Of Beards and Men: The Revealing History of Facial Hair (36 page)

1
Robin Margaret Jensen,
Face to Face: Portraits of the Divine in Early Christianity
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 23–26. See also John Lowden,
Early Christian and Byzantine Art
(London: Phaidon, 1997): 57.

2
Jaroslav Pelikan,
Jesus through the Centuries
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 86.

3
Robin Margaret Jensen,
Understanding Early Christian Art
(London: Routledge, 2000), 38–40.

4
Thomas F. Mathews,
The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art
, rev. ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 126–28.

5
Ibid., 127.

6
Jensen,
Face to Face
, 161.

7
Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis,
Ravenna in Late Antiquity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 156–58. See also Robin Margaret Jensen, “The Two Faces of Jesus,”
Bible Review
18 (October 2002): 50, 59. See also Jensen,
Face to Face,
159–63.

8
Kurt Weitzmann, ed.,
Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century
(New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979), 606–8.

9
Ibid., 515.

10
Jensen,
Understanding Early Christian Art
, 106–7.

11
Clement of Alexandria,
Christ the Educator
(
Paedagogos
), trans. Simon P. Wood (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1954), 214–15.

12
Tertullian,
The Apparel of Women
, trans. Edwin A. Quain, in
Tertullian: Disciplinary, Moral and Ascetical Works
, ed. Rudolph Arbesmann, Emily Joseph Daly, and Edwin A. Quain (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1959), 139.

13
Peter Brown,
The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 169, 174.

14
Ibid., 382.

15
Augustine,
City of God against the Pagans
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 7:289–301. Augustine discusses the body and bodily resurrection in book 22, chaps. 19–20.

16
Augustine,
St. Augustine on the Psalms
, trans. Scholastica Hebgin and Felicitas Corrigan (London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1961), 2:156, 161.

17
Augustine,
Expositions on the Book of Psalms
, in
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church
, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974), 8:623. See also Cassiodorus,
Cassiodorus: Explanation of the Psalms
, trans. and ed. P. G. Walsh (New York: Paulist Press, 1990–1991), 3:334. Concerning Psalm 133 (132 in the old Latin enumeration), Cassiodorus (ca. 485–580) follows Augustine closely: “We do well to interpret
beard
as the apostles, for a beard is the mark of the most forceful manliness, remaining immovable below its head. In overcoming many sufferings by divine kindness, the apostles proved themselves to be most steadfast men through Gods’ grace.”

18
Augustine,
City of God
, 7:335 (book 22, chap. 24).

1
D. D. R. Owens, “Beards in the
Chanson de Roland
,”
Forum for Modern Language Studies
24 (1988): 175–79. See also Susan L. Rosenstreich, “Reappearing Objects in
La Chanson de Roland
,”
French Review
79 (2005): 358–69.

2
Song of Roland
[61], trans. C. H. Sisson (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1983), 37.

3
Ibid., 135.

4
This is what Paul Edward Dutton has determined in his study of hair in the Carolingian era. See Dutton,
Charlemagne’s Mustache and Other Cultural Clusters of a Dark Age
(London: Palgrave, 2004), 21–26.

5
Herbert Kessler,
Old St. Peter’s and Church Decoration in Medieval Italy
(Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 2002), 7.

6
Matthias Becher,
Charlemagne
, trans. David S. Bachrach (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 7.

7
I Corinthians 11:14 (NRSV): “Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him.”

8
Louis Trichet,
La tonsure: Vie et mort d’une pratique ecclésiastique
(Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1990), 45.

9
Gregory the Great,
Morals on the Book of Job
(Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1844), 1:123-24. A generation earlier, another Christian writer, Cassiodorus, had expressed a similar idea in reference to the razor of wicked men in Psalm 51, concluding that a razor “can shave off any external attributes like hair, but in so doing it makes the inner part of the soul more beautiful, since it strives to deprive it of worldly things.” Cassiodorus,
Cassiodorus: Explanation of the Psalms
, trans. and ed. P. G. Walsh (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), 2:3.

10
Quoted in Bernard Lewis,
The Muslim Discovery of Europe
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 280.

11
See Tia M. Kolbaba,
The Byzantine Lists: Errors of the Latins
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 56–57, 195.

12
Ratramnus Corbeiensis,
Contra Graecorum Opposita Romanum Ecclesiam Infamantium Libri Quatuor
, book 4, Apud Acherium, in
Library of Latin Texts Online
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2005) (trans. Katie Derrig, 2008).

13
Gregory VII,
The Correspondence of Pope Gregory VII
, trans. Ephriam Emerton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), 164–65.

