The Rise and Fall of the Knights Templar E-Book

Gordon Napier

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 406

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

The Knights Templar, a mysterious fraternity of warrior monks, pledged their swords to defend pilgrims to the Holy Land from the bandits and marauders of the roads. Patronised by the aristocracy, the Templars soon evolved into a formidable army and were the vanguard of the ongoing Crusades. They were widely acclaimed for their boldness and tenacity, showered with gifts by Catholic nobles and granted special privileges by admiring Popes. Even after the failure of the Crusades, the Templars remained one of the dominant forces in Christendom with political power to rival kings... until with shocking speed they were brought down by accusations of blasphemous crimes. With confessions tortured out of them by the Inquisition, many knights were burnt as heretics, and the Order was disbanded by the Pope. What really happened behind the closed doors of the Templars' preceptories? Was there truth in the rumours of secret rituals conducted in the dead of the night? Did heretical depravity and Devil-worship truly exist within the illustrious brotherhood? Why is their name associated today with the Freemasons? In this lively and authoritative account, historian Gordon Napier unravels the many mysteries that surround the Knights Templar.

Leseprobe

But will God indeed dwell

on the earth? behold, the heaven and

heaven of heavens cannot contain

thee; how much less will the house that

I have built?

(Solomon’s prayer, 1 Kings 8:27)

Non nobis, non nobis, Domine, sed nomini

tuo da gloriam

Not unto us, not unto us O Lord, but unto thy name

give the glory

(Psalm spoken by the Knights Templar on the eve of battles)

About the Author

Gordon Napier is a writer and artist interested in the culture and history of the Middle Ages. He gained a BA (Hons) in History and Art from the University of Worcester, and an MA in Crusader Studies from Royal Holloway and Queen Mary’s, University of London. His dissertation pieces were on the suppression of the Knights Templar, and on the cult of St Mary Magdalene in the era of the Crusades. His other published works include A to Z of the Knights Templar (Spellmount, 2008). Born in Aberdeen, he now lives in Buckinghamshire.

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to Jamie Wilson and everyone associated with Spellmount Publishing, especially David Grant, the editor. Appreciations also to my mother, Helen, for those laborious hours going through all this and for her help in straightening it out. I also wish to thank the history department at University College, Worcester, in particular Dr Darren Oldridge. To all of the above, and to the memory of my grandmother, Nancy, this book is dedicated.

Contents

Title Page

Series Page

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Introduction and Historiography

PART ONE: Beauseant!

I Holy War

II The Early Templars

III The Templars’ Rule

IV The Fortunes of War in the Holy Land

V Powers and Accomplishments

VI The Loss of Jerusalem

VII The Third Crusade and its Aftermath

VIII The Fate of the Holy Land

PART TWO: Baphomet

IX The Aftermath of Acre

X The Sleep of Reason

XI The Downfall

XII The Destruction of the Temple

XIII Possible Non-Catholic Influences on the Templars

XIV Trial and Terror

XV The Templars Beyond France

XVI Abolition and Aftermath

Epilogue: The Shadow of the Crusades

APPENDICES

A Modern Templars – Survival or Revival?

B Grand Masters of the Knights Templar

C Timeline

Addendum

Bibliography

Plates

Copyright

Introduction and Historiography

The Knights Templar was a religious brotherhood founded in Jerusalem, in AD 1118, in the wake of the mysticism and bloodshed of the First Crusade. They were made up of idealistic European knights, who elected to live as warrior-monks. Their avowed purpose was to protect Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land, and to fight to safeguard the territory conquered by the Crusaders. According to the twelfth-century chronicle of Richard of Poitiers, the Templars:

… live as monks, take vows of chastity, observe discipline at home and on the battlefield, eat in silence, and hold everything in common. They fight only against the infidel, and have spread themselves far and wide … They are called ‘Soldiers of the Temple’ because they have fixed the seat of their Order in the Portico of Solomon.1

To many they were the dutiful and courageous defenders of Christianity, and their dedication to the doomed cause of the Crusades was to become legendary. In battle after fierce and bloody battle against the Muslims, in Syria, Palestine and Egypt, the Templars fought to the brink of their own extinction. Then new brethren came to replace the dead – equally proud and equally ready to die for the Cross. Widely acclaimed for their boldness and tenacity, the Order received many gifts from devout Catholic nobles, and powers and accolades from admiring Popes.

