When men decided to enter the community, the first haircut they got wasn't the tonsure - it was just an incredibly short haircut done with scissors. He says the distinctive hairstyle was a tribute to the crown of thorns placed on Christ's head during the crucifixion. There's another theory, too, and this one comes from Daniel McCarthy, a scholar in Dublin who has done a ton of research on the use of the tonsure. Early monks styled themselves as "slaves of Christ," and the tonsure might have been a way to demonstrate their obedience to the divine. There are a few reasons why early monks might have chosen to go for this sort of look, and one is that it had long been traditional to completely shave the head of slaves to denote their low status. Historians do think it started around the same time men started organizing into devout communities of monks, which places the time frame around the second or third century A.D. And it's in Rome that the story of the Christian tonsure starts.Īccording to the Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History, it's unclear just when Catholic monks started adopting the trend of shaving the tops of their heads while leaving that little ring of hair. It's usually done to mark a stage in some kind of religious journey, and it's practiced in religions including Christianity, Eastern Orthodoxy, Buddhism, Hinduism, and it was even done in ancient Greece and Rome (via Britannica). The term "tonsure" is actually a reference to any religious or ceremonial clipping of hair.
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