Saint John Henry Newman records in Loss and Gain a rumour that circulated in the febrile atmosphere of mid-1840s Oxford:
"Have you heard the news?" said Sheffield; " I have been long enough in college to pick it up. The Kitchen man was full of it as I passed along. Jack's a particular friend of mine; a good honest fellow, and has all the gossip of the place. I don't know what it means, but Oxford has just now a very bad inside. The report is, that some of the men have turned Romans; and they say that there are strangers going about Oxford whom nobody knows anything of. Jack, who is a bit of a divine himself, says he heard the Principal say that, for certain, there were Jesuits at the bottom of it; and I don't know what he means, but he declares he saw with his own eyes the Pope walking down the High Street with the priest. I asked him how he knew it; he said he knew the Pope by his slouching hat and his long beard; and the porter told him it was the Pope ..."
Happy days, when Jesuits were sinister figures of subtle intrigue and stout defenders of Catholic orthodoxy.
Incidentally, Reginald Cardinal Pole had a long beard. What were the ecclesiastical politics of beards in the 1550s?
The Catholic encyclopedia treats the matter at considerable length; the Corpus juris canonici contains the prohibition Clericus nec comam nutriat nec barbam since about the 6th century, which became the classical expression and was also used in the canons of the 5th Lateran council; in the 13th century, Pope Alexander III even directed clerics who allowed their hair and beard to grow freely to be shave by the archdeacon, by force if necessary. However, at least in the 16th century it seems evident from the popes' portraits, that at least a beard of moderate length was not seen to contradict this canon (although Charles Borromeo in 1576 strongly exhorted his clergy to follow this canon and is always depicted clean-shaven); this fashion lasted until about end of the 17th century, when under the example of the French court and the example of Cardinal Orsini clean-shaven clerics became the norm again.
ReplyDeleteInteresting article, Protasius. It seems that exceptions to the canon were allowed for clergy in mission territory. Hence photos of Marcel Lefebvre show him as bearded in Africa, but beardless in Europe.
DeleteHappy days indeed! Long gone, Jesuits like that are rare as black swans.
ReplyDelete"What were the ecclesiastical politics of beards in the 1550s?"
ReplyDeleteWondering about this, I perused Wikipedia's list of every pope ever at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_popes and noted that from Clement VII, whose reign began in 1523, to Innocent XII, who died in 1700, every pope was bearded. Since then, for the last 322 years, every pope has been clean-shaven.
Attempting to date the events of Loss and Gain as precisely as possible, I noted that Charles Reding takes a train from Steventon to London. According to this web page: https://southoxfordhistory.org.uk/interesting-aspects-of-grandpont-and-south-oxford-s-history/the-coming-of-the-railway-to-oxford, this was how one travelled by rail from Oxford to London from 1838, when the line reached Steventon, until 1844, when the railway line reached Oxford itself. I googled images of Gregory XVI (Pope from 1831 until 1846) and he was definitely clean-shaven. But as Google and the Internet had not yet reached Oxford in the 1840's, we can excuse the people of Oxford for not knowing what the incumbent Pope looked like.
Dear Father,
ReplyDeleteWas Cardinal Pole a stout defender of Catholic orthodoxy?
Prof. De Mattei, in his recent biography of S. Pius V, explains how the saintly Dominican pontiff agreed with the intemperate Paul IV that Pole was a crypto-Lutheran heretic. I understand De Mattei to conclude that both popes were correct and that the English cardinal, whatever virtues he may have possessed, was not orthodox.
I don’t know if he’s right about that, but in general De Mattei’s historical judgment is entitled to great respect.
It was claimed that when Pope Benedict came to the U.K. for the beatification of Cardinal Newman, the possibility of him visiting Oxford was mooted - not least because it would accrue some £6 million to the city.
ReplyDeleteOfficials in Rome declined the invitation reminding the University that it had withdrawn a previous offer of an Honorary Doctorate to Cardinal Ratzinger by capitulating to liberal pressure from the Theological Faculty who claiming he was too ‘Conservative’.
In 1531, the humanist Pierio Valeriano published a learned tract, Pro Sacerdotum Barbis, addressed to Ippolito de' Medici, strongly defending the recent fashion of clerical beards. Pope Julius II had worn a beard for a while after the loss of Bologna - and was depicted thus by Raphael - while Clement VII took to wearing a beard in mourning for the Sack of Rome in 1527. It seems to have caught on, and in Valeriano's apology the beard is treated as an emblem of masculine gravity, worn not only by the ancient Greeks and Romans (before decadence set in) but also by Our Lord and his apostles; at the same time, it is a sign of mourning most apt for the turbulent times in which the author and his audience were living. (See also Kenneth Gouwens, Remembering the Renaissance.) Valeriano partly blames the mollities of the Curia for the fall of Rome; the clerical beard, one might say, was one of the most visible symbols of the Counter-Reformation!
ReplyDelete(After the mid-17th C. the fashion turned towards the combination of moustache and goatee; Innocent XII (+ 1700) was the last pope to date to wear a beard.)
The late George Shaw's Academical Dress (2nd edn., 1995) has, as one of the colour plates, a group photo of Lambeth degree recipients in May 1993. They are in some sort of parlour, presumably at Lambeth Palace, and behind them on the wall is a portrait of Cardinal Pole but with a small beard not much longer than my own. Further research is needed on the precise dates of these portraits. As a young man Pole had a short beard, but can I assume that his magnificent "beard of wisdom" was his final beard style?
ReplyDeleteI see that in Hebrew zaqan is beard and zaqen is elder, which could be taken as justification for a bearded presbyterate.
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember that one Achille Ratti visited Oxford in order to recuperate, having been injured on some sort of a climbing holiday. Not a pope at that time, of course, but perhaps it's as close as Oxford has come to the presence of a pope.
ReplyDeleteOn prelates noticed in unexpected places, the following joke seems apposite:
ReplyDeleteTwo Glaswegians on a visit to London were on the Tube. One said to the other, "Look over there! I do believe that's the Archbishop of Canterbury." His friend replied, "Nah, it's never him." The first said, "I'm goin' tae ask him." He made his way to the purported archbishop and said, "Beg pardon, sir, but are you the Archbishop of Canterbury?" The man looked up at him and said, "F--- off!" The Scot returned to his seat, and his friend said, "Well? Was it the Archbishop?" He replied, "He would nae say one way nor the other."
Quoniam de Oxonia loquimur, si, in missis tuis, quadam domina memineris ...
ReplyDeleteAvB.
Checked my Kennedy's after all these years - should be "cujusdam dominae" with meminisse. Ir's amazing what tricks the passong of time plays on one's memory.
ReplyDeleteAvB.