A Look at the History and Legend of the Knights Templar (I)
As with many legends, the recorded history of the Knights Templar is probably less spectacular than people’s imagination. The Templar order was one of the several military monk institutions established in the High Middle Ages, amongst which the other prominent ones were the Knights Hospitaller and the Teutonic Knights. Yet it was only the Templars that captured the imagination of the West as an archetype of the secret society.
The Knights Templar were established around 1119 by Hugh de Paynes (Payns), a French knight who had participated in the First Crusade and helped in the capture of Jerusalem from the Moslems (1). To quickly recap, the First Crusade (1095-1099) was the most successful of all, as mostly French (or Franks as they were called then) knights had conquered Jerusalem, as well as several important cities in the Middle East, such as Antioch and Tripoli. Following the conquest, the Crusaders established a system of feudal states in the region, out of which the Kingdom of Jerusalem was the most important. The Crusader success created a new pilgrimage fervor in the West, with thousands of pilgrims taking the inland route through Byzantium to reach the Holy Land. When they did so, they often found themselves robbed or killed by bands of Turks and other raiders (2). It was this situation that prompted Hugh de Paynes, with eight other knights, to propose the establishment of a monk order that would actually protect the pilgrims and locals from Moslem raids. The King of Jerusalem, Baldwin II, was happy to grant this new order and actually gave them headquarters on the Holy Mount, in the captured Al-Aqsa mosque (3).
But why a monk order, and not a regular army corps? The answer is not very straightforward. It is said that Paynes was inspired by the Hospitallers, a monk order that had set up a Hospital in Jerusalem to feed and treat poor pilgrims. Yet at this stage the Hospitallers apparently were not a military order (4). The Templars were also influenced by the Cistercian movement in southern France, which was a supranational monk order which contributed to the flourishing of learning in the High Middle Ages (5). Yet, again, as all monk orders of Europe, the Cistercians were not a fighting order. An early analysis proposed that the model of the Templars might not have come from Christianity at all, but from a mysterious warlike group of Moslems called the Assassins (6). The Assassins were an Islamic warrior sect that belonged to a particular Shi’ite branch, called the Ismailis (the Moslem community had suffered a schism in the early 800s into the majoritary Sunnite and the minority Shiite). This connection is hard to establish, as the Templars and the Assassins were in opposite camps. It is perhaps safer to conclude that the Templar order, just as the Hospitaller and Teutonic knights, were products of their own age, which sought to achieve divine salvation through holy conquest. The First Crusade was led under this premise, and the Templars only continued its ethos.
Surely, there were many churchmen in the West that were questioning such a warlike mindset, because in 1125 a major figure of the Cistercian movement, St. Bernard de Clairvaux, felt obliged to publish a pro-Templar treatise that applauded the new military clergy (7). Clairvaux’s idealist presentation of the Templar knigths contributed to the creation of an entire legend surrounding the order, which spilled over into chivalric literature and other High Middle Age constructs. I will return on this topic later.
Following Clairvaux’s ‘manifesto’, the Council of Troyes in 1129 proclaimed the full endorsement of the Templar order by the Church (8). This support was further extended in 1139, when Pope Innocent II exempted the Order from obedience to local laws (9). From then on, the Templars were an order that lay effectively outside the control of the European feudal system, being untied by the senior-vassal relationship that characterized the power structure of the era. It was in this position that the Templars built what has been dubbed as the first ‘multinational corporation’ of the era (10). Of course, applying modern concepts to medieval phenomena is more than an anachronism. What can indeed be said about the Templars is that they achieved an European-wide power because they were not subjected to the fragmentation of feudal states. This power became expressed particularly in financial dealings, as many noblemen entrusted their fortunes to the secure Templar order.
The Templars were known in the 12th century as effective warriors, feared for their bravery and superior weaponry. However, even they could not stop the re-conquest of the Holy Land by the charismatic Moslem leader Saladin. The Christians continued to seek the recapture of the states, but throughout the 1200s lost the remainder of their possessions in the Middle East. With the waning of Christian power in the area the Templars began to fade as well. Increasingly they became less of a military order than a financial one, acting as money brokers for warlike noblemen (11). It was precisely this power that was their undoing. The rising monarchical power in the 1300s meant that kings needed both money and control. In this new scheme of things, the Templars were an obvious target, as they lay outside monarchical control and possessed immense fortunes. Thus, it was no surprise that Philip IV of France, himself indebted to the Templars, chose to capture the entire wealth of the order with one single strike. In 1307, Philip arrested the Grand Master of the order, Jacques de Molay, and the Templar leadership. In a formidable display of monarchical power, Philip forced the Pope to denounce the Templar order, and in 1310 to officially disband them (12). Jacques de Molay was burned at the stake in 1314, not before he cursed the perpetrators of the Templar demise, Philip and Pope Clement, who promptly died before the end of the year (13). This was the official end of the Templar order. It is hard to believe, however, that the Templars simply vanished; most of them were absorbed within the Hospitaller order and other structures. Many legends were born in regards to their subterranean survival, creating the premise of the “re-birth” of Templar orders usually within Freemasonic groups.
This is, very briefly, the official history of the Templar order. In a future installment I plan to investigate what is known about Templar practice and beliefs and how these fostered the ongoing fascination with the Templars.
References
(1) Barber, M. (1995). The new knighthood: a history of the Order of the Temple. Cambridge University Press.
(2), (3), (11) Campbell, G.A. (2003). Knights Templar: Their Rise and Fall. Kessinger Publishing.
(4) Nicholson, H. J. (2001). The Knights Hospitaller. Boydell & Brewer.
(5) Burman, E. (1990). The Templars: Knights of God. Inner Traditions.
(6) King, C.W. (1887). The Gnostics and Their Remains. Sacred Texts. Online. Available at: http://www.sacred-texts.com/gno/gar/gar63.htm. Accessed: 29 May 2009.
(7), (8) Gervers, M. (1992). The Second Crusade and the Cistercians. Palgrave Macmillan.
(9), (12), (13) Wikipedia. (2009). Knights Templar. Online. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Templar. Accessed: 29 May 2009.
(10) Ralls, K. (2007). Knights Templar Encyclopedia. Career Press.
Tags: assassins, bernard of clairvaux, crusades, history, ismailis, jacques de molay, knights hospitaller, Knights Templar, military order, secret societies
