shewing that in those early times St. Paul was better understood than at a later date.
Subsequently the Beard was alternately commended to the elergy for its becoming gravity, or condemned from the ascetic notion that pride was apt to lurk in a fine Beard. In some of the monasteries lay members wore the Beard, while those in orders were shaved, and the hairs, remnant of an earlier superstition, devoutly consecrated to God with special prayers and imposing ceremonies.
One order of the Cistercians were specially allowed to wear their Beards, and were hence called "fratres barbati" or Bearded brethren.
The military orders of the Church, as the Knights of St. John and the Templars, were always full Bearded.
To touch the Beard, was at one time a solemnity by which a godfather acknowledged the child of his adoption.
One of the fertile sources of dispute between the Roman and Greek Churches has been this subject of wearing or not wearing the Beard, faithfulness which docs credit to its orthodoxy, has stood The Greek Church, with a firm manfully by the early Church decisions and refused to admit any shaven saint into its calendar, heartily despising the Romish Church for its weakness in this respect. On the other hand, the Popes, to mark the distinction between Eastern and Western christianity, early introduced statutes "de radendis barbis," or concerning shaving the Beard.
