If the classical poets winged their satirical shafts against wigs, these were as little spared by the mimic thunderbolts of the Fathers, Councils, and Canons of the early Church. Even poets and Christian elders could no more digest human hair than can the crocodile,—of whom, dead, it is said, you may know how many individuals he devoured living by the number of hair-balls in the stomach, which can neither digest nor eject them. The indignation of Tertullian respecting these said wigs is something perfectly terrific. Not less is that of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who especially vouches for the virtue of his simple sister Gorgonia, for the reason that she neither cared to curl her own hair, nor to repair its lack of beauty by the aid of a wig. The thunder of St. Jerome against these adornments was quite as loud as that of any of the Fathers. They were preached against as unbecoming to Christianity. Council after Council, from the first at Constantinople to the last Provincial Council at Tours, denounced wigs even when worn in joke. “There is no joke in the matter!” exclaimed the exceedingly irate St. Bernard; “the woman who wears a wig commits a mortal sin!” St. John Chrysostom cites St. Paul against the fashion, arguing that they who prayed or preached in wigs could not be said to worship or to teach the Word of God “with head uncovered.” “Look!” says Cyprian to the wearers of false hair; “look at the Pagans! they pray in veils. What better are you than Pagans if you come to prayers in perukes?” Many local Synods would authorize no fashion of wearing the hair but straight and short. This form was especially enjoined on the clergy generally. St. Ambrose as strictly enjoined the fashion upon the ladies of his diocese: “Do not talk to me of curls,” said this hard-working prelate; “they are the _lenocinia formæ, non præcepta virtutis_.” The ladies smiled. It was to some such obdurate and beautiful rebels that Cyprian once gravely preached, saying: “Give heed to me, O ye women! Adultery is a grievous sin; but she who wears false hair is guilty of a greater.” It must have been a comfortable state of society when two angry ladies could exclaim to each other, “You may say of me what you please; you may charge me with breaking the seventh commandment; but, thank Heaven and Cyprian, you cannot accuse me of wearing a wig!”