Silas, the albino
monk in The Da Vinci Code, wears a cilice belt round his thigh as an
“instrument of mortification”. He keeps telling himself that “pain is good”
because he believes that in this way he will receive absolution from God for
the evil deeds he feels obliged to perpetrate against those he sees as “God’s
enemies”.
The cilice is a
spiked chain that leaves nasty little pricks in the flesh, but it would need to
be worn unusually tightly in order to inflict the kind of tearing wounds that
Silas sees as necessary in order to gain God’s forgiveness.
The cilice seems to
have developed out of the more commonly known hair shirt, which was originally
made from rough goat’s hair from Cicilia in Asia Minor. It was a penitential
device meant to make the wearer decidedly uncomfortable in order to remind him
that he was a sinner in need of absolution, but it was hardly of the same order
as the later spiked metal device designed to be worn round the thigh.
This later
development had barbs like small fish hooks that dug into the flesh and was
apparently intended to deter the wearer’s sexual urges. Unless the victim were
addicted to sado-masochistic practices - in which case the cilice might have
played a stimulatory role - one
can safely assume that it achieved its purpose!
There is some
evidence that the cilice continued to be used by a small number of Catholic
monks as recently as the mid-20th century, but its use has apparently been discontinued
for several decades, except by certain members among the Numeraries of the Opus
Dei who are said to wear it for up to two hours a day. However, probably because the practice
smacks of masochism and may even have links with the auto-erotic, few members
will admit to the cilice’s existence today.
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