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| - The origin of the tonsure remains unclear but it certainly was not widely known in antiquity. There were three forms of tonsure known in the 7th and 8th centuries:
* The Oriental, which claimed the authority of St. Paul the Apostle (Acts 18:18) and consisted of shaving the whole head. This was observed by churches owing allegiance to Eastern Orthodoxy. Hence Theodore of Tarsus, who had acquired his learning in Byzantine Asia Minor and bore this tonsure, had to allow his hair to grow for four months before he could be tonsured after the Roman fashion, and then ordained Archbishop of Canterbury by Pope Vitalian in 668.
* The Celtic, which consisted of shaving the whole front of the head from ear to ear, the hair being allowed to hang down behind. This is a style that was inherited fro
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| abstract
| - The origin of the tonsure remains unclear but it certainly was not widely known in antiquity. There were three forms of tonsure known in the 7th and 8th centuries:
* The Oriental, which claimed the authority of St. Paul the Apostle (Acts 18:18) and consisted of shaving the whole head. This was observed by churches owing allegiance to Eastern Orthodoxy. Hence Theodore of Tarsus, who had acquired his learning in Byzantine Asia Minor and bore this tonsure, had to allow his hair to grow for four months before he could be tonsured after the Roman fashion, and then ordained Archbishop of Canterbury by Pope Vitalian in 668.
* The Celtic, which consisted of shaving the whole front of the head from ear to ear, the hair being allowed to hang down behind. This is a style that was inherited from the old Druids. An alternate explanation describes the "delta" tonsure cut as a triangle with the apex at the forehead, and the base from ear to ear at the back of the head. The Roman party in Britain attributed the origin of the Celtic tonsure to Simon Magus, though some traced it back to the swineherd of Lóegaire mac Néill, the Irish king who opposed St. Patrick; this latter view is refuted by the fact that it was common to all of the Celts, both insular and continental. Some practitioners of Celtic Christianity claimed the authority of St. John for this, as for their Easter practices. It is entirely plausible that the Celts were merely observing an older practice, possibly from Antioch, which had become obsolete elsewhere.
* The Roman: this consisted of shaving only the top of the head, so as to allow the hair to grow in the form of a crown. This is claimed to have originated with St. Peter, and was the practice of the Latin Rite Roman Catholic Church until obligatory tonsure was suppressed in 1972. These claimed origins are possibly unhistorical; the earliest history of the tonsure is lost in obscurity. This practice is not improbably connected with the idea that long hair is the mark of a freeman, while the shaven head marks the slave (in the religious sense: a servant of God). Other theories are; that the tonsure mimics male pattern baldness in an attempt to lend artificial respectability to men too young to display the real thing, or that the tonsure is a ritual created by balding superiors in act of vanity and power over young non-bald subordinates. Also in the documentary A Hole in the Head, Amanda Feilding, an advocate of trepanation, related her theory that linked the tonsure to the practice of Trepanation. Among the Germanic tribes there appeared the custom that an unsuccessful pretender or a dethroned king would be tonsured. Then, he had to retire to a monastery but sometimes this lasted only until his hair grew back.) The practice of tonsure, coupled with castration, was common for deposed Emperors and his sons in Byzantium from around the 8th century, prior to which execution, usually by blinding was the normal practice.
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