43

43. On sumptuary laws

[A whole series of sumptuary laws sought to restrain rash expenditure on clothing and jewels and to limit extravagances in eating and dressing to certain classes of society. These laws were reiterated under Francis I, Henry II and Charles IX. Montaigne was inspired to write on the subject by Amyot’s translation of Diodorus Siculus. His conservatism is deep-rooted and based on moral commitment. Dress and so on are ‘matters indifferent’, but constant giddy change undermines the very foundations of a culture.]

[A] The way our laws make an assay at limiting insane and inane expenditure on table and clothing seems to run contrary to their end. The right way would be to engender in men a contempt for gold and silk as things vain and useless: we increase their honour and esteem, which is a most inappropriate way of putting people off them. For to declare that only princes may [C] eat turbot and [A] wear velvet and gold braid, forbidding them to the people, what is that but enhancing such things and making everyone want to have them? Let kings stoutly renounce such symbols of greatness: they have others enough; [B] such excess is more pardonable in anyone else but a king. [A] We can learn from the example of many a nation plenty of better ways of indicating our different ranks and distinctions – something which I do indeed think to be requisite in a state – without encouraging such manifest corruption and evil. It is wonderful how quickly and easily custom plants her authoritative foothold in matters so indifferent. In mourning for Henry II we have been wearing plain-cloth at Court for barely a year now, yet it is already certain that silk has become so unaristocratic that if you do see anyone wearing it you [C] immediately take him for one of the townsfolk.1 [A] It has become the lot of doctors and barber-surgeons. Even if everyone dressed more or less identically there would still be enough other ways of showing differences of rank.

[B] (How quickly do muddy doublets of chamois-leather or coarse-cloth come to be honoured by our soldiers in the field, and rich elegant clothes bring reproach and contempt.)

[A] Let our kings start giving up spending money on such things and it would be all over in a month, without edict or ordinance: we will all follow suit. The Law ought to state, on the contrary, that purple and goldsmithery are forbidden to all ranks of society except whores and travelling-players.

It was with astuteness like that that Zeleucus reformed the debauched customs of the Locrians. He ordained as follows: ‘That no free-born woman be attended by more than one chambermaid, except when she be drunk; That no woman leave the city by night or wear any golden jewellery about her person nor any richly embroidered dress, unless she be a public prostitute; That except for such as live on immoral earnings, no man shall wear gold rings on his fingers nor any elegant robes such as those tailored from cloth woven in Miletus.’ Thus, with those shaming exceptions, he cleverly diverted the inhabitants of his city away from pernicious superfluities and luxuries. [B] That was a most useful way to bring men to obedience by honour and ambition.2

French kings are all-powerful over the reformation of such externals: their fancy is law. [C] ‘Quidquid principes faciunt, praecipere videntur.’ [Any actions of princes seem like commands.]3 The rest of the country4 adopts as canon the canons of the Court. [B] Let the Court stop liking those vulgar codpieces which make a parade of our [C] hidden [A] parts, those heavily padded doublets which make our shape look different and our armour so hard to put on; those long effeminate tresses; the custom of kissing any gift offered to our companions, and our hands, too, when we greet them (an honour formerly due only to princes); allowing a nobleman to appear in respectable company with no sword at his side, untidy and unbuttoned, as though he had just come straight from the privy; the custom (something contrary to the practice of our forefathers and the express privilege of the nobility of this Kingdom) of remaining hat-in-hand even when at some distance from our monarchs, wherever they happen to be (as well as in the presence of dozens of others, so many tercelets and quartlets of kings do we have);5 and so on for similar recent and depraved innovations: then they would soon all vanish in disapproval. Such defects may be all on the surface, but they augur badly: when we see cracks in the plaster and the cladding of our walls it warns us that there are fissures in the actual masonry.

[C] In his Laws Plato concludes that no plague in this world can do more damage to his city than allowing liberty to the young to change from fashion to fashion in their dress, comportment, dances, sports and songs, constantly changing the basis of their ideas this way and that, running after novelties and honouring those who invent them; by such things are morals corrupted and all ancient principles brought into disdain and contempt. In all things – except quite simply for those which are evil – change is to be feared, including changes of seasons, winds, diets and humours; and no laws are truly respected except those to which God has vouchsafed so long a continuance that no one knows how they were born or that they had ever been different.6