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Tonsure is the practice of some Christian churches and Hindu temples of cutting the hair from the scalp of clerics as a symbol of their renunciation of worldly fashion and esteem. There were three forms of tonsure known in the seventh and eighth centuries:

(1) The Oriental, which claimed the authority of St. Paul 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.

(2) The Celtic, which consisted of shaving the whole front of the head from ear to ear, the hair being allowed to hang down behind. An alternate explanation (apparently first described in the modern day in the article On The Shape Of The Insular Tonsure) 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 which had become obsolete elsewhere.

(3) 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 Catholic church until obligatory tonsure was abolished in 1972.

These claimed origins are unhistorical; the early history of the tonsure is lost in obscurity. This practice is not improbably connected with the Roman idea that long hair is the mark of a freeman, while the shaven head marks the slave.

Among the Visigoths, a dethroned king would be tonsured. Then, he had to retire to a monastery and was not available to claim the crown back.

The most common interpretation of tonsure after ancient times is the rejection of worldly concerns -- monks, other clerics, and Christian religious sisters and nuns undertake some degree of cutting of the hair as a sign that they are rejecting society's standards of beauty, concern with personal appearance, pride, fashion and so on, in much the same way they are clothed with a uniform habit or other garment which is, ideally, simple and practical and reflective of Christian notions of the vow of poverty.

Tonsure today

Today in Eastern Orthodoxy and in the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church, there are three types of tonsure: baptismal, monastic, and clerical. It always consists of the cutting of four locks of hair in a cruciform pattern: at the front of head as the celebrant says "In the Name of the Father", at the back of head at the words "and the Son", and on either side of the head at the words "and the Holy Spirit". In all cases, the hair is allowed to grow back; the tonsure as such is not adopted as a hairstyle. Baptismal tonsure is performed during the rite of Holy Baptism as a first sacrificial offering by the newly baptized. Monastic tonsure (of which there are three grades: Rassophore, Stavrophore and the Great Schema) is the rite of initiation into the monastic state. Clerical tonsure is done prior to ordination to the rank of reader. This has lead to the common usage that one is "tonsured a reader", although technically the rite of tonsure occurs prior to the actual ordination by laying on of hands.

In the "Latin" or Western Rite of the Roman Catholic Church, "first tonsure" referred to the rite of inducting a person into the clergy. Once a seminarian received the tonsure, which for most consisted of a symbolic cutting of a few tufts of hair or at most a small bald spot toward the back of the head, he was officially considered a cleric, and in medieval times obtained the civil benefits of clerics. He could then also receive the minor orders which were prerequisites to the major orders. Today, though, one becomes a cleric only when one is ordained deacon. Paul VI adopted this rule in 1972 while simultaneously suppressing obligatory tonsure, the minor orders, and the subdiaconate. It is still maintained, however, by Traditional Catholics including the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter.

Apart from this clerical "first tonsure," some Western Rite monastic orders, including for example the Carthusians and Trappists, have historically employed a very full version of tonsure (leaving behind a narrow ring of short hair sometimes called "the monastic crown"). Many of these monks, whether priests or not, maintain such traditions even today.

Catholic traditionalism | Christian history | Eastern Orthodoxy | Hairstyles

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Tonsure".

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