Did Medieval Knights REALLY Have Long Hair?

this video is brought to you by magic spoon [Music] hey number ones medieval inspired films video games and novels have created this image of the uniting shining armor very vividly in our minds and oftentimes together with a sword horse and harness long locks dark or blonde accompany this image of nightly aristocracy giving it we could say a time long gone feel now since i've rocked long hair already several times in my life my question for you today is this if i put myself in medieval plate armor and was sent to the medieval period would i blend in or would people think that i look weird how real is this idea of night in association with long flowy hair [Music] to approach this systematically we first of all need to properly define the word long hair identifying what we mean exactly because one of the things we'll see today is that since long and short hair are very loosely descriptive adjectives our own culture and personal perspective shape and change their meaning and in general the mental image we perceive some people will describe this length of air on a man has long hair already while a very similar length of hair in a woman could be referred to as short so for clarity's sake even though with my current length with a rather extreme example we'll consider any length of air that reaches the shoulders on a man as long of course when we are discussing nights we are referring to the medieval period what's key to understand before we begin looking at iconography and reading period sources is the length of the middle ages we are dealing with a thousand years and fashion changed a lot during this time i mean i'm sure any of you watching could spot a hairstyle from the 80s when put together with current hairstyles and that's what a difference of 40 years so precise timing is the first gear of a research mechanism today secondly the geographical area the culture of reference a specific custom in say 11th century england won't tell us much about 15th century italy or 13th century spain alright with all of that established there's shared elements in the mechanism that supported the social construct of the meaning of hair in the medieval period shall now be examined here in the medieval period often had a distinctive function this is why the look of any given character in iconography should be seen as multi-dimensional both as an act of personal display and as a marker of identity in other words it helped dividing people based on their social status and social position within a rather complex field of society hair could also indicate social rank and marital status to fully understand how the mechanism operated allow me to digress for a brief moment the knight alongside the monk and the plowman can be identified as some of the cultural archetypes of the middle ages in a way they embodied a certain level of solidity a distinct corporeal identity and monks are a great example of this because of the fact that they had to adopt a very distinctive hairstyle and what the heck is this guy doing anyways gods there is thus little doubt that hairstyles held significance to people in the past monks often wore a tonsil haircut which imitated christ's crown of thorns and it seems like some believed that the bold part in the head allowed god to reach them more directly now regardless people actually believe this or not it was part of the vow to leave behind the secular world and become servants of god hence we can already see that having a certain haircut in the medieval period could mean entering clerical status which according to the law of the church enshrined in the council of calcium in 451 decreed those that have become clerics well not that kind of clerics all who have entered the monastery should neither enter the army nor take on secular honours and sometimes i don't think people appreciate enough how much this idea of if you have this haircut in means you have already entered clerical status was important in the medieval period so much so that it was historically used as a weapon against people who say we're opponents to the seat of a king they were literally forced to take the haircut because that already disqualified them for trying to become kings there was a combination between hair and the production of identity men may have lived by the sword but their social position could metaphorically die by the scissors and now i'd like to take a moment to mention the kind sponsor that made this video possible magic spoon i'm really happy to be able to present to you this brand because both my wife and i really like it magic spoon cereals have 0 grams of sugar 13 or 14 grams of protein and only 4-5 net grams of carbs in each serving honey nut has one gram of sugar while magic spoon cereal bars have one gram of sugar 10 grams of protein four neck grams of carbs and only 130 calories per bar only 140 calories per serving they're also keto-friendly gluten-free green-free so free and low-carb also they've got a lot of 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of the franks from the 5th century to 751 he says the hair is never cut from the heads of the frankish king's sons from early youth their hair falls gracefully over their shoulders it is spotted on their forehead and falls equally on both sides it is with them a matter to which they give special attention we are told besides that they sprinkled it with gold dust and platted it in small bands which they ornamented with pearls and precious metals now to cross-reference with a different source about the same topic to give this more validity we also have a byzantine historian by the name