14
Quoted in Giles Constable, “Introduction to
Apologia de Barbis
,” in
Apologiae Duae: Gozechini Epistola ad Walcherum; Burchardi, Ut Videtur, Abbatis Bellevallis: Apologia de Barbis
, vol. 57 in
Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Mediaevalis
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1985), 103–4.

15
Collectio Canonum in V Libris
, in
Corpus Christinorum, Coninuatio Mediaevalis
, vol. 6, ed. M. Fornasari (Turnholt: Brepols, 1970), 412. See discussion in Trichet,
La tonsure
, 100. See also Constable, “Introduction,” 106–7.

16
A study of Spanish manuscripts reveals the continuing popularity of beards for laymen in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, particularly among the royalty and nobility. See Philippe Wolff, “Carolus Glaber,”
Annales du Midi: Revue archéologique, historique et philologique de the France mérodionale
102 (1990): 375–82. The Roman theologian (later canonized) Peter Damien (d. 1072) worried that the absence of facial hair was too often the
only
thing that distinguished a priest from a laymen, because so many priests had become
immersed in worldly affairs. See Peter Damien,
Peter Damien: Letters 91–120
, trans. Owen J. Blum (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1989), 55.

17
H. Platelle, “Le problème du scandale: Les nouvelles modes masculines aux XIe et XIIe siècles,”
Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire
53 (1975): 1073–76.

18
Othlonus S. Emmerammi Ratisponensis,
Narratio Olthoni de Miraculo, quod Nuper Accidit Cuidam Laico
in
Library of Latin Texts Online
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2005) (trans. Katie Derrig, 2008).

19
Alan of Lille,
The Plaint of Nature
, trans. James J. Sheridan (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1980), 187.

20
Giles Constable provides a thorough analysis of the background and themes of Burchard’s
Apologia
. See Constable, “Introduction,” 47–150.

21
Burchardi,
Apologia de Barbis
, in
Apologiae Duae
, 179 (trans. Katie Derrig, 2008).

22
Hildegard of Bingen,
On Natural Philosophy and Medicine: Selections from “Cause et cure,”
trans. Margaret Berger (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999), 69.

23
Ibid., 51.

24
Burchardi,
Apologia de Barbis
, 187.

25
Bruno Astensis,
Expositio in Pentateuchum: Incipit Expoistio in Leviticum
, chap. 19 in
Library of Latin Texts Online
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2005) (trans. Katie Derrig, 2008). See also Constable, “Introduction,” 70.

26
Burchardi,
Apologia de Barbis
, 162.

27
Ibid., 166.

28
Orderic Vitalis,
Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy
, vol. 3, trans. Thomas Forester (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), 72.

29
Quoted in Lewis,
Muslim Discovery
, 280–81.

30
Serlo’s sermon is described by the medieval monk and historian Oderic Vitalis. See Orderic Vitalis,
The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis
, vol. 6, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 63–67.

31
Pauline Stafford, “The Meanings of Hair in the Anglo-Norman World,” in
Saints, Scholars and Politicians: Gender as a Tool in Medieval Studies
, ed. Mathilde van Dijk and Renée Nip (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 153–71. Stafford emphasizes the clerical defense of masculine standards of the previous generation and analyzes the role of facial hair in distinguishing Normans from Saxons. See also Platelle, “Le problème du scandale,” 1071–96.

32
William of Malmesbury,
Gesta Regum Anglorum
, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) 1:451.

33
William of Malmesbury,
Gesta
, 1:451, 455–59. Pauline Stafford is certainly right to note William’s attempt to link Norman virility with priestly virtue. Though she believes this was an attempt to valorize the shaved priesthood, the reverse is equally possible; that is, that he ascribed moral virtue to the shaved Normans army. See Stafford, “Meanings of Hair,” 167.

34
Alison Weir,
Eleanor of Aquitaine
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1999), 43. See
also Augustin Fangé,
Mémoires pour servir a l’histoire de la barbe de l’homme
(Liege: Jean-Francois Broncart, 1774), 98–99. The clean-shaved style of kings after Louis VII is evident in manuscript images. See Colette Beaune,
Les manuscrits des rois de France au moyen age
(Bibliotheque de l’Image, 1989).

35
Fred S. Kleiner,
Gardner’s Art through the Ages: The Western Perspective
(Boston: Cengage Learning, 2010), 1:341.

36
For a description of Louis’s crisis of conscience, and Bernard’s influence, see Yves Sassier,
Louis VII
(Paris: Fayard, 1991), 109–31. See also Francois Gervaise,
Histoire de Suger, Abbé de S. Denis
(Paris: Francois Berois, 1721), 95.

