I find all the popes of the earliest times of Christianity wore long beards, ’till the first division into two Churches, Greek and Latin. Their rivality had already broken out in the excommunication of the iconoclasts. When Charlemain became emperor of the West, the popes then threw off the yoke of the Grecian authority, and seized that occasion to distinguish themselves from their enemies by something particular. It was at this very epoch, according to fathers Henschenius and Papebrock,[58] that Leo III. gave the Latin church, for the first time, the example of a pope shaved. The disputes soon redoubled. Photius, the Greek patriarch, renewed the pretensions of the clergy of the East to precendency over those of the West: he excommunicated, in his turn, pope Nicholas I. who had already excommunicated him. Never had the chins of the Greeks been so bearded, nor those of the Latins so closely shaved. Photius, having taken the title of œcumenical patriarch, declared the Western bishops heretics. Among other things, he reproached them with cutting off their beards. _A strange reason for setting the Western and Eastern empires at variance_, says a great writer of our age. To think this reason so strange, is making very light of beards.[59] Footnote 58: See the _Propileum_ of fathers Henschenius and Papebrock for the month of May, p. 209, vol. i. of the acts of the saints. Footnote 59: Let it be always recollected that we have nothing to do here but with discipline. Some indispensable invectives against the divers opinion of the popes, ought not to startle tender consciences. The dogma, which we highly respect, has no part in this discussion. Nicholas I. does not offer any thing in his own defence against this serious accusation. In his letter to Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, and the other bishops of France, A. D. 867, he only says, speaking of the Greeks: “Moreover, they endeavour to throw blame on us, because the clergy who are under our authority don’t refuse to be shaved.”[60] This phrase, which shews that all the clergy at that time were constrained to appear shaved, presents nothing in excuse for this violent conduct. If the pope could have offered some reasons to palliate this looseness of discipline, he would not have failed to make use of them on this occasion; but he does not give one. Rivalship was the sole cause of these puerile dissensions. What a number of disputes, and troubles has not this ridiculous infatuation of the Latin priests occasioned! Had they but let their beards grow out, they would have avoided all these mischiefs. Footnote 60: _Quin & reprehendere satagunt, quia penes os clerici barbas radere suas non abnuunt, &c._ Acta Conciliorum.