This stripped-back version of the daily routine of monastic worship was designed to be achievable by noneducated laymen. Everyone, even the most illiterate peasant in France, knew his paternoster; by reducing holy duties to the most mundane repetition of the best-known prayer in Christendom, the Templars opened their pool of potential recruits to dedicated and talented men of any rank, and not just the rich and well schooled.
