William is said to have attempted to compel the sturdy Saxons to shave, but many of them left the kingdom rather than part with their Beards. In this, as in other matters. Anglo-Saxon firmness ultimately conquered the conquerors, and the Norman sovereigns gave in to the national custom. As early as Henry I, that is only 44 years from William's landing, we learn that Bishop Scrlo met that monarch on his arrival in Normandy, and made a long harangue on the enormities of the times, especially long hair and bushy Beards, which he said they would not clip, lest the stumps should wound the ladies faces. Henry, with repentant obedience, submitted his hairy honors to the Bishop, who with pious zeal, taking a pair of shears from his trunk, trimmed king and nobles with his own hand. This conduct of the Bishop is curiously illustrated by a cotemporary decree of the Senate of Venice, of the year 1102, commanding all long Beards to be cut off in consequence of a Bull of Pope Paschal II, denouncing the vanity of long hair, founded on a misinterpretation of 1st Corinthians, xii, 14,[1] which applies only to the hair of the head. On this text a sermon might be written though scarcely preached, which would "a tale unfold, would harrow up the soul."[2]
- ↑ A writer in Dickens' Household Words says Pope Anacletus, (query 1st or 2nd) was the first who introduced the custom of shaving.
- ↑ In this and in other places I am obliged to leave under a veil of obscure allusion, arguments of thrilling force, not only from ancient but from our own history: matters not to be met with in ordinary histories; but too abundant in the pages of satirists and moralists, who were hardy enough to lash the prevalent follies and vices of the times in which they lived.
