One of the fertile sources of dispute between the Roman and Greek Churches has been this subject of wearing or not wearing the Beard. The Greek Church, with a firm faithfulness which does credit to its orthodoxy, has stood manfully by the early Church decisions and refused to admit any shaven saint into its calendar, heartily despising the Romish Church for its weakness in this respect. On the other hand, the Popes, to mark the distinction between Eastern and Western christianity, early introduced statutes “de radendis barbis,” or concerning shaving the Beard. Here and there, however, a manly old fellow, like Pope Julius II, who made Michael Angelo sculpture him with a drawn sword in his hand, or a Cardinal, like Pole or Allen, and many Bishops, managed to believe that faith and nature might be reconciled by taking a comprehensive and truly Catholic view of both. The leading English and German Reformers wore their Beards; (if Luther confined himself to a moustache, it was because his Monkish habit of shaving was too strong for him,) and most of the Martyrs to the Protestant Faith were burnt in their Beards. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MODERN HISTORY. ------- BRITONS. THE Britons “like their neighbours the Gauls”[16] (two of whose heads were shewn copied from Roman monuments,) were Bearded, though, probably, for some purpose of distinction, their Chiefs, as stated by Cæsar and others, had merely an enormous twisted moustache. The Druids and their successors, the native British Clergy, regarded this natural covering as adding to their dignity and gracing their office and their age.[17] Footnote 16: The Goths and Dacians, as seen on the Roman monuments, were Bearded; and the ancient Hungarians, Raumer states, wore long Beards adorned with gold and jewels. The Catti also were accustomed not to trim the hair of the head or Beard till they had proved their manliness by slaying an enemy in battle. Footnote 17: One of the Legends of King Arthur mentions a giant who made “a great exhibition of domestic manufacture,” consisting of a “cloak fringed with the Beards of kings.” SAXONS. The Anglo-Saxons brought their Beards with them which they preferred of the forked shape, and this again might be either two-pronged, or three-pronged, or plutonian and neptunian.