Q&A
What is a cilice?
• SHORT ANSWER
Either a hairshirt or a barbed metal chain. Either way, it’s going to hurt
• LONG ANSWER
Throughout the centuries, and to this day, some Christians have put faith above comfort by wearing one of the two types of cilice. The first version is better known as a hairshirt, a vest of coarse animal hair intended to scratch and irritate the wearer. Inspired by the fashion sense of John the Baptist, who sported a shirt of camel hair, it is a means of penance – or, at the most extreme, mortification of the flesh much like Jesus Christ suffered.
The word comes from Cilicia in modern-day Turkey, a goat-breeding region that ensured a healthy source of hair. But the other type of cilice is no hairshirt at all, but a metal chain with barbs that can be strapped to the leg for a different kind of penitential pain.