Bridal veil

Bride with bridal bouquet and bridal veil

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A history of the veil in Christianity would be an asset to the article. On this occasion it could also be checked whether the function of the veil stated in the article is really correct. There is a lot of literature on the subject, starting with Ambrose's 19th Epistle.

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The bridal veil is a symbolic characteristic of a woman entering either the state of marriage or that of consecrated life .

The bridal veil is already for the early third millennium BC. Chr. In Mesopotamia occupied, for example, the goddess was Inanna the nickname "the Veiled", "the veiled". In the Gilgamesh epic , Gilgamesh's explanation refers to the early existence of the bridal veil: "He [Gilgamesh] covered his friend like the face of a bride." In Assyria , the end of the second millennium BC During the reign of Tukulti-apil-Ešarra I (1114 to 1076 BC) for the first time legal rules regarding the bridal veil regarding a legally defined type of woman became tangible. The Central Assyrian legal code shows that a man who wanted to marry a concubine had to put a veil on the bride in front of five or six witnesses and speak the words: "She is my wife".

In ancient Rome , the bridegroom “put on the snow-white toga on the wedding day , the robe of the free citizen and symbol of male dignity”; the bride wore a saffron-colored bridal veil called a Flammeum over her tunic . The special color of the veil was probably chosen to echo the color of the hearth fire, as a symbol of the family's existence and cohesion.

In Christianity , the bridal veil has been used since the 4th century . The custom was previously common in Judaism . In Christianity it was the veil with which the bride appeared on the day of the wedding , while in earlier times she was accompanied by long, loose hair, the sign of preserved innocence. It was white, and later also red, and represented a symbol of virginity . The bride's father led the veiled bride to the altar , where the veil was lifted by the groom . A second marriage was entered into without a bridal veil.

In the United States , the introduction of the veil into bridal fashion can be traced back to the model of Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis (1779–1852, married 1799), a step-granddaughter of George Washington .

Web links

Wiktionary: bridal veil  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

1. ^ H. Waetzoldt: head covering, § 10: veil, covering the face . In: Dietz-Otto Edzard u. a .: Real Lexicon of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archeology , Vol. 6 . de Gruyter, Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-1101-0051-7 , p. 202.
2. ^ Provincial archaeologist Andrea Rottloff, Munich.
3. ^ Bride's Book of Etiquette . Perigee, New York 2003, ISBN 0-399-52866-0 , pp. 12 ( limited preview in Google Book search).