WAS THE POPE MISTAKEN?

In his recent denunciation of the “cult of nudity,” Pope Pius XI, according to the dispatches, said, “In the olden times nudity was in art, but one could not say that it was in life, neither in Rome nor in Greece,” May we remind His Holiness that Plutarch, in his life of Lycurgus, says of the great Spartan lawgiver, He ordered the maidens to exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the quoit, casting the dart– and to the end he might take away their over great tenderness and fear of exposure to the air, and all acquired womanishless, he ordered that the young women should go naked in the processions, as well as the young men, and dance, too, in that condition at certain solemn feasts, singing certain songs, whilst the young men stood around seeing and hearing them. Nor was there anything shameful in this nakedness of the young women; modesty attended them and all wantoness was excluded. It taught them simplicity and a care for good health, and gave them some taste of higher feelings, admitted as they were, thus, to the field of noble action and glory.

(Editorial comment in The Nudist, Volume IV, No. 5, May, 1935)