Author Description

"Three texts on beards and baldness from the Middle Ages, ranging from fifth-century north Africa to twelfth-century Latin Europe, in new translations (and one translated for the first time in any language). Synesius of Cyrene, a Greek-speaking Christian intellectual, puts his education in the philosophy and literature of classical Greece to comical use in his ironic treatise In Praise of Baldness. Hucbald of Saint-Amand, a monk from northeastern France, composed in the tenth century the remarkable poem On Bald Men, in which every letter begins with C, the first letter of the Latin word for bald (calvus). In the twelfth century, Burchard of Bellevaux, a student of Saint Benedict and Cistercian abbot, wrote A Defense of Beards to quell unrest among lay-brothers who believed their beards were in danger; it is a tour de force of biblical exegesis in which he explains the symbolic meaning of beards and the monastic tonsure, often with a healthy dose of humor. Translations, introduction, and explanatory notes by Joseph McAlhany (PhD, Columbia University)"--