Saturday Morning Beard Fact

By the Middle Ages, facial hair was not only a sartorial choice. In one medieval treatise is printed the belief that growing a beard would cure an ailing man of toothache (what a woman with toothache should do is not recorded). It was however, still a battle for facial hair to be accepted. A cartoon on an exchequer roll of 1233 from the city of Norwich shows an anti-Semitic illustration intimating that beards, as a symbol of the Jewish faith, should be feared and despised. At this time, Jewish people in England were persecuted by the Catholic Church.

Source: Moustaches, Whiskers & Beards, Lucinda Hawksley