of agathias and he tells us the practice of the frankish kings never to have their hair cut this custom has reserved this practice for royalty as a sort of distinctive badge and prerogative we also have confirmation of this from the histories of gregory of tors who tells us how important long hair was for the royal family of the mayor of indian kings and this is where we have mentioned of their rivals being forced to adopt tornsha now let's move spatially what about the kings of britain the kings of britain use their facial hair to create their own identity and to differentiate themselves from their predecessors henry iii wore a short beard as did edward the first whilst edward ii wore a curled beard and a mustache with long curly hair edward iii decided to wear his hair and beard even longer now when it comes to the looks of knights unfortunately evidence is fragmentary so what we're going to do today is we're going to try and reconstruct this image ourselves first of all we can't help but mention the norman knights and their special hairstyle by looking at norman iconography and also reading description of norman knights we know that they chose to keep their hair very short it was short at the top and shaved to the sides and the back somehow more than looking if you think about it now this can help us to envision what a norman knight looked like but that was a characteristic of their culture and it kind of made them stand out with that being said what about the majority of nights what about night in england nights and italy nights in portugal that in spain night in france the first thing that we noticed is that we tend to see in the majority of iconography that knights with short hair are almost non-existent they go from middle length to shoulder length many nights probably wore their hair long now when it comes to my length however this is kind of rare it's not completely non-existent there are representations of people wearing hair as long as mine but it is very uncommon and in the majority of scenes when there is a medieval knight and a medieval woman they both have long hair but the medieval woman is the one with the longest hair however i did find some interesting exceptions to this look at this very curious piece of iconography it appears as a normal image or illumination representing knights fighting but did you notice it could you spot it look at the plaits or the braids these knights definitely have hair that is at least as long as mine if not longer who knows how many knights are hiding very long hair underneath their helmets that we just don't see so shoulder-length hair would have been common medium-length hair would have also been common and very long hair in men who when night was also possible what i'm about to share now is my own personal opinion based on the research that i've done in these past few days for this video but i do believe that the times that we find nights with very long hair they would all be actual nobility probably professional men at arms would have had their hair medium or shoulder length but the nobility would be the one that could afford to have even longer hair than that of course i can't prove it but i think it could logically make sense i might be on to something here alright but if merovingian and british royals wore their hair long if knights wore their hair long how did common people wear their hair there are some clues hidden in the law text the select law considers the sharing of a long-head boy without consent of his parents a serious offence meanwhile the burgundian law code puts a hefty fine on giving a criminal or slave even so much as a wig implying slaves had to remain short-haired or bold medium-length hair may therefore have been the status signal of a free man although the commoner's hair would have been shorter than the royal hairdo now to give you a little bit of personal experience how problematic is it to have long hair and wear armor well as long as it's properly maintained and it's properly tied up when you're getting ready to wear your helmet it makes no difference whatsoever i wouldn't go around fighting like this if i were a medieval lord i would probably wear it down if i'm just in the city in a context of peace even with my armor on but in anything that has to do with combat whether it be war judicial duelings the joust i wouldn't wear it down if i wasn't wearing a helmet i would pull it in a high ponytail which we know people did or i would pull it in a bun or a low ponytail or a plait if i was wearing a helmet in fact if it were me i would choose the plait all right no ones well i hope that you enjoyed this video and if you did please remember thumbs up and if you're not yet members of this community become a noble one subscribe to my channel for more content from the metatron if you haven't already check out magic spoon author it's amazing and all you need to do is click the links in the description thank you very much for watching and remember the metatron let's spread his wings goodbye

Channel: Metatron

Views: 83,266

Keywords: knight, medieval, middleages, king, prince, duke, earl, count, fantasy, historical, history, historicallyaccurate, armor, shield, helm, helmet, sword, lance, spear, shinyng, fantastic, lecture, explanation, documentary, teacher, professor, talk, d&d, plate, chainmail, frogmouth, metatron, fun, amazing, iconography, debunked, myth, real, reality, very, the, books, university, film, movie, novels, steel, iron, wood, footage, great, beautiful, longhair, long, shorthair, hairstyles, fashion, research

Id: o8P9qYZ5NKY

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 16 2022