Don’t like Beards, well you wouldn’t have been able to join the Knights Templar!
Well, it’s not completely true, if you are one of those people who find growing a beard challenging then you would have been able to join the ‘Order of the Knights Templar’, but only if you were an established knight already!
The Knights Templar‘ did not have a traditional dubbing ceremony ‘Ceremony where Squire’s are Knighted’, there was no apprenticeship to become a Templar Knight either!
To become a Templar knight you had to be an established knight already – and a pretty good one at that if you were going to have any chance of staying alive!
The Templars’ organization was a very militaristic order and there were a lot and lots of rules, although growing a beard was not one of them! Growing a beard did however become something of a trend, rather than a rigid rule.
Growing a big bushy beard became something of a custom for Templar Knights.
So many Templars adopted the ‘Templar Beard Style’.
In fact, Templar Knights were described by ‘Alberic of Trois-Fontaines’ in around the Year 1240 as looking like an ‘order of bearded brethren’!
Also, no less than 76 Templar knights are described as sporting a beard during an interrogation by papal commissioners in the early 14th Century.
Just as the Knights Templar themselves went into decline and eventually ended (or did they?) records confirm that 133 Templars shaved off their beards!
There were a few good reasons for ‘the shaving off one’s beard