Tonsure

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tonsure is the practice of some Christian churches, and some Hindu temples of cutting the hair from the scalp of clerics as a symbol of their renunciation of worldly fashion and esteem.

1 History
2 Tonsure today
- 2.1 Christianity
- 2.2 Buddhism
3 Sources

[edit] History

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 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. 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, 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 medieval 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).

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 till his hair grew back.

[edit] Tonsure today

[edit] 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 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" (generally consisting of a symbolic cutting of a few tufts of hair or at most a coin-sized bare spot toward the back of the head) was the rite of inducting someone into the clergy. In medieval times he then enjoyed the civil benefits of clerics. Tonsure was a prerequisite for receiving the minor and major orders. Today one becomes a cleric only when ordained a deacon (canon 266 of the Code of Canon Law). In accordance with Pope Paul VI's motu proprio Ministeria quaedam "first tonsure is no longer conferred", except in those institutes that have been authorized to continue to use the ceremony, such as the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and the Personal Apostolic Administration of Saint John Mary Vianney.

Apart from this clerical tonsure, some Western Rite monastic orders, for example Carthusians and Trappists, employed a very full version of tonsure, keeping only a narrow ring of short hair sometimes called "the monastic crown" (see "Roman tonsure", above). Many of these monks, whether priests or not, still maintain the tradition.