The Battle of the Beards

Professor MacCullouch’s excellent A. B. Emden Public Lecture in Oxford yesterday traced the historiography or hagiography of the life of Thomas Cranmer by charting The Battle of the Beards - complete with pictures. One can often tell how Thomas Cranmer is being presented by artists by whether or not he is wearing a beard.

Medieval Roman Catholic clergy were clean shaven. They were going to drink the blood of Christ and they didn’t want to get Jesus in their beards.

Reformed ministers often grew beards. They were going to receive the whole Christ spiritually by faith in the Supper and they didn’t mind a bit of wine on their chops. Maybe they like the OT prophet look too? Or did they think it manly?

So under Henry VIII, Cranmer was clean shaven. But later he grew a big long bushy beard. But portraits of him are not always historically accurate. Often the artists are spinning Cranmer as Catholic or Reformed by distorting his facial hair.

The notion that Cranmer grew his beard as a sign of grief at Henry's death (which John Foxe mentions) is probably falacious, althiugh Cranmer may have said it.

The present Archbishop of Canterbury might blow the beard theory out of the water. But then there are also Orthodox beards.

There are surely PhDs in the theology of beards.