Why Templar Knights Grew Beards

Don’t like Beards, well you wouldn’t have been able to join the Knights Templar!

Knights Templar Costume Crusades

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!

Coif chainmail for the head and neck

Becoming A ‘Templar Knight’

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!

History of the Knights Templar Jacques de Molay

Rules, Rules, and More Rules!

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.

Knights templar Costumes

Growing a big bushy beard became something of a custom for Templar Knights.

Maybe they thought it made them look even tougher than they already were – or it was just simply the ‘Templar Style’! In any case, you wouldn’t want to look out of place if everyone else had a manly Beard!

Famous Spanish Knights El Cid

So many Templars adopted the ‘Templar Beard Style’.

Order of the knights templar

Order of the knights’ templar

Templar Beards and the Facts!

In fact, Templar Knights were described by ‘Alberic of Trois-Fontaines’ in around the Year 1240 as looking like an ‘order of bearded brethren’!

Knights Templar Beards Frieze

Also, no less than 76 Templar knights are described as sporting a beard during an interrogation by papal commissioners in the early 14th Century.

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End of the Templar Beard

Just as the Knights Templar themselves went into decline and eventually ended (or did they?) records confirm that 133 Templars shaved off their beards!

Medieval Merchants Ships

There were a few good reasons for ‘the shaving off one’s beard

  1. To Escape the order and go incognito.
  2. To show one’s renunciation of the order.

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