The Order of the
Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon of Jerusalem was inaugurated in or around
1119. From the beginning, the Order was plagued by controversy and rumours that
were often no more than wild speculation. Their exploits were captured in
literature and myth almost from the beginning, so that it was difficult to tell
fact from fiction.
Holy sites had been
captured during the First Crusade, and pilgrims were soon pouring into the
Middle East. They were mostly unarmed and without protection. Although hospices
of monks (who became known as the Knights Hospitallers) had been set up some
forty years earlier to lodge and feed Christian pilgrims, over 300 pilgrims
were killed in 1118 alone.
Although some
sources record that a small body of knights was operating earlier, the most
widely accepted version is that, as the number of pilgrim casualties mounted, a
knight named Hugh Le Payens asked King Baldwin II of Jerusalem whether he and a
small body of his followers, all knights and said to be nine in number, could
set up a religious order which would have the specific duty of protecting
pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. The knights would take the normal monastic
vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. King Baldwin agreed and provided
accommodation in a former mosque in the Temple area which was part of the
palace.
The Knights Templar
were allowed no contacts with women whatsoever. They were not even allowed to
embrace their own mothers and sisters. This restriction was, it seems, imposed
not by the Church but by their own leaders who wanted the Knights Templar to be
seen as morally above indulging in fornication – and especially as not
engaging in the rapes that were so much part of victorious warrior behaviour…
and remain so to this day. Ironically, these strict sexual prohibitions were to
lead to many accusations of homosexuality, whether there was any evidence for
this or not.
Within a few years,
the much-extended Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon was
receiving donations from Europe, especially from the French-speaking areas.
After 1128, money poured in from London as well. Within the next twenty years,
Templar preceptories proliferated in England and Europe. Being a knightly
military organisation, the Order was expensive to maintain, but the Templars
nonetheless rapidly accumulated property and wealth.
As a matter of
interest, the Templars’ preceptory (something between a monastery and a
recruiting and fund-raising office) in London burnt down, and another was built
in 1185. It is this 1185 preceptory, or Templar Church, that features in Dan
Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.
The Knights found
the stern religious requirements imposed on the Order galling in the extreme,
while the sparse diet was inadequate to sustain active fighting men. Hugh Le
Payens and another knight, Andrew of Montbard, succeeded in getting the Pope to
give approval for them to found an independent Order.
The Knights Templar,
as they came to be called, by no means restricted themselves to defending
pilgrims. In fact, it is doubtful whether this had ever been their primary
mission as they much preferred aggressively attacking Muslim strongholds where
there was opportunity for rich plunder. It was perhaps hardly surprising that
people found it difficult to come to terms with the idea of a monastic order of
knightly warriors devoted to the killing of enemies in battle.
The Da Vinci Code
refers to the wealthy Templars as being the first bankers in Europe. They did
set up one of the first international banking systems, but Jewish merchants
had, in fact, created an effective monetary system for the transfer of funds
more than a century prior to the founding of the Templars’ Order, and several
independent Italian city-states had been involved in private banking exchanges
since the early 12th century.
When the Crusades to
the Holy Land ended, the Templars were no longer needed to protect pilgrims (or
wage war against the Saracens, as the Muslims were called at the time). During
the hundred and seventy years of their existence, they had, however, extended
their activities across a wide front, and their accumulation of property and
enormous wealth was creating great jealousy… and jealousy creates vicious
enemies.
In France, the
vicious enemy was no other than the avaricious French king, Philip IV,
ironically known as “Philip the Fair”. Knights Templar in France were arrested
and tortured until they admitted to a variety of crimes, including sexually
deviant behaviour. Many were executed.
The Knights Templar
in France could not have been entirely taken unawares because at the time of
their arrest, neither documents nor treasures were to be found. Many Templars
had apparently left the country, taking documents and maps with them to be
placed in safe places and safe hands. Those of knightly rank who stayed behind
were able to withstand the tortures of the Inquisition rather than reveal their
secrets. As with most important secret societies, those of lower rank were not
privy to the inner mysteries.
On 22 November 1307,
Pope Clement V was persuaded to issue a call for the arrest of all Knights
Templar living in other countries. The Pope’s order was greeted with
astonishment and totally ignored by the kings of England and Aragon, two
countries where there were large numbers of Templars.
King Philip of
France now pushed for a papal decree abolishing the Order of the Templars. Pope
Clement vacillated as long as he could, but five years later issued a papal
bull that summarily brought the Order to an end. However, he refused to allow
the greedy French king to get his hands on Templar properties and money.
Instead, this was used to pay the pensions of retired Templars or their widows
throughout Europe.
The only Templars
convicted of heresy were those in France. The convictions had been based on
confessions made under torture, and most of the Templars concerned subsequently
withdrew their confessions. In 1310, Philip ordered that 54 Templars be burnt
at the stake for having admitted to heresy and then withdrawing their
confessions, an order that was both legally and logically absurd.
Two years later, a
Papal Council declared all Templars outside of France to be innocent of the
charges laid against them by the French king. The last Grand Master of the
Knights Templar, Jacques de Morlay, who had been arrested and tortured during a
visit to France in 1307 and had been one of those who confessed and then
recanted, was burnt at the stake in Paris in 1314. His death marked the end of
the Templar Order.
There is some evidence that small numbers of former Templars met from time to time, but it seems that most either retired quietly or joined other Orders, including the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights.
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