If you are hunting for a single, unique Knights Templar helmet, the honest answer is that no such object existed. The Templars were an order of their time, and they wore the same head protection as other Western European knights and foot soldiers of the 12th and 13th centuries. What changed across the Order’s roughly two-hundred-year life was the technology of the helm itself. This guide walks through the main templar helmet types a brother-knight or a sergeant might have worn — the nasal helm, the great helm and the kettle hat — along with the padding and mail that went underneath.
Was there really a special “Templar helmet”?
There is no documented, order-specific helmet design in the surviving sources. The Templars followed the arms and armor of the wider Latin Christian world; their Rule regulated which equipment a brother received and forbade needless ornament, but it did not invent a bespoke helm. What set a Templar apart on the field was the white mantle and red cross, not the steel on his head.
An important caution: no surviving helmet can be proven to have belonged to the Order. Reconstructions lean on general arms-and-armour archaeology, tomb effigies, seals and manuscript illuminations rather than on any labelled Templar relic. So when we say “Templar helmet,” we really mean a period helmet that a Templar would plausibly have used.
The hierarchical statutes that expanded the original Rule do list a brother-knight’s war-gear in some detail — mail hauberk, iron leg armor, helm, shield, lance, sword, mace and dagger, plus his horses and a squire. But they describe standard-issue military kit, not a bespoke design. A Templar’s steel would have looked much like that of any well-equipped secular knight from the same decade; only the surcoat and shield told friend from foe.
The nasal helm: iron cap of the early brothers
In the Order’s first decades — it was founded around 1119 — the dominant helmet was the nasal helm. Picture the silhouette from the Bayeux Tapestry: a rounded or gently pointed bowl of iron, either raised from a single piece or riveted together from segments in the older spangenhelm style, with a single fixed bar, the nasal, guarding the nose.
Its open face gave a knight good vision and easy breathing, which mattered in the heat of the Holy Land. It was normally worn over a mail hood, and it was the standard head protection for Norman and crusader knights alike well into the 12th century.
Because it was cheap to make and comfortable to wear, the nasal helm did not vanish overnight when fashions changed. Effigies and manuscripts show it lingering for decades alongside newer, more enclosing designs, so an early brother and a later one could easily have worn very different helmets while serving the very same Order.
TEMPLAR SHIELD – TEMPLAR SHIRTS
You may never buckle on a great helm, but you can carry the Order’s shield and cross on your chest every day.
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The great helm (heaume): a steel cylinder for the charge
By the early-to-mid 13th century, the great helm, or heaume, had spread across knightly Europe. This was a fully enclosing helmet: a flat-topped cylinder — later rounded into the “sugarloaf” profile — that covered the entire head, pierced with narrow eye-slits (the sights) and small breathing holes.
The great helm offered superb protection for the couched-lance cavalry charge, and the Templars fought as disciplined heavy cavalry, striking in tight formation on command. The trade-offs were real, though:
- Vision was reduced to a slot, and hearing was muffled.
- Ventilation was poor, a genuine problem under a Levantine sun.
- It was heavy and tiring to wear for long stretches.
For these reasons a knight often wore it over both a mail coif and a padded cap, and might push it back or remove it once the first shock of the charge was spent.
The great helm also created a practical problem: once a man vanished behind a faceless steel cylinder, nobody could tell who he was. This is one reason knightly heraldry blossomed in exactly this period, painted on shields and stitched onto surcoats. For the Templars the answer was uniform rather than personal arms — the plain red cross on white did the identifying, marking every enclosed brother as part of one disciplined body.
The kettle hat (chapel-de-fer): practical iron for the many
The kettle hat — the chapel-de-fer, or “war hat” — looked rather like an iron sun hat: a simple bowl with a wide brim. It was cheap, quick for an armorer to make, comfortable and open-faced, and the brim usefully deflected downward blows as well as sun and rain.
It was a favorite of sergeants, serving brothers, crossbowmen and infantry, though knights wore them too, especially during sieges and in hot weather, when a sealed great helm became unbearable. Its low cost and forgiving fit made it the sensible choice for the many men who filled out a Templar column but were not belted knights. It is worth remembering the Order’s colour code here: knights wore the white mantle, while sergeants and serving brothers wore black or brown — the man in the kettle hat was often the latter.
What went underneath: coif, arming cap and cervellière
A helmet is only as good as what cushions it. Beneath the steel, a Templar built up several layers, and this is where head protection meets the rest of the kit that reenactors study so closely in guides on recreating historically accurate attire:
- A padded arming cap or coif — quilted linen stuffed with wool or tow — to absorb impact and stop chafing.
- A mail coif, a hood of riveted rings protecting the neck, throat and shoulders.
- A cervellière, a close-fitting steel skull-cap that appeared in the 13th century and could be worn under a great helm or on its own.
Together these turned a bare iron shell into a survivable system, spreading the force of a sword cut or mace blow across padding, mail and bone. The same logic ran down the whole body: the head padding matched the quilted body garment — the aketon or gambeson — worn beneath the mail hauberk, so that a brother was cushioned from crown to knee before a single ring of iron went on.
Discipline over decoration — and wearing the legacy today
The Latin Rule and the later statutes governed a brother’s gear tightly. Equipment was issued from the Order’s stores and inventoried, a brother was not to alter or trade it at will, and gilding, plumes and fancy crests ran against both the vow of poverty and the ideal of the humble soldier-monk. That plainness is, in a sense, the authentic Templar look — function before flourish. History lovers who chase that impression usually pair a period-correct helm with the right cloak and tunic materials and a properly cut custom tabard.
Most of us will never don a heaume, of course. But the identity the helm served — disciplined, faithful, unmistakable under the cross — travels well onto everyday clothing. That is the appeal of a good crusader-style graphic: it borrows the recognizable shape of shield and cross while leaving the eighty pounds of iron in the museum where it belongs. Wear the shield and the cross, and you carry the same plain, purposeful spirit that the brothers valued far above shiny steel.
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