Shaving (2)
Shaving.
In the early Church the clergy were exhorted to a decent mean in dress and habits. Thus, for instance, long hair and baldness, by shaving the head or beard, being then generally reputed indecencies in contrary extremes, the clergy were obliged to observe a becoming mediocrity between them. This is the meaning, according to its true reading, of that controverted canon of the fourth Council of Carthage, which says that a clergyman shall neither indulge long hair, nor shave his beard: "Clericus nec comam nutriat, nec barbam radat." Sidonius Apollinaris (lib. 4, ep. 24) describes his friend Maximus Palatinus, a clergyman, as having his hair short and his beard long. Shaving of the monks was performed at certain fixed times, the razors being kept in an ambry close to the entrance to the dormitory (Bingham, Christ. Antiquities, 6, 4, 15). Eustathius, the heretic, was for having all virgins shorn or shaven at their consecration, but the Council of Gangra immediately rose up against him and anathematized the practice, passing a decree in these words: "If any woman, under pretense of an ascetic life, cut off her hair, which God hath given her for a memorial of subjection, let her be anathema, as one that disannuls the decree of subjection." Theodosius the Great added a civil sanction to confirm the ecclesiastical decree. See Bingham, Antiquities of the Christian Church, 7, 4, 6. SEE TONSURE.
