Tonsure


Tonsure is the practice of cutting or shaving some or all of the hair on the scalp as a sign of religious devotion or humility. The term originates from the Latin word tonsura and referred to a specific practice in medieval Catholicism, abandoned by papal order in 1972. Tonsure, in its earliest Greek and Roman origin, was used as a sign or signifier for slavery. Tonsure can also refer to the secular practice of shaving all or part of the scalp to show support or sympathy, or to designate mourning. Current usage more generally refers to cutting or shaving for monks, devotees, or mystics of any religion as a symbol of their renunciation of worldly fashion and esteem.
Tonsure is still a traditional practice in Catholicism by specific religious orders. It is also commonly used in the Eastern Orthodox Church for newly baptised members and is frequently used for Buddhist novices, monks, and nuns. The complete shaving of one's head bald, or just shortening the hair, exists as a traditional practice in Islam after completion of the Hajj and is also practised by a number of Hindu religious orders.

Christianity

History and development

Tonsure was not practiced by the Early Church, and no records of its use in a Christian context exist prior to the 6th century. There were three forms of tonsure known in the 7th and 8th centuries:
  • The Oriental consisted of shaving the whole head. This was observed in the Eastern churches, including the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches. 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 tonsure, the exact shape of which is unclear from the sources, but in some way involved shaving the head from ear to ear. The shape may have been semicircular, arcing forward from a line between the ears, but another popular suggestion, less borne out in the sources, proposes that the entire forehead was shaved back to the ears. More recently a triangular shape, with one point at the front of the head going back to a line between the ears, has been suggested. The Celtic tonsure was worn in Ireland and Great Britain and was connected to the distinct set of practices known as Celtic Christianity. It was opposed by the Roman tradition, but many adherents to the Celtic tradition continued to maintain the old way well into the 8th and 9th centuries. Some sources have also suggested links between this tonsure and that worn by druids in the Pre-Roman Iron Age.
  • 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. It was the practice of the Latin Church of the Catholic Church, but went into decline after the Middle Ages before finally being abolished by the Pope in 1972. Catholic tradition asserted this tonsure to have originated with Saint Peter; however, there is no evidence for this.

    Ancient and medieval usage

Eastern Christianity

Clerical tonsure
, Patriarch of Constantinople from 715 to 730, writes "The double crown inscribed on the head of the priest through tonsure represents the precious head of the chief-apostle Peter. When he was sent out in the teaching and preaching of the Lord, his head was shaved by those who did not believe his word, as if in mockery. The Teacher Christ blessed this head, changed dishonour into honour, ridicule into praise. He placed on it a crown made not out of precious stones, but one which shines more than gold, topaz, or precious stone - with the stone and rock of faith.” In the Eastern Orthodox Church today, priests, deacons, readers, and other tonsured offices do not have their heads shaved. Rather, four locks of hair are clipped from the top of the head in the shape of a cross to mark their obedience to the Church.
Monastic tonsure
St. Germanus I writes "The total tonsuring of the head is in imitation of the holy Apostle James, brother of the Lord, and the Apostle Paul, and of the rest."

Western Christianity

Clerical tonsure
In the Latin Church of the Catholic Church, "first tonsure" was, in medieval times, and generally through to 1972, the rite of inducting someone into the clergy and qualifying him for the civil benefits once enjoyed by clerics. Tonsure was a prerequisite for receiving the minor and major orders. Failing to maintain tonsure was the equivalent of attempting to abandon one's clerical state, and in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, any cleric in minor orders who did not resume the tonsure within a month after being warned by his Ordinary lost the clerical state. Over time, the appearance of tonsure varied, ending up for non-monastic clergy as generally consisting of a symbolic cutting of a few tufts of hair at first tonsure in the Sign of the Cross and in wearing a bare spot on the back of the head which varied according to the degree of orders. It was not supposed to be less than the size of a communicant's host, even for a tonsuratus, someone simply tonsured, and the approximate size for a priest's tonsure was the size of a priest's host. Countries that were not Catholic had exceptions to this rule, especially in the English-speaking world. In England and America, for example, the bare spot was dispensed with, likely because of the persecutions that could arise from being a part of the Catholic clergy, but the ceremonious cutting of the hair in the first clerical tonsure was always required. In accordance with Pope Paul VI's motu proprio ''Ministeria quaedam'' of 15 August 1972, "first tonsure is no longer conferred".
Monastic tonsure
Apart from this general clerical tonsure, some Western Rite monastic orders, for example Carthusians and Trappists, employed a very full version of tonsure, shaving the head entirely bald and keeping only a narrow ring of short hair, sometimes called "the monastic crown", from the time of entrance into the monastic novitiate for all monks, whether destined for service as priests or brothers.

Contemporary practice

Eastern Christianity

Today in Eastern Orthodoxy and in the Eastern Catholic Churches of Byzantine Rite, 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
Baptismal tonsure is performed during the rite of Holy Baptism as a first sacrificial offering by the newly baptised. This tonsure is always performed, whether the one being baptised is an infant or an adult.
Monastic tonsure
Monastic tonsure, is the rite of initiation into the monastic state, symbolic of cutting off of self-will. Orthodox monks traditionally never cut their hair or beards after receiving the monastic tonsure as a sign of the consecration of their lives to God.
Clerical tonsure
Clerical tonsure is the equivalent of the "first tonsure" in the Latin church. It is done immediately prior to ordination to the minor order of reader but is not repeated at subsequent ordinations. This led to a once common usage that one was, for instance, "tonsured a reader", although technically the tonsure occurs prior to the prayer of ordination within the ordination rite.

Western Christianity

Clerical tonsure
Since the issuing of Ministeria quaedam in 1972, certain institutes have been authorized to use the first clerical tonsure, such as the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, and the Personal Apostolic Administration of Saint John Mary Vianney.
Although the tonsure itself is obsolete, the wearing of a skull cap, called a zucchetto, in church to keep the head warm, which the fuller form of clerical tonsure led to, still survives. The zucchetto is worn by the pope, cardinals and bishops both during and outside of formal religious ceremonies. Priests may wear a simple black zucchetto, only outside of religious services, though this is almost never seen except on abbots, who continue to wear the black zucchetto, or abbots of the Order of Canons Regular of Premontre, who wear white. Another congregation of Canons Regular, the Canons Regular of the Lateran, wear a white zucchetto as part of their proper habit. Some priests who held special titles formerly wore black zucchettos with red or purple piping, but this too has fallen out of use except in a few, extremely rare cases.
Monastic tonsure
Some monastic orders and individual monasteries still maintain the tradition of a monastic tonsure. While not required, it is still a common practice of Latin Church friars, such as the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word. Some references compare the tonsure to the Crown of Thorns worn by Christ at the crucifixion.

Secular European

Merovingians

Among the Merovingians, whose rulers were the "long-haired kings", the ancient custom remained 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. Thus Grimoald the Elder, the son of Pippin of Landen, and Dagobert II's guardian, seized the throne for his own son and had Dagobert tonsured, thus marking him unfit for kingship, and exiled.

Byzantine Empire

The practice of tonsure, coupled with castration, was common for deposed emperors and their sons in Byzantium from around the 8th century, prior to which disfigurement, usually by blinding, was the normal practice.