This article is an excerpt from Why Christians Can Wear Pants: Spiritual Lessons from Strange Stories in Papal History.
When one looks through the letters of the great Pope Saint Nicholas I, one comes across the following rather strange sentence,
We consider what you asked about pants to be irrelevant; for we do not wish the exterior style of your clothing to be changed, but rather the behavior of the inner man within you, nor do we desire to know what you are wearing except Christ — for however many of you have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ [Gal. 3:27] — but rather how you are progressing in faith and good works.
Pope Nicholas I
The Theological Significance Of Wearing Pants
The great pope spends the next paragraph or so of his letter discoursing on the theological significance (or lack thereof) of wearing pants. He continues, acknowledging that though there is not a particular reason why one ought to wear or not wear pants, there is some spiritual significance to this choice of garment. “It should be noted that we put on pants spiritually, when we restrain the lust of the flesh through abstinence; for those places are constrained by pants in which the seats of luxury are known to be.” What prompted such a strange paragraph of papal teaching and what can it tell us about our faith today?
Nicholas I was consecrated the Bishop of Rome on April 24, 858 ad during a time of profound tension between the west and the east. A dispute had arisen in the Byzantine Empire over the legitimacy of the Patriarch of Constantinople, a man named Photius. The previous patriarch, a strict and conservative bishop named Ignatius, had been deposed by the emperor Michael at the prompting of his uncle. Michael then promoted Photius, a layman and state official, to the position. Ignatius, with the backing of his own faction and the support of the emperor’s mother, protested to Rome that he was unfairly deposed, and that Photius’s election was likewise illegitimate. After some back and forth, Pope Nicholas sided with Ignatius, and ordered that Photius be deposed. Now of course, Photius and the Emperor Michael weren’t going to be bossed around by some bishop in Rome, even if he is the pope. So what began as a tense situation, became an all-out schism, with Photius refusing to acknowledge Pope Nicholas, and the Pope demanding the resignation of Photius.
Into this messy conflict walked the Bulgars. The Bulgars were a Slavic tribe which had moved from central Asia into the Balkans (the area which is now today named after them, Bulgaria). This brought them swiftly into conflict with the Byzantine Empire. The Bulgars were originally pagans, but by the ninth century, their ruler, Kahn Boris began to think about converting to Christianity. Partly this was because of the growing influence of Christians in Bulgar territory, and partly because it would help Boris politically. With the Church split in a schism between Photius and Nicholas, the burning question at the time was, which side would they take? Which direction would Boris look for guidance in his faith, west to Rome or east to Constantinople?
Initially it seems he looked west, probably because he wanted to secure an alliance with the Frankish empire, but this initial outreach seems to have prompted the Byzantines to get nervous and attack the Bulgars in 864. The Bulgars were weak from a famine and surrendered to the Byzantines and Boris was baptized by missionaries from Constantinople. When this news reached the Patriarch Photius, he sent a letter to Boris instructing him on how to be a proper orthodox Christian, and informing him that he now fell under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople.
This arrangement, however, didn’t sit well with the Bulgars, and Boris began to try and find a better deal. So, he turned again to the west, and initiated contact with Pope Nicholas I. His thought seemed to be that if he could play Rome and Constantinople off each other, he could secure the best situation for the infant Bulgar church and more significant autonomy from either side. Which brings us to the letter quoted at the beginning of this chapter. The Kahn Boris wrote a long list of questions to Pope Nicholas about the faith in 866 ad.
Pope Nicholas responded, answering over one hundred questions, ranging from deeply theological questions about the law of God and the sacraments to trivial inquiries about when its lawful to bathe. And tucked into this massive question and answer letter is an inquiry about the legitimacy of wearing pants. It seems like the Bulgars were concerned; most Christians they had encountered did not wear pants regularly. Indeed, both western and eastern practices at the time derived from the more ancient Roman form of the toga, and trousers were fairly rare. For the Bulgars however both men and women wore long pants, made out of lighter material in the summer, and wool in the winter. Did conversion to Christianity require a conversion in clothing as well?
Saint Nicholas’s response was no, your clothes don’t really matter that much. It seems like he found this question amusing, writing that they must have asked this rather nonsensical question, “in [their] simplicity,” because they “were afraid lest it be held against [them] as a sin, if [they] diverge in the slightest way from the custom of other Christians.” He writes that in general pants are worn by men rather than women, “but really do what you please. For whether you or your women wear or do not wear pants neither impedes your salvation nor leads to any increase of your virtue.” From there, the Pope moves to his more theological understanding of pants already quoted. “Spiritual pants” are the virtues that we put on to help us to live a temperate life and restrain our disordered passions. These spiritual pants we should all wear at all times.
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