ROMANCE OF THE BEARD.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 470, 1 June 1912, 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 w.e no longer quarrel with a man or discharge or inhibit or persecute him because he will not shave. In old lays, however, all Christendom was agitated, men fought for generations, past schisms and much bad blood ivere 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 disiussed 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, ivhile 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 lis 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 "Pogonolojia ; or A Philosophical and Historical Essay on Beards" tells us that—"Not satisfied with writing, ;he enemies of the Capuein's beard lave employed the most violent and nost unwarrantable means." It may not at first sight be easy to appreciate the connection between beards and dogma. The controversy was, however, maintained by frejiicnt appeals to the scriptures. It is clearly stated in the Levitical law —"Ye shall not round the corners of yonr 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 acad shall be balled and every beard :,lipped : upon all the hands shall be cuttings, and upon the loins cack;loth." This, however, may merely nave indicated a period of misfortune. The importance of beards, lowever, does not appear to have been restricted to the theological controversy. Indeed, several historians assert that the hereditary latred between England and France, lasting from the Twelfth Century almost to the present day, was entirely due to the romance of the icard. The world is familiar with the romance of the Rose, but that of the beard still remains to be sung. It appears that Louis VIT. 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 eonsangunity. Six weeks later she married the Count of Anjou, afterwards Htnry

[I., 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."