[some_random]

That's a great question, my understanding was that if one survived birth (infant mortality skews average lifespan quite a bit) and had food, one could live about as long as a modern human. From the sound of it, the knights certainly weren't going hungry.

> One source suggests that cooks loaded enough meat onto their plates “to feed two poor men with the leftovers.”

[dragonwriter]

> That's a great question, my understanding was that if one survived birth (infant mortality skews average lifespan quite a bit)

Infant mortality does, but that's more than just surviving birth, but more like the first five years to get past the point where it skews results.

> From the sound of it, the knights certainly weren't going hungry

Well, sure, and you wouldn't expect knights—a narrow elite class—to be goings hungry even if food insecurity was common for the masses. But they probably lived longer mostly because the average expectancy for people who had survived to the age at which you become a knight of the order was much greater than the average population-wide life expectancy, because the large proportion that died very young did so earlier.

[dalore]

The article said that the average lifespan was 31 but if one lived to 20 then the average was 48.

[abritinthebay]

Which is misleading for a whole bunch of reasons as generally people were dying due to the incredibly dangerous life it was then plus lack of medical care.

If you survived your 20s without being killed you were likely to live into your late 50s with little problem.

Being young was dangerous. Being a religious knight meant you basically skipped all that until later (and then put yourself in less harm than the average peasant soldier did)

[mobilefriendly]

Totally incorrect, the Knights Templar were an elite group with a code of fighting to the death. They were often found in the middle of battle, making suicidal charges and fighting against superior numbers. Unlike other soldiers they were often executed by Arab commanders if captured.

[abritinthebay]

Not.. really. I mean... almost not at all.

There certainly was some of that but they were, for the first 100 years or so, glorified bounty hunters fighting bandits & marauding highwaymen around the Holy Land. Basically a religious police force.

They also were the favored money donation/papal favor buying scheme used by nobles. Quite quite rich.

The certainly DID fight of course in things like the defeat of Saladin at Montgisard but they were usually not a very present force (for example there were less than 500 knights in that battle but about about 9000 infantry)

In fact relatively few Knights were combatants! The others acted in support positions to assist the knights and to manage the finances.

They were mostly a rich proto-banking guild by the mid 1100s tbh and by the 1200s they rapidly became utterly pointless.

They had about 50 years of being involved in any real combat and it wasn't very involved when it did. You've been paying attention to too much myth making about them and not their actual deeds.