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Today’s reason to give in to sloth, which is to fight sloth, to justify the action of customising my cardigan with a needle and some thread:
Early Church doctrine generally viewed free time as a temptation, leisure as an invitation to sloth. This feared applied particularly to women. Eve was the temptress, distracting man from his work. The Church Fathers imagined women as specifically prone to sexual licence if they had nothing to occupy their hands. This prejudice bred a practice: female temptation could be countered by a particular craft, that of the needle, whether in weaving or embroidery, the woman’s hands kept ever busy.
The needle as a remedy for female idleness traces back to the early Church Father Jerome. As is the way of prejudices that mature in time, this sexual negative became by the middle ages also a source of honour. As the historian Edward Lucie-Smith points out, “queens were not ashamed both to weave and sew”.
Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, pp-57-8
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