Page:The philosophy of beards (electronic resource) - a lecture - physiological, artistic & historical (IA b20425272).pdf/53



BRIEF glance at Ecclesiastical History will furnish one or two interesting matters. Most of the Fathers of the Church both wore and approved of the Beard. Clement, of Alexandria, says, "nature adorned man like the lion, with a Beard, as the index of strength and empire." Lactantius, Theodoret, St. Augustine, and St. Cyprian, are all eloquent in praise of this natural feature: about which many discussions were raised in the early ages of the Church, when matters of discipline necessarily engaged much of the attention of its leaders. To settle these disputes, at the 4th Council of Carthage, held A.D. 252, canon 44, it was enacted "that a clergyman shall "not cherish his hair nor shave his Beard." (Clericus nec comam nutriat nec barbam radat.) And Bingham quotes an early letter, in which it is said of one who from a layman had become a clergyman, "his habit, gait, modesty, countenance, and discourse, were all religious, and agreeably to these his hair was short and his Beard long;"