Beards in the Biblical and Patristic Tradition

Abstract The church fathers did not spend a great deal of time writing about facial hair—after all, there were far more important dogmatic and pastoral questions to be answered. However, when the fathers did have cause to speak of beards, they were, with few exceptions, extremely laudatory. Yet beards were never the real issue, as if they believed them to be holy or imbued by God with an inherent theological significance. The real issue was always morality (particularly sexual morality) and the desire that Christian men should avoid the sins of vanity and lust, especially those deemed contra natura. It is only with this in mind that the canonical legislation of ancient church, which in East and West sometimes mandated, and sometimes outlawed, the growing of facial hair, makes any sense. These canons were never about hair, but about Christian morality. Bearded or beardless, what was important was not how hairy a man was, but how holy he should be.