It's hard to imagine walking around all day wearing an old itchy (sackcloth) or Cilice.
A burlap potato sack for underwear, rubbing and irritating your skin around your groin area but people do, as a self-imposed means of repentance and mortification of the flesh. The more uncomfortable the better.
People wore Cilices before written history. They could tell by scars left on the skin of mummies. Originally they were made of coarse, black goat hair, laced with wire and twigs to irritate the skin but today anything can be called a Cilice, just as long as it's used for the purpose intended, to repent or mortification of the flesh.
In an odd way it represented a 'cleansing' of the soul. It's a Christian thing, eh?
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