37
Illustrations in medieval manuscripts typically showed Westerners without beards, in contrast to Byzantines and Muslims of the Middle East. See Jaroslav Folda,
Crusader Manuscript Illumination at Saint-Jean d’Acre, 1275–1291
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976).

38
Robert Bartlett, “Symbolic Meanings of Hair in the Middle Ages,”
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
, 6th series, vol. 4 (1994): 46–47.

39
Giles Constable,
Crusaders and Crusading the Twelfth Century
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), 333.

40
Thomas Asbridge,
The Crusades
(New York: Echo Press, 2010), 414.

41
Malcolm Barber and Keith Bate, eds.,
The Templars: Selected Sources
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 42. See also J. M. Upton-Ward, ed.,
The Rule of the Templars: The French Text of the Rule of the Order of the Knights Templar
(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1992), 25.

42
Helen Nicholson,
The Knights Templar: A New History
(Stroud: Sutton, 2001), 124–27.

43
Caire Richter Sherman,
Imaging Aristotle: Verbal and Visual Representation in Fourteenth-Century France
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 184–98.

44
Pero Tafur: Travels and Adventures (1435–1439)
, trans. and ed. Malcolm Letts (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1926), 175.

1
R. J. Knecht,
Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

2
Elliot Horowitz, “The New World and the Changing Face of Europe,”
Sixteenth Century Journal
28 (Winter 1997): 1196.

3
Francis Hackett,
Henry the Eighth
(New York: Liveright Publishing, 1945), 112; Horowitz, “New World,” 1197.

4
Knecht,
Renaissance Warrior
, 105.

5
Horowitz, “New World,” 1198.

6
Knecht,
Renaissance Warrior
, 105.

7
Glenn Richardson,
Renaissance Monarchy: The Reigns of Henry VIII, Francis I and Charles V
(London: Arnold, 2002), 173. See also Knecht,
Renaissance Warrior
, 125.

8
Jean-Marie Le Gall locates the origin of the beard renaissance at the papal court in Rome in the 1510s, as evidenced by Raphael’s artwork in particular, in
Un idéal masculin: Barbes et moustaches, XV
^e
–XVIII
^e
siècles
(Paris: Payot, 2011), 33–34.

9
Mark J. Zucker, “Raphael and the Beard of Pope Julius,”
Art Bulletin
59 (1977): 526.

10
Ibid., 530.

11
John Julius Norwich,
The Popes: A History
(London: Chatto & Windus, 2011), 294.

12
Pierio Valeriano,
The Ill Fortune of Learned Men
, trans. Julia Haig Gaisser, in
Pierio Valeriano on the Ill Fortune of Learned Men: A Renaissance Humanist and His World
, ed. Julia Haig Gaisser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 93–95.

13
Gaisser,
Pierio Valeriano on the Ill Fortune of Learned Men
, 38. See also Zucker, “Raphael,” 532.

14
Zucker, “Raphael,”532.

15
Pierio Valeriano,
A Treatise Written by Iohan Valerian a Great Clerke of Italie, Which Is Intitled in Latin “Pro Sacerdotum barbis”
(London: Tho. Bertheleti, 1533), 8–9.

16
Pierio Valeriano (Pierii Valerianii),
Pro Sacerdotum Barbis
(Rome: Calvi, 1531), 18–19 (trans. J. Holland, 2012).

17
Ibid., 19.

18
Mark Albert Johnston,
Beard Fetish in Early Modern England: Sex Gender, and Registers of Value
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 34.

19
Le Gall,
Idéal masculine
, 57.

20
Mémoire pour Mer André Imberdis et Charles Pacros
(Paris: Pillet, 1844), 18–19. See also Léon Henry,
La barbe et la liberté
(Niort: Ve H. Echillet, 1879), 74–76.

21
Gentian Hervet,
Orationes
(Veneunt Aureliae apud Franciscum Gueiardum Bibliopolam, 1536), 55 (trans. J. Holland, 2012).

22
Ibid., 61.

23
Le Gall,
Idéal masculine
, 132–40.

24
Ibid., 47–48.

25
Diarmaid MacCulloch,
The Reformation
(New York: Viking, 2003), 627–28.

26
Quoted in Steven E. Ozment,
Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975).

27
Quoted in Horowitz, “New World,” 1186.

28
Sergio Rivera-Ayala, “Barbas, fierros y masculinidad dentro de la mirada columbiana,”
Bulletin of Hispanic Studies
87 (2010): 609.

29
Horowitz, “New World,” 1186.

30
Merry Wiesner-Hanks,
The Marvelous Hairy Girls
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 35.

31
Frederick William Fairholt, ed.,
Satirical Songs and Poems on Costume: From the Thirteenth to the Nineteenth Century
(London: Percy Society, 1849), 121–24. Also quoted in Johnston,
Beard Fetish
, 257–58. Scholars have dated this poem to 1597; see Johnston,
Beard Fetish
, 167.

