For the times, this would have been positively geriatric. Fellow Grand Masters Thibaud Gaudin, Hugues de Payens, and Armand de Périgord, to name just a few, all lived into their sixties. This longevity seems to have been almost commonplace. Geoffrei de Charney, who was executed in the same year, is usually said to have been around 63. In 1314, Jacques de Molay, the order’s final Grand Master, was burned alive at the age of 70. And even then, they often died at the hands of their enemies, rather than from illness. The Knights Templar, then, must have seemed to have some magical potion: Many members of this Catholic military order lived long past 60. For even wealthy landholding males, average life expectancy was about 31 years, rising to 48 years for those who made it to their twenties. Graybeards were thin on the ground in the 13th century. Meals were eaten communally and may have looked rather like this feast scene from the Bayeux tapestry-albeit rather less raucous.
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