6-404: A cornette is a piece of female headwear. It is essentially a type of wimple consisting of a large starched piece of white cloth that is folded upward in such a way as to create the resemblance of horns ( French : cornes ) on the wearer's head. It remained fashionable for some Parisian ladies around 1800, wearing ones made of muslin or gauze and richly ornamented with lace . The cornette
12-525: The Vatican (Vatican II), the nun's habits were modernized to return to a clothing that better reflected their charitable role, working with the poor and infirm. Wimple A wimple is a medieval form of female headcovering , formed of a large piece of cloth worn draped around the neck and chin , covering the top of the head ; it was usually made from white linen or silk . Its use developed in early medieval Europe ; in medieval Christianity it
18-683: The wearing of the cornette. After the cornette generally fell into disuse, it became a distinctive feature of the Daughters of Charity, making theirs one of the most widely recognized religious habits . Because of the cornette, they were known in Ireland as the "butterfly nuns". In the United States, the Daughters of Charity wore wide, white cornettes for 114 years, from 1850 to 1964. With the Second Ecumenical Council of
24-638: Was performed by others. Today a plain wimple is worn by the nuns of certain orders who retain a traditional habit . The Wife of Bath and the Prioress are depicted wearing wimples in the Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer ( c. 1343 – 1400). The King James Version of the Bible explicitly lists wimples in Isaiah 3:22 as one of a list of female fineries; however,
30-503: Was retained as a distinctive piece of clothing into modern times by the Daughters of Charity , a society of apostolic life founded by St. Vincent de Paul in the mid-17th century. The founder wanted to have the sisters of this new type of religious congregation of women, that tended to the sick and poor, and were not required to remain in their cloister, resemble ordinary middle-class women as much as possible in their clothing, including
36-450: Was unseemly for a married woman to show her hair. A wimple might be elaborately starched, creased and folded in prescribed ways. Later elaborate versions were supported on wire or wicker framing, such as the cornette . Italian women abandoned their head coverings in the 15th century or replaced them with transparent gauze , showing their braids . Elaborate braiding and elaborately laundered clothes demonstrated status, because such grooming
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