All Shaven and Shorn.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume XV, Issue 3, 1 September 1924, Page 443

All Shaven and Shorn.

When did the clergy, of" the .•W-est first adopt the habit of: shaving? None can say with precision: But there is a decree of the Fourth Council of Carthage enjoining . that • .a cleric is to allow neither hair nor beard to> grow freely. That, however, ,is not tantamount to saying that he must shave. It may mean no more ■ than that he is to keep his beard and hair from growing to excessive length. However, we all know that in the Middle Ages the ecclesiastic, did not allow his beard to grow. "Priests' 1 were then "all shaven arid shorn"; indeed, "a shorn man": meant a cleric. In the laws of King Alfred there, is. a penalty of twenty shillings imposed for him who shall be convicted of shaving off another man's, beard. But if he bind him first and shave him like a priest he is to pay sixty shillings. No doubt of it, priests were : • shaven close for some hundreds of years, and why .with the Renaissance they began to grow beards I carinpt tell. Even the Popes -had beards :then, and Paul 111. had one as long as any patriarch. Perhaps it was merely a disregard of the Canon Law, or possibly it was felt that the ordinances governing it were ambiguous, enough to be loosely interpreted.,. * ;v .... Harking back ; to the Middle Ages, the Council of Toulouse; ■ in 1119 threatened with excommunication the cleric who, like \ a layma<n, allowed his hair and beard to grow. But of all the: authorities who .legalised in this matter, I give the highest marks to Pope Alexander 111. He was a thoroughly^ practical man^and would stand no nonsense from. Hair-splitting divines. So-he Said that, those clerics who dared in face of the law to nourish their, hair and beard were to be shorn by their archdeacon, by force if necessary. Alas! that that decretal has fallen into desuetude. On a famous occasion in the House of Commons a member asked what were the functions of an archdeacon, and he was informed that 'they were "mainly archidiaeorial." I ' wouicT give much to see the archdeacons shaving by force the bearded and moustached clergymen of their archdeaconries. .';■' . . But all this does not explain • why the clergy have ; forsaken the fashion of the patriarchs and apostles, arid treated their beards as though they were unholy things. But Durandus knew. He had a mystical interpretation for the most commonplace enactinents of the" Canon Law, and in his Rationale he explains that .length of hair is symbolical of a multitude of sins. "Hence,' 5 he says, "clerics are directed to shave; 'their beards; for the cutting, of the hair oif the jbeard, which is said to be

nourahe^by'the superfluous humors !of th¥ stomach^ deifoies that h'e : ought to cut away the vices and sins which are & superfluous growth in us. Hence 'we shave our beards that, we may seem purified by innocence and humility and "that we. may be like the angels, who remain always in the bloom, of youth."' As I can think of no better reason; I accept all this gratef ully, though with- no offence to my evidently humorous friends or to my liege the King.— Urbanus in ' ' Church Times. " ,