ROMANCE OF THE BEARD.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2901, 10 January 1911, Page 7

ROMANCE OF THE BEARD.

ITS PLACE IN HISTORY. Nowadays very few people take beards seriously. Delicate men may protest that they are cosy in winter, fastidious ladies may object to them on aesthetic grounds. But we no longer quarrel with a man or discharge or inhibit or persecute him because he will not shave. In old days, however, all Christendom was agitated, men fought for generations, vast schisms and much bad blood were caused by bitter prejudices with regard to the growth or absence of hair on the chin. The OEcumenical Councils of the Church were the burning question of beards was discussed were probably more numerous than those where it was ignored, and it is stated by some historians to have been the true cause of the breach between the Eastern and Western churches. To this day, it may be observed, the Orthodox clergy wear hair on their faces, while Roman Catholic priests are clean-shaven. Bearded men were refused the Holy Communion, and even Frederick Barbarossa, who had resisted the Pope and refused to kiss his feet, was compelled to sacrifice the adornment by which he is distinguished in history. The only exception allowed was in favour of certain lay brothers of monastic orders, and they wore beards in token of humility. The author of "Pogonologia ; or A Philosophical and Historical Essay on Beards" tells us that—"Not satisfied with writing, the enemies of the Capucin's beard have employed the most violent and most unwarrantable means."

It may not at first sight be easy to appreciate the connection between beards and dogma. The controversy was, however, maintained by frequent appeals to the scriptures. It is clearly stated in the Levitical law —"Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shall thou mar the corners of thy beard"( Lev. xix, 27), though this appears to forbid hair-cutting quite as much as shaving. Jeremiah threatened—"Every head shall be balled and every beard clipped : upon all the hands shall be cuttings, and upon the loins sackcloth." This, however, may merely have indicated a period of misfortune. The importance of beards, however, does not appear to have been restricted to the theological controversy. Indeed, several historians assert that the hereditary hatred between England and Prance, lasting from the Twelfth Century almost to the present day, was entirely due to the romance of the beard. The world is familiar with the romance of the Rose, but that of the beard still remains to be sung. It appears that Louis VII. of France cut off his beard as a penance. This alienated the affections of his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who transferred her affections to more hirsute personages, and was divorced on the pretext of consangunity. Six weeks later she married the Count of Anjou, afterwards Henry 11., King of England, conferring upon him the provinces which composed her dowry. As a writer in the seventeenth century exclaims :—'Who would have thought that the cutting off of a beard (six hundred years since) should have been the cause of a war the flames of which are scarcely extinguished, and which not long since set a great part of the globe in a blaze Evening Standard."