te them to sin. And if indeed they adorn themselves
with this intention of provoking others to lust, they sin mortally;
whereas if they do so from frivolity, or from vanity for the sake of
ostentation, it is not always mortal, but sometimes venial. And the
same applies to men in this respect. Hence Augustine says (Ep. ccxlv
ad Possid.): "I do not wish you to be hasty in forbidding the wearing
of gold or costly attire except in the case of those who being
neither married nor wishful to marry, should think how they may
please God: whereas the others think on the things of the world,
either husbands how they may please their wives, or wives how they
may please their husbands, except that it is unbecoming for women
though married to uncover their hair, since the Apostle commands them
to cover the head." Yet in this case some might be excused from sin,
when they do this not through vanity but on account of some contrary
custom: although such a custom is not to be commended.

Reply Obj. 1: As a gloss says on this passage, "The wives of those
who were in distress despised their husbands, and decked themselves
that they might please other men": and the Apostle forbids this.
Cyprian is speaking in the same sense; yet he does not forbid married
women to adorn themselves in order to please their husbands, lest the
latter be afforded an occasion of sin with other women. Hence the
Apostle says (1 Tim. 2:9): "Women . . . in ornate [Douay: 'decent']
apparel, adorning themselves with modesty and sobriety, not with
plaited hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly attire": whence we are
given to understand that women are not forbidden to adorn themselves
soberly and moderately but to do so excessively, shamelessly, and
immodestly.

Reply Obj. 2: Cyprian is speaking of women painting themselves: this
is a kind of falsification, which cannot be devoid of sin. Wherefore
Augustine says (Ep. ccxlv ad Possid.): "To dye oneself with paints in
order to have a rosier or a paler complexion is a lying counterfeit.
I doubt whether even their husbands are willing to be deceived by it,
by whom alone" (i.e. the husbands) "are they to be permitted, but not
ordered, to adorn themselves." However, such painting does not always
involve a mortal sin, but only when it is done for the sake of
sensuous pleasure or in contempt of God, and it is to like cases that
Cyprian refers.

It must, however, be observed that it is one thing to counterfeit a
beauty one has