St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite's Comments on Canon 96 of the Sixth Oecumenical Synod
Those too incur the excommunication of this Canon, according to Zonaras, who do not put a razor to their head at all, nor cut the hair of their head, but let it grow long enough to reach to the belt like that of women, and those who bleach their hair so as to make it blond or golden, or who twist it up and tie it on spills in order to make it curly; or who put wigs or “rats” on their head. This excommunication is incurred also by those who shave off their beard in order to make their face smooth and handsome after such treatment, and not to have it curly, or in order to appear at all times like beardless young men; and those who singe the hair of their beard with a red-hot tile so as to remove any that is longer than the rest, or more crooked; or who use tweezers to pluck out the superfluous hairs on their face, in order to become tender and appear handsome; or who dye their beard, in order not to appear to be old men. This same excommunication is incurred also by those women who use rouge and paint on their face, in order to look pretty, and in this way to attract men beholding them to their Satanic love. Oh, and how the miserable women have the hardihood to dishonor the image which God gave them with their wicked beautifications! Ah! how is God to recognize them and tell whether they are His own creatures and images, at a time when they are wearing another face which is devilish, and another image, which is that of Satan? Hence it is that St. Gregory the Theologian says the following in his epic verses:
“Build yourselves not towers of spurious tresses on your head, women,
While petting soft necks of rocks invisible;
Nor apply shameful paint to forms of God’s,
So as to be wearing masks, and not faces.
Lest God requite you for such things when He has come to resent them.
Who? Whence is the Creator? Avaunt, get thee away from me, strange female!
I did not paint thee a bitch, but created an image of myself.
How is it that I have an idol, a specter instead of a friend?”
And the poor wretches do not know that by what they are doing they are managing only to make themselves like that hag and whore called Jezebel (II Kings 9:30), and are themselves becoming new and second Jezebels, because she too used to paint her face in order to please the eyes of men, just as is written: “And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of him; and she painted her face, and attired her head, and peeped through the window” (ibid.). So all men and all women who do such things are all excommunicated by the present Ecumenical Council. And is these things are forbidden to be done by the laity in general, how much more they are forbidden to clerics and those in holy orders, who ought by their speech and by their conduct, and by the outward decency and plainness of their garments, and of their hair, and of their beard, to teach the laity not to be body-lovers and exquisites, but soul-lovers and virtue- lovers. Note that the present Canon censures the priests of the Latins who shave off their moustache and their beard and who look like very young men and handsome bridegrooms and have the face of women. For God forbids men of the laity in general to shave their beard, by saying: “Ye shall not mar the appearance of your bearded chin” (Lev. 19:27). But He specially forbids those in holy orders to shave their beard, by saying to Moses to tell the sons of Aaron, or, in other words, the priests, not to shave the skin of their bearded chin (Lev. 21:5). Not only did He forbid this in words, but He even appeared to Daniel with whiskers and beard as the Ancient of Days (Dan. 7:9); and the Son of God wore a beard while he was alive in the flesh. And our Forefathers and Patriarchs and Prophets and Apostles all wore beards, as is plainly evident from the most ancient pictures of them wherein they are painted with beards. But, more to the point, even the saints in Italy, like St. Ambrose, the father of monks Benedict, Gregory Dialogus, and the rest, all had beards, as they appear in their pictures painted in the church of St. Mark in Venice. Why, even the judgment of right reason decides the shaving of the beard to be improper. For the beard is the difference which in respect of appearance distinguishes a woman from a man. That is why a certain philosopher when asked why he grew a beard and whiskers, replied that as often as he stroked his beard and whiskers he felt that he was a man, and not a woman. Those men who shave their beard are not possessors of a manly face, but of a womanly face. Hence it was that Epiphanius blamed the Massalians for cutting off their beard, which is the visage peculiar to man as distinguished from woman. The Apostles in their Injunctions, Book I, ch.3, command that no one shall destroy the hair of his beard, and change the natural visage of the man into one that is unnatural. “For,” says he, “God the Creator made this to be becoming to women, but deemed it to be out of harmony with men.” The innovation of shaving the beard ensued in the Roman Church a little before Leo IX, Gregory VII even resorted to force in order to make bishops and clerics shave off their beard. Oh, and what a most ugly and most disgusting sight it is to see the successor of St. Peter close-shaven, as the Greeks say, like a “fine bridegroom,” with this difference, however, that he wears a stole and a pallium, and sits in the chief seat among a large number of other men like him in a council called the college of cardinals, while he himself is styled the Pope. Yet bearded Popes did not become extinct after insane Gregory, a witness to this fact being Pope Gelasius growing a beard, as is stated in his biography. See the Dodecabiblus of Dositheus, pp. 776-8. Meletius the Confessor (subject 7, concerning unleavened wafers) states that a certain Pope by the name of Peter on account of his lascivious acts was arrested by the king and one half of his beard was shaven off as ‘a mark of dishonor. According to another authority, in other temples too there were princes, even on the sacerdotal list, who had a beard, as in Leipzig they are to be seen painted after Martin Luther in the church called St. Paul’s and that called St, Thomas’s. I saw the same things also in Bardislabia.
From
The Rudder, pp. 403-405.