In the reign of Oswie, the last of the
Bretwaldas, who flourished towards the end
of the seventh century, a fierce contest
arose between the See of Rome and the
Catholic Church of England, Scotland,
and Ireland, as to how the priests should
shave their heads and faces, or whether
they should shave them at all. The British
priests held that shaving was superfluous:
the Pope, however, maintained that the
use of razors was indispensable to salvation.
The strife waxed warm; but, as things
seemed likely to go too far, Oswie, who
feared interdict and excommunication,
convoked a meeting of ecclesiastics at Whitby,
and there decreed: first, that priests should
shave all but a thin crown of hair off their
heads: secondly, that they should wear
neither beard nor whiskers nor moustaches,
upon pain of public penance. This was
peremptory, and the English priests gave in.

Beards had come into fashion again for
laymen long before this meeting at Whitby.
It is likely that Oswie himself wore a full
flowing beard, whiskers, and all the
appurtenances; but the Emperor Charlemagne,
who ascended the French throne in 768,
sported only a moustache; and, for some
reason or other, he had such an aversion to
hairy faces, that he not only required his
courtiers to shave, but furthermore made
it an express condition, when he gave the
dukedom of Benevento to Grimoald, that
the latter should oblige the Lombards to
cut off their beards. Egbert of Wessex, the
first king of all England, had spent a part
of his youth at the Court of Charlemagne;
when he returned home to take possession
of his throne, he brought with him a smooth
face. The Danes, who, during this reign,
infested England, were all bearded men.
This was sufficient reason, had no other
existed, for the Anglo-Saxons to shave:
men in those days made it a point to be
as unlike their enemies as possible.

Strangely enough, the beard, which had
seemed a heresy to the Church of Rome in
the time of Oswie, had come into favour
again with the Catholic priesthood by the
middle of the ninth century; bishops and
priests allowed their hair to grow on their
faces, and were even rather lax in shaving
the crown of their heads. This scandalised
the Greek Church, the ministers of which
made a diligent use of razors; and the
dispute upon this subject grew as fierce as
it had been two centuries before, between
Rome and England. On this occasion,
however, the Papal See argued that as all
the apostles, and notably St. Peter, had
worn beards, it was the duty of their
successors to imitate them. This failed to
convince the Greeks; and, in the famous
edict of excommunication which the
Patriarch Photius launched against Pope
Nicholas in 856, it was alleged as a major
grievance that the Latin priests refused to
shave, and were consequently unworthy
of entering into communion with their
brethren of the Eastern Church. Philosophers
of the Democritus school will smile
when they remember that opinions on this
mighty point have see-sawed again since
that time; now-a-days, the Greek priests
wear beards, and the Romish shave!

Between the ninth and twelfth centuries
the fashion with regard to the wearing of
moustaches and beards varied several times.
History tells us that King Robert, son of
Hugh Capet, who died A.D. 1031, wore in
his latter years a long white beard, which
in battle he allowed to flow out of his
helmet to serve as a rallying sign to his
soldiers. Henry the First of France, son of
Robert, ascended the throne with
moustaches; but having soon after received a
frightful gash on the chin in combating
the rebellion of his young brother, he
allowed his beard to grow, in hopes that the
scar would be concealed. The hope proved
vain, however; the hair would only grow
upon one side, whereupon, says the chronicler
Bertholde: "Ordonna le roy nostre
sire que fust ragé la teste d'ung beau
damoyseau et que des cheveux d'ycelui
furrent feit une barbe moult longue et
belle à voyre; ce qui fut fait. Et porta
cette barbe le roy nostre sire aug au tant
qu'elle dura; puis fut razé la teste d'ung
autre damoyseau," &c. &c. "The king our
master ordered that the head of a
handsome youth should be shaved, and that
with his hair a long and fine beard should
be made; which was done. And the king
our sire wore this beard a year, so long as
it lasted; and then the head of another
youth was shaved," &c. &c.

The intercourse kept up between
England and France, by means of errant knights
and the crusaders, was so continuous, that
the two countries set the fashions to each
other pretty much as they do now; thus,
the ups and downs of beards took place in
both countries alike. At the commencement
of the twelfth century, the order of
the Templars was founded by nine French
knights. They decreed, among other
regulations, that all the members of the order
should wear closely-cropped hair and long
beards; but only the latter half of the