by men and women together. Thus Alwin
Schultz remarks (in his _Hoefische Leben zur Zeit der
Minnesaenger_), that the women of the aristocratic classes, though
not the men, were often naked in these baths except for a hat and
a necklace.

It is sometimes stated that in the mediaeval religious plays Adam
and Eve were absolutely naked. Chambers doubts this, and thinks
they wore flesh-colored tights, or were, as in a later play of
this kind, "apparelled in white leather" (E.K. Chambers, _The
Mediaeval Stage_, vol. i, p. 5). It may be so, but the public
exposure even of the sexual organs was permitted, and that in
aristocratic houses, for John of Salisbury (in a passage quoted
by Buckle, _Commonplace Book_, 541) protests against this custom.

The women of the feminist sixteenth century in France, as R. de
Maulde la Claviere remarks (_Revue de l'Art_, Jan., 1898), had no
scruple in recompensing their adorers by admitting them to their
toilette, or even their bath. Late in the century they became
still less prudish, and many well-known ladies allowed themselves
to be painted naked down to the waist, as we see in the portrait
of "Gabrielle d'Estrees au Bain" at Chantilly. Many of these
pictures, however, are certainly not real portraits.

Even in the middle of the seventeenth century in England
nakedn