Tillotson is the first of our clergy represented in a wig, and that a mere substitute for the natural head of hair. “I can remember,” he says, in one of his sermons, “since the wearing of the hair below the ears was looked upon as a sin of the first magnitude; and when ministers generally, whatever their text was, did either find or make occasion to reprove the great sin of long hair; and if they saw any one in the congregation guilty in that kind, they would point him out particularly, and let fly at him with great zeal.”
The victory of Ramilies introduced the Ramilies wig, with its peculiar, gradually diminishing, plaited tail, and tie, consisting of a great bow at top, and a smaller one at the bottom. This wig survived till the reign of George III. The macaronis of 1729 wore “a macaw-like toupee and a portentous tail.” But when the French Revolution came in contact with any system,—from the German Empire to perukes,—that system perished in the collision. So periwigs ceased, like the dynasty of the Doges of Venice; and all that remains to remind us of by-gone glories in the former way, is to be found in the Ramilies tie, which still clings to court coats, though the wigs have fallen from the head, never again to rise.
Lady Wortley Montague makes a severe remark in her letters, less against wigs indeed than their wearers. She is alluding to an alleged custom in the East of branding every convicted liar on the forehead; and she smartly adds, that if such a custom prevailed in England, the entire world of beaux here would have to pull their periwigs down to their eyebrows.
Tillotson, as I have noticed above, makes reference to the opposition which perukes met with from the pulpit. The hostility from that quarter in England was faint, compared with the fiery antagonism which blazed in France. In the latter country, the privilege of wearing long hair belonged, at one time, solely to royalty. Lombard, Bishop of Paris, in the middle of the twelfth century induced royalty not to make the privilege common, but to abolish it altogether. The French monarchs wore their own hair cut short, until the reign of Louis XIII., who was the first King of France who wore a wig. To the fashion set by him is owing that France ultimately became the paradise of perruquiers.
In 1660, they first appeared on the heads of a few dandy abbés. As Ireland, in Edward Dwyer, or “Edward of the Wig,” has preserved the memory of the first of her sons who took to a periwig, so France has handed down the Abbé de la Rivière, who died Bishop of Langres, as being the ecclesiastical innovator on whose head first rested a wig, with all the consequences of such guilty outrage of canonical discipline. The indignation of strict churchmen was extreme; and as the fashion began to spread amongst prelates, canons, and curés, the Bishop of Toul sat himself down and wrote a “blast” against perukes, the wearing of which, he said, unchristianized those who adopted the fashion. It was even solemnly announced that a man had better not pray at all than pray with his head so covered. No profanity was intended when zealous, close-cropped, and bareheaded ecclesiastics reminded their bewigged brethren, that they were bound to imitate Christ in all things; and then asked them, if the Saviour were likely to recognize a resemblance to himself in a priest under a wig.
Nor was this feeling confined to the Romish Church in France. The Reformed Church was fully as hostile against the new and detested fashion. Bordeaux was in a state of insurrection, for no other reason than that the Calvinist pastor there had refused to admit any of his flock in wigs to the sacrament. And when Riviers, Protestant Professor of Theology at Leyden, wrote his ‘Libertas Christiana circa Usum Capillitii Defensa’ in behalf of perukes, the ultra-orthodox in both churches turned to gore him. The Romanists asked, what could be expected from a Protestant but rank heresy? and the Protestants disowned a brother who defended a fashion which had originated with a Romanist. Each party stood by the words of Paul to the Corinthians. In vain did some suggest that the apostolical injunction was only local. The ultras would heed no such suggestion, and would have insisted on bare heads at both poles.
“And yet,” remarked the wiggites, “it is common for preachers to preach in caps.” “Ay,” retorted the orthodox, “but that is simply because they are then speaking only in their own name. Reading the Gospel or offering up the adorable sacrifice, they are speaking or acting in the name of the Universal Church. Of course,” they added, “there are occasions when even a priest may be covered. If a Pope invented the baret, a curé may wear a cap.”
Sylvester was the first Pontiff who wore a mitre, but even that fashion became abused; and in the year 1000 a Pope was seen with his mitre on during mass,—a sight which startled the faithful, and a fact which artists would be none the worse for remembering. After that period, bishops took to them so pertinaciously that they hardly laid them by on going to bed. These prelates were somewhat scandalized, when the Popes granted to certain dukes the privilege of wearing the mitre; but when the like favour was granted to abbots of a peculiar class, the prelatic execration was uttered with a jealous warmth that was perfectly astounding.
When the moderns brought the question back to its simple principles, and asked the sticklers for old customs if wigs were not as harmless as mitres, they were treated with as scant courtesy as Mr. Gorham or the Lord Primate is in the habit of experiencing at the hands of a “mediæval” bishop. If, it was said, a priest must even take off his calotte in presence of a king or Pope, how may he dare to wear a wig before God? Richelieu was the first ecclesiastic of his rank in France who wore the modern calotte; but I very much doubt if he ever took it off in the presence of Louis XIII. It is known however that the French King’s ambassador, M. d’Oppeville, found much difficulty in obtaining an audience at Rome. He wore a wig à calotte,—that is, a wig with a coif, as though the tonsure had been regularly performed, and that the wig was natural hair. The officials declared he could not be introduced unless he took off the calotte. He could not do this without taking off the wig also, as he showed the sticklers of court etiquette, and stood before them with clean-shaven head; asking, at the same time,—“Would the Pope desire me to stand in his presence in such a plight as this?” The Pontiff however did not yield the point readily. Perhaps his Holiness, had he received the ambassador under bare poll, would have graciously served him as one of his predecessors had served the Irish saint, Malachi,—put his pontifical tiara on the good man’s head, to prevent his catching cold!
But of all the tilters against wigs, none was so serious and chivalresque as “Jean Batiste Thiers, Docteur en Théologie et Curé de Champrond.” Dr. Thiers, in the year 1690, wrote a book of some six hundred pages against the wearing of wigs by ecclesiastics. He published the same at his own expense; and high authority pronounced it conformable in every respect to the “Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.” Dr. Thiers wrote a brief preface to his work, in which he invokes an abundant visitation of divine peace and grace on those who read his volume with tranquillity of mind, and who preferred truth to fashion. The invocation, I fear, is made in vain; for the tediousness of the author slays all tranquillity of spirit on the part of the reader, who cannot however refrain from smiling at seeing the very existence of Christianity made to depend upon the question of perukes. The book is a dull book: but the prevailing idea in it,—that it is all over with religion if perukes be not abolished,—is one that might compel a cynic to inextinguishable laughter. Yes, says the Doctor, the origin of the tonsure is to be found in the cutting of Peter’s hair by the Gentiles, to make him look ridiculous; therefore, he who hides the tonsure beneath a peruke insults the Prince of the Apostles! A species of reasoning, anything comparable with which is not to be found in that book which Rome has honoured by condemning—Whately’s ‘Logic.’