The Tonsure and Other Customs

Alongside the reckoning of Pascha, the second great mark of difference between the Insular churches and the advancing Roman party was the tonsure — the shape of the shaven head by which a monk or cleric was set apart. The Insular tradition shaved the front of the head from ear to ear; the Roman tradition shaved the crown in a circle. Each side read its own tonsure as apostolic and the other’s as suspect, and the Roman polemic went so far as to call the Insular form “the tonsure of Simon Magus.” This file sets out the two tonsures and the further points of custom at issue — baptism, episcopal consecration — and states plainly, with the sources and with our methodology, what was not at stake: no article of the Creed, no sacrament, no point of Christology or of the faith. This was a quarrel over discipline and custom within one undivided Church.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Celtic; defender of the Celtic Pascha)

The Two Tonsures

The tonsure — the ritual shaving of part of the head — marked a man as dedicated to God’s service, a monk or cleric distinguished by his very appearance from the laity (Corning 2006, 18–30; McCarthy 2003). By the seventh century two forms were in open competition in the Insular world. The Roman form was the coronal tonsure: the crown of the head shaved in a circle, leaving a ring of hair around it, understood to recall the crown of thorns and claimed as the tonsure handed down from the Apostle Peter (Bede, HE V.21; trans. Colgrave & Mynors 1969; Corning 2006, 18–30). The Insular form — worn at Iona and Lindisfarne and across the Columban familia — shaved the front of the head from ear to ear, leaving the hair to grow at the back, a line drawn across the forehead rather than a ring about the crown (Bede, HE V.21; Colgrave & Mynors 1969; McCarthy 2003; Charles-Edwards 2000, 391–415).

[Disputed: the precise geometry of the Insular tonsure — Bede and the Roman sources describe it as a frontal, ear-to-ear shaving (*HE* V.21), and most scholars accept that general shape (Corning 2006, 18–30; Charles-Edwards 2000, 391–415); but the exact line — whether a straight band across the front, a forward-pointing triangle, or a crescent, and how much it owed to a pre-Christian Insular or "druidic" antecedent — is reconstructed from hostile description and later report rather than from any neutral contemporary depiction, and remains debated (McCarthy, "On the shape of the insular tonsure," *Celtica* 24 [2003], 140–167)].

“The Tonsure of Simon Magus”

The tonsure became polemical because each side claimed apostolic warrant and impugned the other’s pedigree. The Roman party did not merely prefer the coronal tonsure; it attacked the Insular tonsure by attaching to it the name of Simon Magus, the sorcerer of Acts 8:9–24 who tried to buy the gift of the Holy Spirit and became, in Christian memory, the archetype of the heretic and false teacher (Acts 8:9–24; Bede, HE V.21; Colgrave & Mynors 1969; Corning 2006, 18–30). To call the Insular tonsure “the tonsure of Simon Magus” was to insinuate that the form worn by Colmán and the whole Columban tradition descended not from an apostle but from the Church’s first heresiarch — a charge of pedigree, not of doctrine, but a wounding one (Bede, HE V.21; Stancliffe 1995; Mayr-Harting 1991, 103–113).

This polemical genealogy is preserved most fully in the long letter that Abbot Ceolfrith of Wearmouth-Jarrow sent to King Nechtan of the Picts, which Bede reproduces at length and evidently endorses (Bede, HE V.21; Colgrave & Mynors 1969). The letter argues that the only tonsures with claim to authority are the coronal “Petrine” tonsure and the total shaving of converts, and it ranges the Insular ear-to-ear tonsure on the side of Simon Magus (Bede, HE V.21; Corning 2006, 18–30; Mayr-Harting 1991, 168–171). The reader must weigh the source: this is the Roman case in its own words, transmitted by a Roman partisan who agrees with it. The Insular side’s own account of the dignity and origin of its tonsure does not survive in comparable form, and we therefore know the dispute largely through the polemic of the party that won (Stancliffe 1995; Charles-Edwards 2000, 391–415; on the one-sidedness of the record, see The Irish Record).

[Disputed: whether the Insular churches themselves claimed an apostolic origin for their tonsure — the Roman letter in Bede (*HE* V.21) sets a "Petrine" coronal tonsure against a "Simon Magus" Insular one, but this antithesis is the Roman party's framing; what genealogy, if any, the Insular churches asserted for their own tonsure is not directly preserved, and scholars reconstruct it only by inference (Corning 2006, 18–30; Charles-Edwards 2000, 391–415). The "Simon Magus" label should be read as polemical attribution, not as an Insular self-description].

The Symbolic Weight Each Side Gave It

To a modern eye a haircut is a trivial thing on which to divide a Church, and it is worth saying why it was not trivial to them. The tonsure was a visible, daily, public sign of a man’s consecration; it was the first thing one saw of a monk. When two missions worked the same kingdom with two different tonsures, the difference was as plain as the difference in their Easters and as hard to ignore (Mayr-Harting 1991, 103–113; Corning 2006, 18–30). For the Roman party, conformity of the tonsure was part of conformity to the practice of the apostolic see and the wider Church, and divergence in so visible a sign was a standing emblem of disunity (Bede, HE V.21; Colgrave & Mynors 1969). For the Insular party, the inherited tonsure was bound up with the authority of their founders — Columba and the whole Columban tradition — and to abandon it was to disown the fathers who had given them the faith (Stancliffe 1995; Charles-Edwards 2000, 391–415). The symbolism was real on both sides; what neither side claimed was that the shape of the tonsure touched the content of the faith (Corning 2006, 18–30; Mayr-Harting 1991, 103–113).

The Other Customs at Issue

Pascha and tonsure were the two great heads of dispute, but the sources mention, more glancingly, further points of Insular-Roman difference.

