For if the woman is not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it is a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered.
All Commentaries on 1 Corinthians 11:6 Go To 1 Corinthians 11
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
For if a woman be not covered, let her also be shorn. For here is not causal, but an emphatic continuative. It is as disgraceful for a woman to have her head uncovered as to have her hair cut short or cut off. Heretics infer from this that it is wrong for religious virgins to be shorn; but I deny that it follows; for the Apostle is speaking in general of women living in the world, especially of married women, who are seen in public in the temple: he is not speaking of religious who have left the world. These latter rightly despoil themselves of their hair, to show (i.) that they contemn all the pomp of the world, (2.) that they have no husband but Christ. This was the custom at the time of S. Jerome, as he says ( Ephesians 48 ad Sabin.). The Nazarites did the same (Num. vi5).
It may be urged that the Council of Gangra (can17) forbids virgins to be shorn under pretext of religion. I reply from Sozomen (lib. iii. c13) that this canon does not refer to religious, but to heretical women, who left their husbands and against their will cut off their hair, in the name of religion, and donned man"s dress.
It is these that the Council excommunicates, as Baronius rightly points out (Annals, vol. iv.). Add to this that religious virgins wear a sacred veil instead of their hair.
It should be noticed that, although Theodosius (Codex Theod. lib27 , de Epis. et Cler.) forbade virgins to be shorn in the West, that is to say, younger women not living within the walls of a monastery, but wishing to profess a religious life of chastity in the world, his reason was to prevent scandal, which would be caused if, as sometimes was the case, they happened to fall away into the ordinary secular life. This actually happened in the very same year that this law was passed by Theodosius, as Baronius has well pointed out (Annals, A.D390). Sozomen, too (lib. vii. c26), gives the same reason for its being passed. A young matron at Constantinople, and of noble birth, and a deaconness, had been, it would seem, seduced by a deacon; and when, according to custom, by the order of her confessor she was making a public confession of certain sins, she proceeded to confess also this sin of fornication to the great scandal of the people; and because of this Nectarius abolished public confession and the office of public penitentiary. Still it has ever been the common practice of the Church that virgins, when taking vows of religion, should be shorn. S. Jerome ( Ephesians 48) says that in Egypt and Syria women who had dedicated themselves to God were accustomed to cut off their hair. He says: "It is the custom of the monasteries in Egypt and Syria, that both virgin and widow who have vowed themselves to God, and have renounced and trodden underfoot all the delights of the world, should offer their hair to be cut off, and afterwards live, not with head uncovered, which, is forbidden by the Apostle, but with their heads both tied round and veiled." Palladius (in Lausiaca) is our authority for saying that the Tabeunesiot, an order of sacred virgins founded by S. Pachomius in obedience to the command of an angel, did the same. Moreover, S. Basil (in Reg. Monach.) prescribes, that at the very beginning of the monastic life the head should be shaven, for he says that this well becomes him who is mourning for his sins.
