Saturday Morning Beard Fact

During the Crusades – the battles Christians waged against Saracen Muslims to regain Holy Land  – it became a sign of Christian piety to be beardless. This somewhat bemused the Saracens, who regarded facial hair as a sign of virility and therefore perceived their Christian opponents as oddly feminine. One notable Crusader who declined to shave, however, was Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem, who was crowned in III8 and married the daughter of an Armenian prince. Known sometimes as  ‘Bearded Baldwin’ or Baldwin the Beard’, he famously extorted a large ‘ransom’ from his father-in-law, Gabriel, for whom the wearing of a beard was an essential sign of manhood.  The story goes that Baldwin, aware of Gabriel’s abhorrence for shaven faces, claimed he had ‘mortgaged’ his beard for the enormous sum of 30’000 gold bezants in order to fund his army. So horrified was Gabriel at the thought of a beardless son-in-law that he paid the astronomical sum to ensure his daughter’s husband kept his facial hair intact.

Source: Moustaches, Whiskers & Beards, Lucinda Hawksley