What did the early church say about tattoos?

Our recent piece on ancient pilgrimage tattoos in Jerusalem generated many comments, both from the pro and anti-tattoo camps.

In the office discussion that followed, we became interested in what the Church has historically said about tattooing.

There is no biblical or official prescription that prohibits Catholics from obtaining tattoos (contrary to some false news of a ban on Pope Hadrian I, which cannot be proven) that would apply to Catholics today, but many early theologians and bishops commented on the practice in both words or act.

One of the most common quotes against the use of tattoos among Christians is a verse from Leviticus which prohibits Jews from "cutting bodies for the dead or putting tattoo marks on you." (Lev. 19:28). However, the Catholic Church has always distinguished between moral law and Mosaic law in the Old Testament. The moral law - for example, the Ten Commandments - remains binding on Christians today, while the Mosaic Law, which deals largely with Jewish rituals, has been dissolved by the new covenant to the crucifixion of Christ.

The ban on tattoos is included in the Mosaic Law, and therefore the Church today does not consider it binding on Catholics. (Also an important historical note: according to some sources, this ban was sometimes overlooked even among Jewish believers around the time of Christ, with some mourning participants tattooing the name of their loved ones on their arms after death.)

Also interesting is the broader cultural practice within Roman and Greek cultures of marking slaves and prisoners with a "stigma" or a tattoo to show who a slave belonged to or the crimes committed by a prisoner. St. Paul even refers to this reality in his letter to the Galatians: “From now on, let no one give me problems; because I carry the signs of Jesus on my body. " While biblical scholars claim that St. Paul's point here is metaphorical, the point still remains that tagging yourself with a "stigmata" - generally understood as a tattoo - was a common practice for making the analogy.

Furthermore, there is some evidence that in some areas before Constantine's rule, Christians began to anticipate the "crime" of being Christians by marking themselves as Christians with the tattoos themselves.

Early historians, including the sixth-century scholar and rhetorician Procopius of Gaza and the seventh-century Byzantine historian Theophilact Simocatta, recorded stories of local Christians who willingly tattooed themselves with Crosses in the Holy Land and Anatolia.

There is also evidence among others, small communities in the western churches of the early Christians who mark themselves with tattoos or scars from the wounds of Christ.

In the 787th century, tattoo culture was a topic that was raised in many dioceses around the Christian world, from the tattoo of the first pilgrims to the Holy Land to the question of the use of previously pagan tattoo costumes among the new Christian populations. In XNUMX Council of Northumberland - a meeting of lay and ecclesial leaders and citizens in England - Christian commentators distinguished between religious and secular tattoos. In the council documents, they wrote:

“When an individual undergoes tattoo ordeal for the love of God, he is highly appreciated. But those who submit to being tattooed for superstitious reasons in the manner of the pagans will not derive any benefit from there. "

At the time, pre-Christian pagan tattoo traditions still existed among the British. Acceptance of tattoos remained in English Catholic culture for several centuries after Northumbria, with the legend that the English king Harold II was identified after his death by his tattoos.

Later, some priests - especially the priests of the Franciscans of the Holy Land - began to take the tattoo needle themselves as a pilgrimage tradition, and souvenir tattoos began to take off among European visitors to the Holy Land. Other priests of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages sported tattoos themselves.

However, not all bishops and theologians in the early Church were pro-tattoos. St. Basil the Great famously preached in the XNUMXth century:

“No man will let his hair grow or be tattooed like the pagans, those apostles of Satan who make themselves despicable by indulging in lascivious and lascivious thoughts. Do not associate with those who mark themselves with thorns and needles so that their blood flows over the earth. "

Some types of tattoos have even been outlawed by Christian rulers. In 316, the new Christian ruler, Emperor Constantine, banned the use of criminal tattoos on a person's face, commenting that "since the penalty of his sentence can be expressed both on his hands and on his calves, and in a way that his face, which has been modeled in the likeness of divine beauty, cannot be dishonored. "

With nearly 2000 years of Christian discussions on the subject, there is no official teaching of the Church on tattoos. But with such a rich history to draw from, Christians have the opportunity to hear the wisdom of theologians over the millennia as they think before they ink.