Corona Tonsure Makes a Comeback

Recent guests at Heiligenkreuz Abbey. These visitors belong to a community outside of Austria which still uses the "corona."

Claude de Vert: "The clergy, however, and the monks retained the old fashion, cutting the hair short, and even shaving the back of the neck, as far as the ears. When to this fashion of wearing the hair was added the Tonsure at the Crown of the head, the hair left was in modum coronae, as ritualists speak" (qtd. in Pugin's Glossary of ecclesiastical ornament and costume, 233).
Carlo Andreini's manual of 1779 explains why the form of a crown was used: 1. as a reminder of Christ's crown of thorns and 2., a slightly more provocative simile: the crown signifies clerical perfection, because it is an unbroken circle. Notice, however, that most men after a certain amount of hair loss do not have the means for an unbroken circle.