Baarden

Wat is het toch ineens met baarden? Marc Kregting onlangs met ‘Baardenmanieren’ op Tirade.Nu/. Chrétien Breukers gisteren op De Contrabas. Nee, dan dit volgende.

‘Thus in Turpin’s History Of Charlemagne, the Saracens appear, “Habentes LARVAS BARBATAS, cornutas, DÆMONIBUS consimiles.” c. xviii. And in Lewis The Eighth, an old French romance of Philip Mouskes,

J ot apries lui une barboire,

Com diable cornu et noire.

There was a species of masquerade celebrated by the ecclesiastics in France, called the SHEW OF BEARDS, entirely consisting of an exhibition of the most formidable beards. Gregory of Tours says, that the abbess of Poictou was accused for suffering one of these shows, called a BARBATORIA, to be performed in her monastery. Hist. lib. x. c. vi. In the Epistles of Peter de Blois we have the following passage:– “Regis curiam sequuntur assidue histriones, candidatrices, aleatores, dulcorarii, caupones, nebulatores, mimi, BARBATORES, balatrones, et hoc genus omne.” Epist. xiv. where, by Barbatores, we are not to understand Barbers, but mimics, or buffoons, disguised in huge bearded masks. In Don Quixote, the barber who personates the squire of the princess Micomicona, wears one of these masks, “una gran barba,” &c. Part. prim. c. xxvi. l. 3. And the countess of Trifaldi’s squire has “la mas larga, la mas horrida,” &c. Part. sec. c. xxxvi. 1. 8. See Observat. on Spenser, vol. i. Section ii.

About the eleventh century, and long before, beards were looked upon by the clergy as a secular vanity; and accordingly were worn by the laity only. Yet in England this distinction seems to have been more rigidly observed than in France. Malmesbury says, that king Harold, at the Norman invasion, sent spies into Duke William’s camp, who reported, that most of the French army were priests, because their faces were shaved. Hist. lib. iii. p. 56 b. edit. Savil. 1596. The regulation remained among the English clergy at least till the reign of Henry the Eighth; for Longland bishop of Lincoln, at a Visitation of Oriel college, Oxford, in 1531, orders one of the fellows, a priest, to abstain, under pain of expulsion, from wearing a beard, and pinked shoes, like a laic; and not to take the liberty, for the future, of insulting and ridiculing the governor and fellows of the society. Ordinat. Coll. Oriel. Oxon. Append. ad Joh. Trokelowe, p. 339. See Edicts of king John, in Prynne, Libertat. Eccles. Angl. tom. iii. p. 23. But among the religious, the Templars were permitted to wear long beards. In the year 1311, king Edward the Second granted letters of safe conduct to his valet Peter Auger, who had made a vow not to shave his beard; and who having resolved to visit some of the holy places abroad as a pilgrim, feared, on account of the length of his beard, that he might be mistaken for a knight-templar, and insulted. Pat. iv. Edw. II. In Dugdale’s Warwickshire, p. 704. Many orders about Beards occur in the registers of Lincoln’s-inn, cited by Dugdale. In the year 1542, it was ordered, that no member, wearing a BEARD, should presume to dine in the hall. In 1553, says Dugdale, “such as had beards should pay twelve-pence for every meal they continued them; and every man to be shaven, upon pain of being put out of commons.” Orig. Jurid. c. 64. p. 244. In 1559, no member is permitted to wear any beard above a fortnight’s growth, under pain of expulsion for the third transgression. But the fashion of wearing beards beginning to spread, in 1560 it was agreed at a council, that “all orders before that time made, touching BEARDS, should be void and repealed.” Dugd. ibid. p. 245.’

Thomas Warton, ‘The History of English Poetry from the Close of the Eleventh Century to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century’. Vol. II. London, 1840, blz. 510.

© 2011 Leo van der Sterren