A charming, and apparently unrecorded piece of ephemeral printing; a copy of a decree issued by the Vatican in 1800 against the 'scandalous' and immodest trends in women's fashion flooding like a 'torrent' through Christendom, now threatening Rome. We have found no other copies of this printing; of the recorded imprints we have identified (Liège, Tournay, Louvain), there are just five copies, none of which are in US libraries.
The text of the decree explains how good Christians 'cannot raise their eyes from the ground without being obliged immediately to lower them again', revolted by the 'scandaleuses nudités' of women's fashion (4). In consequence, the Holy See under Pope Pius VII issued a decree: 'ordonne...a tous les Curés, confesseurs, Prédicateurs, Catéchists et à tout autre Ministre de l'Evangile' to arm themselves with the zeal and fortitude to encourage modesty, in particular in holy places and churches (immodesty is particularly 'monstrous' when it profanes such holy places, pp.5-6). Following the text of the decree is an extract from a letter on the same subject, dated 1685, and a further extract from St John Chrysostome on indecency in women's dress.
This 'torrent impétueux' so concerning to the Holy See came as part and parcel of the French occupation of Rome in early 1798, the removal of the then-Pope Pius VI - who died in exile - and the short-lived Roman Republic established there by the French until 1799. The occupation was perceived to go hand-in-hand with immodesty and moral laxity imported from France, including, evidently, popular women's fashions. The taste for revealing dresses in transparent fabrics was widespread on the continent and further afield, lampooned in English satire (see Parisian Ladies in their winter dress for 1800, 1799, LOC, PC 1 - 9457) and even criticised as far away as Philadelphia, by First Lady Abigail Adams, who called it 'an outrage upon all decency' and complained of women who 'wear their Cloaths too scant upon the body' (Letter to M.S. Cranch, 15 March 1800).
