Purple in Christianity

Another guest post by amateur theologian Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace.

Catholic Bishops at the funeral of Pope John Paul II. See another telling picture here.

Christian Bishops traditionally wear purple robes. The significance of the color, especially in clothing, dates back to antiquity.

Purple frequently emerges as a color for monarchs and religious leaders in the Old Testament. Moses’ second-in-command Aaron, who wore a purple priestly uniform in the flight from Egypt. It was also associated with royalty, as seen when the Kings of Midian lost their purple coats to Gideon. Daniel was clothed in purple after helping his king. The color’s importance was not unique to Israel. In the Roman Senate, only the Emperor was entitled to wear a purple toga (although Senators were allowed a purple stripe).

Purple dye came from two sources. The more common variant was a mixture of indigo (blue) and madder (red) plant dyes that produced a dull, light purple that faded with washing and sunlight. A more effective and permanent concoction was extracted from small marine snails, a secret discovered by the Minoans at around 1750 BCE (and only rediscovered recently). Production of this dye in Roman times centered in Tyre on the Lebanese coast, and the color remains known as “ËœTyrian purple’ even today. Because each sea snail produced just one drop of the dye, it was much more valuable than gold!

Rome fell, the Byzantine Empire crumbled, and Tyrian purple disappeared from commerce during the Dark, or at least Purple-less, Ages. For centuries, only the duller plant dye purple was available for the robes of the monarchy and bishops of Europe.

All that changed 150 years ago, when entrepreneur-chemist William Perkin stumbled across the first synthetic purple dye in his home laboratory in London. Perkin was just eighteen years old and attempting to synthesize the malaria prophylactic quinine. Serendipitously, he discovered “Ëœmauve’ and thereby revolutionized the textile industry. To what degree his discovery was related to the subsequent doubling of the number of bishops in the Church of England, we can only guess…

So think of William Perkin when next you meet a bishop—and try and imagine what a dull world it must have been before the advent of synthetic dyes.