Mystical systems
Hair Shirt
Direct answer
Hair Shirt: A hair shirt, also called a cilice, is an undergarment of coarse animal hair once worn against the skin by Christian penitents and monks as a hidden, constant discomfort.
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At a glance
- Also called
- cilice, hairshirt, cilicium
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Asceticism, Lent, Flagellants, Repentance
A hair shirt, also called a cilice, is an undergarment of coarse animal hair once worn against the skin by Christian penitents and monks as a hidden, constant discomfort.
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What is a cilice?
A hair shirt is a garment woven from goat or other coarse hair and worn under ordinary clothes so that it scratches the skin. Its other name, cilice, comes from Cilicia in what is now southern Turkey, whose rough goat-hair cloth the Romans called cilicium. The Bible's sackcloth, put on for mourning and repentance, is the same kind of fabric.
The point of the hair shirt was that no one saw it. A bishop or a king could wear silk outside and penance beneath. When Thomas Becket was murdered at Canterbury in 1170, the monks who undressed the body reported finding a hair shirt under his robes, and took it as proof of holiness. Thomas More wore one for much of his life. In everyday English, to wear a hair shirt now means to punish oneself more than is called for.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Fasting and discipline.
What sets Hair Shirt apart
The hair shirt is penance designed to be invisible. Fasting shows at table and a pilgrimage shows on the road, but the cilice sat under a clean linen shirt, known only to the wearer and a confessor. That secrecy is why so many are known to us only from the moment of death, when a body was undressed. Medieval writers also name its humbler effect, vermin, which the biographers of Becket describe with a frankness later ages found hard to read.
- Latin name: cilicium, cloth of Cilician goat hair
- Biblical kin: sackcloth, worn for mourning and repentance
- Famous wearer: Thomas Becket, found in one at his death in 1170
- Another: Thomas More, executed in 1535, whose hair shirt was kept as a relic
- Chief season: Lent, when lay penitents might wear one
- Idiom: to wear a hair shirt: to punish oneself needlessly
Often mistaken for something else: Sackcloth was worn openly, with ashes, as a public sign of grief; the hair shirt was worn hidden under good clothes as a private penance.
The story behind Hair Shirt
Sackcloth appears throughout the Hebrew Bible as the dress of grief. Christian ascetics adopted hair garments from the fourth century, and medieval custom allowed them to monks and to lay penitents, above all in Lent. In later centuries the word cilice was also used for a small spiked chain worn around the thigh. Church teaching urges moderation and warns against penances that harm health.
Why Hair Shirt matters
Hair Shirt is the plainest case of bodily penance in Western Christianity, and the source of a phrase still used for needless self-punishment.
How to read Hair Shirt
Historians use the term for the garment; in ordinary speech it is a figure for making oneself suffer in order to feel absolved.
Hair Shirt in practice: an example
Someone who refuses every comfort after a small mistake may be told, kindly, to take off the hair shirt.
Where readings of Hair Shirt go wrong
Worn for long, such garments broke and infected the skin. They are described here as history and are not a practice to take up.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- cilice, hairshirt, hair shirt meaning, cilicium, wearing a hair shirt
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is a cilice?
Cilice is another word for a hair shirt, from the goat-hair cloth of Cilicia. Later the word was also applied to other penitential devices worn hidden under clothing, such as a small chain around the thigh.
Why did people wear hair shirts?
As penance and as training in self-denial. The constant itch was meant to remind the wearer of sin and to share in the sufferings of Christ, and it was kept secret so that it would not become a show.
What does wearing a hair shirt mean today?
It is an idiom for punishing oneself or choosing hardship out of guilt, often more than the fault deserves. Few who use the phrase have the garment in mind.
