On Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the solemn season of Lent, purple altar cloths, drapes and vestments are used in Christian churches throughout the world until Easter.
That always puzzled me - why would the early church leaders select the most expensive color there was to be the liturgical color for Lent?
I had learn about Tyrian purple in, of all places, ecology class, because it is a dye made with snail secretions.
The dye was so costly that only kings, emperors and maybe military heroes could afford it.
In the book “The Secret Lives of Color,” Kassia St. Claire wrote, “Since each specimen contained a single drop, it took around 250,000 snails to make an ounce of dye. The piles of shells discarded millennia ago are so large they have become geographical features on the coast of the Mediterranean.”
First the snails had to be caught by hand, then left to decompose in the sunlight.
Once the snails had rotted, the glands were removed and boiled for ten days in lead pots filled with brine.
One reference pointed out that the dyeworks gave off such an appalling odor that they were always located downwind of cities.
It was a lucrative business, but not so good for ecosystem, especially the snails.
Anyway, purple dye was costly throughout the ancient world and the Roman Empire well into 19th century Europe.
Purple was worn exclusively by the aristocracy.
And while purple appears sparingly in Renaissance and classical artworks, it was usually was used in religious paintings, most often for to illustrate a robe slipping off the shoulders of Jesus.
And that is the answer.
The New Testament books of Mark and John tell how soldiers borrowed the purple robe of the king for Jesus to wear and wove a crown of thorns to mock Jesus for being a “king.”
The symbolism has reached into the liturgical colors in use today.
Purple is supposed to remind Christians of the Passion.
I’m afraid it reminds me that since ancient times, humans have been degrading the environment in search of profit.