32
William Shakespeare,
As You Like It
II.7.149–56.

33
Robert Greene,
A Quip for an Upstart Courtier: Or a Quaint Dispute between Velvet-Breeches and Cloth-Breeches
, ed. Charles Hindley (London: Reeves and Turner, 1871 [1592]), 38. See also Le Gall,
Idéal masculine
, 45–46.

34
Johannes Barbatium,
Barbae Maiestas hoc est De Barbis
(Frankfurt: Michaelis Fabri, 1614), 7. Ovid, book 13 of the Metamorphoses, trans. Frank Justus Miller (London: William Heinemann, 1958), 2:289.

35
William Shakespeare,
Much Ado about Nothing
I.1.245–46. Shakespeare quotes are from
The Riverside Shakespeare
, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974).

36
Ibid., II.1.29–39.

37
Ibid., III.2.48–49.

38
Ibid., V.1.192.

39
William Shakespeare,
King Lear
II.4.193, p. 1272.

40
Ibid., III.7.34–41, p. 1280.

41
Ibid., IV.6.96–99, p. 1286.

42
Shakespeare,
As You Like It
II.7.139–40, p. 381.

43
Ibid., II.7.149–56, p. 382.

44
Will Fisher suggests that the theatrical use of false beards in this era reflected a general recognition that even real beards were prosthetic: a costume of masculine performance. Fisher, Materializing Gender in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 85-93.

45
William Shakespeare,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
I.2.90–96, p. 226.

46
Paul F. Grendler,
The Universities of the Italian Renaissance
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 154–56.

47
Marcus Antonius Ulmus,
Physiologia Barbae Humanae: De Fine Barbae Humanae
(Bononiae: Apud Ioannem Baptistam Bellagambam, 1603), 82 (trans. J. Holland, 2012).

48
Ibid., 257.

49
Ibid., 199.

50
Ibid., 256.

51
Ibid., 197.

52
Ibid., 198.

53
John Baptista Van Helmont,
Oriatrike, or Physick Refined
, trans. J. C. (London: Lodowick Loyd, 1662), 666.

54
Ibid., 667. See also J. Crofts, “Beards and Angels,”
London Mercury
14 (1926): 134–36.

55
Faegheh Shirazi, “Men’s Facial Hair in Islam: A Matter of Interpretation,” in
Hair: Styling, Culture and Fashion
, ed. Geraldine Biddle-Perry and Sarah Cheang (Oxford: Berg, 2008), 116.

56
Adam is beardless in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling (1512) and in Raphael’s
Adam and Eve
ceiling fresco of the
Stanza della Segnatura
(1519). The same is true of Lucas Van Leyden’s
Expulsion from Paradise
(1510), Tintoretto’s
Temptation of Adam
(ca. 1550), Veronese’s
Expulsion from Paradise
(ca. 1580), and several other paintings and engravings from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

57
Quoted in Fisher,
Materializing Gender
, 115. See also Will Fisher, “The Renaissance Beard: Masculinity in Early Modern England,”
Renaissance Quarterly
54 (2001): 171.

58
Mark Albert Johnston also discusses this painting but argues that it clearly demonstrates Magdalena’s subordination to her husband, because his beard “looms” over hers. See Johnston,
Beard Fetish
, 201–4.

59
The case of the Gonzales sisters is thoughtfully explored in Wiesner-Hanks,
Marvelous Hairy Girls
. For a discussion of Vanbeck (Userlein), see Johnston,
Beard Fetish
, 204–12. See also Chistopher Hals Gylseth and Lars O. Toverud,
Julia Pastrana: The Tragic Story of the Victorian Ape Woman
, trans. Donald Tumasonis (Stroud: History Press, 2005), 51–53.

60
The story of St. Galla is related in St. Gregory the Great,
Dialogues
, trans. Odo John Zimmerman (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1959), 205–7. For discussion of other legends, see Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg,
Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500–1100
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 152–53. See also Vern L. Bullough, “Transvestism in the Middle Ages,” in
Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church
, ed. Vern L. Bullough and James Brundage (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1982), 50; also Wiesner-Hanks,
Marvelous Hairy Girls
, 38–41.

61
Wiesner-Hanks,
Marvelous Hairy Girls
, 3–11.

62
Valeriano,
Treatise
, 10.

63
John Bulwer,
Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transform’d: Or the Artificiall Changling Historically Presented
(London: W. Hunt, 1653), 215.

64
Barbatium,
Barbae Maiestas
, 6.