The first article stipulated that the said craft should, under certain penalties, keep and maintain a light before the image of our Lady in our Lady's Chapel, within the precincts of St. Frideswyde's Church; the second, that no person of the said craft should work on a Sunday, save on market Sundays and in harvest-time, or shave any but such as were to preach or do a religious act on Sunday all through the year; while a third provided that all such as were of the craft were to receive at least sixpence a quarter from each customer who desired to be shaved weekly in his chamber or house. One shave per week does not coincide with our modern notions of what is attractive and presentable in the outer man, but the same rule prevailed at Cambridge. The statutes of St. John's College in the latter university affirmed: "A barber is very necessary to the college, who shall shave and cut once a week the head and beard of the Master, Fellows, and Scholars, as they shall severally have need."
In the statutes of New College, Oxford, there is an injunction against the mock ceremony of shaving on the night preceding magistration. It is called a _ludus_ (or play), and is believed to have been affined to the ecclesiastical mummeries so popular in the Middle Ages, in one of which the characters were a bishop, an abbot, a preceptor, and a fool shaved the precentor on a public stage erected at the west end of the church. There was also a species of masquerade celebrated by the religious in France, which consisted in the display of the most formidable beards; and it is recorded by Gregory of Tours that the Abbess of Poitou was accused of allowing one of these shows, called a _Barbitoria_, to be held in her monastery.
The only men of religion permitted to wear long beards were the Templars; and, speaking generally,[4] the presence or absence of hair was one of the marks of cleavage between the clergy (_tonsi_) and the laity (_criniti_). Even those privileged to wear long hair--we refer, of course, to the male portion of the community--were required to be shorn so far that part of their ears might appear, and that their eyes might not be covered. At first it may seem strange that the question of trimming the hair should come under the cognizance of the Church--the person himself or his barber might have been deemed at liberty to consult his own taste. The canon, however, which regulated the usage was based on the apostolic challenge: "Doth not nature itself teach you that, if a man hath long hair, it is a shame unto him?"