The color violet made its appearance yesterday in many Christian churches. Of all the colors of the church year, violet stands as the second or third most prominent, appearing during Lent and Holy Week as well as during the 22 to 27 days of Advent with one exception: the third Sunday called Rejoicing (Gaudete) or Rose Sunday. This explains why one candle in an Advent wreath often is colored pink.
Violet’s prominence is eclipsed by green, the color of life and hope used for the longest season of the year called Ordinary Time (between Pentecost and Advent), and rivaled by white, the glory of Eastertide, Christmastide, and Festive Sundays.
But what does any of this have to do with sea snails?
Ah, sea snails! Those cute little creatures. Actually, the one at issue today, called the Murex mollusk, is not cute. It is carnivorous and boasts extraordinarily decorative shells often framed in spooky spikes and fronds. These mollusks were designated first by Aristotle who named them, making them one of the earliest of scientifically classified creatures.
It is from the fluids in the Murex’s glands that a true violet pigment is obtained, called Tyrian Purple. Other mollusks can be harvested for this color too, but the Murex is preferred.
Wouldn’t you like to know who first squeezed the fluid out of these sea snails to make a gorgeous violet pigment? Whoever it was, he likely squeezed a lot, for it takes 120 pounds of these snails to produce a single gram of fluid that can be then dried and extracted into the tint of a pure powder. As you might guess, the process of harvesting, putrefying, drying, and extracting its violet fluid is a stinky one. Ancient writers, including Pliny the Elder (c. 24-79 AD), described the details of the process, some noting that it took place best when done far from city dwellers.
Commercially, though, the Phoenicians made the production of Tyrian dye immensely profitable, shipping this regal color in powdered form and in dyed fabrics across the Mediterranean into Europe to adorn emperors, kings, and archbishops.
Surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly) the extraction of Tyrian Purple, while never ceased, is enjoying a comeback today. Don’t expect it to show up too often, though, since the German dye company Kremer Pigment, for example, currently charges approximately $2700 per gram.
Violet does exist independent of sea snails, though. It is one of the colors in the spectrum of light and seems to first to have been identified by Isaac Newton in 1672 when he analyzed and divided visible light into seven sectors. Violet’s wavelength is between 380 and 435 nanometers, in case you care. A nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter and its name comes from the Greek word for dwarf!
To my non-artistic eye, violet and purple, seem interchangeable, and they are, liturgically. But purple is a color created by blending the hues of two colors: red and blue. Purple is created every day by children mixing their crayons. Perhaps you remember the first time you or your children made the wonderful discovery of how to create purple with paint or crayons.
Branching out a bit, it is useful to know that royal blue can function much as violet in Christian iconography. In icons and paintings, we see Christ sometimes clad in royal blue, while Mary reliably is shown in a color known as Marian blue.
But the aristocratic message of violet (Tyrian Purple) is hard to deny. A famous shroud (left) that has survived from Charlemagne (Karl the Great) gives us a spectacular example of Tyrian Purple in its role of conveying royal power. A bit later, the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire, Constantine VII (905-959), was accorded the title Porphyrogenitus which means “born of the purple room.”
Tyrian Purple had strong meaning for Old Testament Jews, too. We find it referenced in Judges 8:26, Esther 8:15, Exodus 28:5, Ezekiel 27:7, Proverbs 31:22, and Song of Solomon 3:10, always conveying the idea of wealth, luxury, and status. Tyrian purple was also used decoratively in the Temple, including in the garments worn by the High Priest.
But it is in the Gospels of Mark (15:17) and John (19:2, 5) where we learn of Tyrian Purple’s most famous usage when the soldiers of Pontius Pilate draped a robe of violet on Jesus’ shoulders before the Crucifixion. Notably, though, Matthew’s Gospel, calls the same robe scarlet (27:28).
All told, Judeo-Christian culture has built an enormous amount of meaning upon the fluids of a pokey sea snail. Yet, in Advent we are uniting ourselves with this long tradition. True, we first think of the association of this striking liturgical color with penance, and indeed Advent is a penitential season. But we can enjoy thinking further and consider the long heritage of a color extracted at great cost and with unthinkable effort to beautify the realm of kings. After all, we are awaiting a King, one we tend to celebrate using white, gold, and silver. But always, a purple robe awaits His battered body.