In 16th-century France, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, leader of the Huguenots, used his beard to hold his toothpicks.

Dangerous beards

Alexander the Great is often credited with starting the fashion for soldiers shaving. He introduced it as a safety measure because many of his men died in hand-to-hand combat after their beards were grabbed by their enemies.

A century earlier, King Tarquin II (535-509 BC) thought beards were unsanitary and brought the first razor to Rome. Hadrian (76-138 AD) was the first Roman emperor to sport a beard, allegedly to hide his scarred face. Until then, a beard meant you were either in mourning - or Greek.

The most treacherous beard in history was that of Austrian Hans Steininger. It was more than two metres long and he kept it rolled and stowed in a leather pouch, but in 1567 he tripped over it while running from a fire, and perished.

One of the CIA's more insane attempts to destabilise Cuba was to put toxic thallium salts in the shoes of Fidel Castro to make his beard fall out.

Beard tax

Peter the Great (1672-1728) introduced a tax on beards in as part of his modernisation programme for Russia. On his return in 1698 from a Grand Tour of the West, where beards had become deeply unfashionable, he shaved off his advisers' beards himself and made those who defied the law pay a hefty fine and carry a special gold beard token.

"I cultivate this beard, not for the usual given reasons of skin trouble or pain of shaving,
nor for the secret purpose of covering a weak chin,
but as pure, unblushing decoration, much as a peacock finds pleasure in his tail.
And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing a woman cannot do better than a man,
or if she can, her success is assured only in a circus."

John Steinbeck in Travels with Charley (1961)

Female beards

The most impressive female beard in history belonged to Queen Hapshetsut (c. 1480 BC) who proclaimed herself Pharaoh after the death of her husband, Thutmose II, and wore a long, plaited false beard as part of her royal dress. St Wilgefortis and St Paula both sprouted miraculous beards to preserve their chastity by discouraging potential rapists.

The current world record holder is Vivian Wheeler from Illinois, who started growing her fine beard in 1993 after her mother's death. "It showed me I could be proud of being me," she said. "It made me feel like I had a chance in society."

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In the 16th century, hirsute ladies were not regarded as freaks. Members of the Gonzales or Gontsalvus family (from Tenerife) had a condition known as Hypertrichosis (excess of hair), and one of them, Antonietta, was painted in Parma 1585 (aged 11 or 12) by a female painter, Lavinia Fontana. This portrait can be seen in the Musée de Blois, in France. She is holding a handwritten account of her life up to that time. Her father, also wonderfully hairy, had been received as a boy into the French court, and became Royal Breadserver to king Henri II, but later moved to Italy.

In France, also, are several images of the spurious Saint Wilgefortis, unsurprisingly de-canonised by the Second Vatican Council in 1969.
The statue shown below is at Wissages in the Pas-de-Calais. Not far to the south, at Arques, is another one, which was the subject of devotion by Ernest Dowson when he was in France comforting Oscar Wilde after the latter's release from prison.

The best known statue of Wilgefortis, however, is in the church of Loreto in Prague, in the Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows. (Postcards are available.)

The legend recounts that as a young noblewoman, Wilgefortis’ father (in some versions he is the king of Portugal) had promised her to a pagan king (in some versions the King of Sicily, who might or might not have been a Moor and not a king). The pious Wilgefortis would have nothing to do with such defilement, so she took a vow of virginity and prayed for a miracle to save her from a fate worse than death.. Lo and behold! (for the Lord works in myserious ways) Wilgefortis sprouted a beard worthy of any freak-show. The engagement was, of course called off. Because the patriarchy is awesome, her father flew into a rage at her unfeminine miracle and had Wilgefortis crucified. She is now prayed to by women who wish to be “unencumbered” of abusive husbands, but it is a mystery which Edward Dowson, a seeker after young girls, prayed to a statue which only a pervert like myself would find attractive.

The real story, however, is as good as the legend created to explain a wooden carving from the 11th century. The 'Volto Santo' or Holy Face in Lucca is an unbearded carving of Jesus on the cross, believed to have been the work of a certain Nicodemus.. Instead of the customary, attractively-arranged loin cloth, Jesus is less titillatingly clad in a full-length tunic. He was commonly clothed this way in the earlier Middle Ages, but the practice had been discontinued.

Thus, when copies of the Volto Santo of Lucca began to appear in Northern Europe,.where real men wore trousers and women wore dresses, the unfamiliar image was explained by the wonderful legend of St Wilgefortis. This name derives from the Old High German “heilige Vartez”, or Holy Face. Wilgefortis became extremely popular in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with different names all over Europe (Liberata, Kummernis, Uncumber, and (in France) Livrade), translating to everything from “Strong Virgin” to “The Liberator”. She is easy to overlook - but just keep an eye out for a statue that looks exactly like Jesus in a frock.

click here for an even more bogus saint

and here for one perhaps a bit less bogus (6 on the Bogus Scale)