Baptism. Some sources name a difference in the baptismal rite as among the customs the Roman party wished corrected, though the texts are reticent about its exact nature, and the matter is far less prominent than Easter or tonsure (Mayr-Harting 1991, 168–171; Corning 2006, 18–30). It is a measure of the modesty of the difference that the sources do not dwell on it, and modern scholarship treats the precise point as uncertain.

[Disputed: the nature of the alleged Insular baptismal difference — the Roman sources list baptism among the customs to be reformed but do not clearly specify the variation (whether in the manner of immersion, the number of immersions, or some attendant rite); Mayr-Harting (1991, 168–171) and Corning (2006, 18–30) note the reference but treat its precise content as unrecoverable from the surviving texts. No source alleges that Insular baptism was invalid or unorthodox in form of words — the Trinitarian baptism was common ground].

Episcopal consecration and order. A further point sometimes raised concerned the consecration of bishops and the structure of Insular ecclesiastical authority, in which the abbot of a monastic familia — most famously the abbot of Iona — held a jurisdictional pre-eminence over bishops that struck the Roman party as anomalous (Charles-Edwards 2000, 241–281; Corning 2006, 18–30). Bede himself notes, with evident puzzlement, that Iona was governed by a presbyter-abbot to whom even bishops were subject, “contrary to the usual order” (Bede, HE III.4; Colgrave & Mynors 1969). This was a difference of polity and discipline — how the Church ordered its governance — not a denial that Insular bishops were validly consecrated or that their orders were real (Charles-Edwards 2000, 241–281; on the Iona succession, see Iona and the Lindisfarne Succession).

What Was Not at Stake

It is the central and necessary point of this whole section, required equally by the sources and by our methodology (METHODOLOGY §4), that the paschal controversy — Easter, tonsure, baptismal custom, and order alike — touched the discipline of the Church and not its dogma. The even-handedness here is not a modern softening of a real quarrel; it is what the sources themselves attest.

No article of the Creed was in dispute. The Insular churches confessed the same Nicene faith — the same Trinity, the same Incarnation — as the party pressing for Roman conformity, and no source on either side alleges otherwise (Corning 2006, 18–30; Mayr-Harting 1991, 103–113; Charles-Edwards 2000, 391–415). No sacrament was at issue: the Insular Eucharist was the Eucharist, the Insular baptism was Trinitarian baptism, the Insular ordinations conferred real orders, and the Roman party never declared any of them void (Corning 2006, 18–30; Charles-Edwards 2000, 241–281). No question of Christology divided them; there was no heresy at Whitby. Bede, the Roman partisan whose hostility to the Insular reckoning shapes his whole narrative, nowhere charges the Irish with error in the faith — only with error in computation and with obstinacy in keeping it (Bede, HE III.25, V.21; Colgrave & Mynors 1969; Stancliffe 1995). His own famous tribute to Aidan, even as he laments Aidan’s wrong Easter, makes the distinction explicit: he praises without reserve the holiness, the charity, and the apostolic life of a man whose paschal reckoning he holds to be mistaken (Bede, HE III.17; Colgrave & Mynors 1969; on Bede’s generosity to the defeated, see Honor for the Defeated).

This is the controlling frame for any Orthodox reading of the controversy and of St. Colmán. It would be an anachronism — and a falsification — to cast the dispute as “Rome versus Orthodoxy,” or as a contest between two churches; in the seventh century there was one undivided Church, and both parties belonged to it wholly (Mayr-Harting 1991, 103–113; and see Pre-Schism Church; on the later divergence the dispute does not prefigure, Orthodox and Catholic). What was at stake was the unity of practice within that one Church: whether Christians of one kingdom would keep one Pascha and bear one sign of consecration, or two. That is a serious question of order and communion — the kind of question the Church has always taken seriously, because shared practice is part of how the one faith is lived and shown (Corning 2006, 1–18; and see Holy Tradition). But it is a question of discipline and computus, not of dogma; and to keep that distinction clear is to do justice both to those who pressed for conformity and to St. Colmán, who in defending the tradition of his fathers defended no error of faith, but only an older way of keeping the one faith’s time (Bede, HE III.25–26; Colgrave & Mynors 1969; and see What Was Really at Stake).

References

Bede. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum). Ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. (The coronal “Petrine” tonsure and the “Simon Magus” polemic in Ceolfrith’s letter to Nechtan at V.21; the presbyter-abbot of Iona “contrary to the usual order” at III.4; Bede’s tribute to Aidan despite his Easter at III.17; the controversy and its resolution at III.25–26.)
Corning, Caitlin. The Celtic and Roman Traditions: Conflict and Consensus in the Early Medieval Church. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. (The two tonsures and their symbolism; the Simon Magus charge; baptism and order among the customs at issue; the discipline-not-dogma distinction.)
Charles-Edwards, T. M. Early Christian Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. (The Insular tonsure; the Columban familia and the abbot’s jurisdiction over bishops; pp. 241–281, 391–415.)
Mayr-Harting, Henry. The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd ed. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991. (The tonsure dispute and Ceolfrith’s letter; the pastoral stakes; pp. 103–113, 168–171.)
McCarthy, Daniel. “On the shape of the insular tonsure.” Celtica 24 (2003): 140–167. (Reconstruction and debate over the geometry and antecedents of the Insular tonsure.)
Stancliffe, Clare. “Oswald, ‘Most Holy and Most Victorious King of the Northumbrians.’” In Oswald: Northumbrian King to European Saint, ed. Clare Stancliffe and Eric Cambridge. Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1995. (Bede’s partisanship; the one-sided survival of the Roman case.)