At the same time, the fingered gloves also had come to be used for a practical protection. Pliny, the younger, speaking of the private secretary of his illustrious uncle, writes: “His amanuensis” (who accompanied him on his notable journey to Mount Vesuvius) “wore gloves upon his hands that winter, lest the severity of the weather should make him lose any time” (from his duties as scribe). It is to gloves, then, that we are indebted in part for some of the most remarkable passages in the works of the celebrated Roman naturalist, whose scientific enthusiasm eventually cost him his life in the eruption of Vesuvius, 79 A.D. Not until the age of Musonious, the philosopher, who lived near the close of the first century of the Christian era, do we find gloves among the Romans falling into disrepute. Musonious ejaculates: “It is shameful that persons in perfect health should clothe their hands with soft and hairy coverings!” The denunciation of the dress-reformers of those days, however, seems to have had as little effect in stemming the tide of fashion as in our times. A truly revolting use to which gloves are said to have put—if we may believe certain tales of the famous story-teller, Athenæus (200 A.D.)—is described in a bit of ancient fiction in which he relates that “a well-known glutton,” one of his own contemporaries, “always came to the table with gloves upon his hands, that he might be able to handle and eat the meat while it was hot, and devour more than the rest of the company.” No wonder the early Fathers of the Church looked upon gloves as vicious and corrupting! But their biting invective was directed principally against the effeminancy of those who fell victim to the pleasurable practice, and about the beginning of the ninth century ecclesiastical authority forbade the monks from wearing any gloves save those made of the tough, unyielding sheepskin. Such, it was thought, could not possibly afford the brethren any sensuous enjoyment, nor tempt them into love of luxuries. There is an ancient story of Saint Gudula, patroness of Brussels, which well illustrates the early Christian distrust of gloves. In Butler’s Legends of the Saints, it is related of this holy woman—who died in 712 A.D.—that one day, kneeling at prayers barefooted, one of the monks, moved to compassion, “put his gloves upon her feet” to protect them from the cold stones of the floor. St. Gudula, however, snatched off the offending articles and contemptuously tossed them ceiling high. And there they remained, says the legend, miraculously suspended in midair for one hour.