The Grand Masters of the Knights Templar, at their height, were among the most highly honoured men in Christendom: advisers to princes, guardians of national treasuries, commanders of armies, lords of countless castles and internationally respected diplomats. Even at the turn of the fourteenth century, after the final failure of the Crusades, the brotherhood survived throughout Europe as an august landed elite, retaining unity, great wealth and political power.

Then suddenly, in 1307, they were set on by the regime of King Philip IV (known as Philip the Fair) of France – the land where the Order of the Temple was most extensively based. With shocking speed and seeming ease the King brought the Temple down. Soon Philip, who had extended his power over the papacy, had the Templars condemned and destroyed for crimes, astonishing to hear of, against the very faith they were supposed to defend. Ecclesiastical trials were convened, presided over by bishops and friars of the Mendicant Orders but dominated by the Inquisition. There, the Templars were revealed by their own testimony to be duplicitous heretics, Devil-worshippers, sodomites and traitors. They had conducted secret, nocturnal rituals involving spitting on the Cross, denying Christ, idolatry, and bestowing obscene kisses. Numerous Templars confessed to all these practices. By 1314 the Order was no more. In that year, after revoking his confession, the last Grand Master was burned alive.

Evidently, however, the royal jailers and Dominican Inquisitors, as was their proclivity, had used protracted torture in the obtaining of these damning depositions. Their agenda, perhaps always, was to seal the fate of the Knights Templar. Many contemporaries, including the poet Dante, maintained the Order’s innocence. Philip’s extensive debts and his imperialistic ambitions were both common knowledge, and destroying the Templars (and seizing their assets) provided a convenient solution to the former concern, while eliminating a potential barrier to the latter. However, it must have been a dangerous thing to voice this opinion too loudly. For many it was easier to accept the allegations as true, especially when they took into account the secretive ways of the Templars. Raimon Lull, the Mallorcan poet and mystic (who had learned Arabic and sought to convert the Muslims to Christianity), was among those who ultimately came to accept the Templars’ guilt.

The issue remained politically controversial, as Templar innocence had consequences for the reputations of the monarchies of France and elsewhere, and for the infallibility claimed by the Supreme Pontiff. Therefore, the dark guilt of the Templars found its way as fact into official chronicles. The seventeeth-century writer Pierre du Puy, librarian of the Bibliothèque Royale, wrote a history of the Templars affirming their guilt, and so defended the French monarchy from any posthumous slur by vindicating Philip IV.

Protestant-Catholic arguments and the contention of Freemasonry later fuelled the controversy. Some Protestant writers asserted the Templars’ guilt, in the context of Catholic nefariousness. It was, therefore, Catholic writers who began to question the matter. Canon R P M Jeune, Prior of Etival, championed the Order’s innocence in 1789.

Then came the esotericists, such as orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall and Freemason Friedrich Nicolai, who, for very different reasons, linked the Templars with the Essenes and the ancient heresy of Gnosticism. Freemasonry is an esoteric society pledged to mutual support. Its initiates meet in lodges to conduct arcane rituals. Exiled Scottish Jacobite and Freemason Andrew Ramsey became Chancellor of the French Grand Lodge in the 1730s, and traced his society to the masons who built the Crusader castles. George Frederic Johnson, another Scotsman, was prominent in German Freemasonry. He believed the Templars had recovered profound secrets in the east, and that a number of them had escaped from Philip’s clutches to Scotland, where they afterwards went underground as Freemasons. Meanwhile various rumours went around concerning the nature and the likely hiding place of the Templars’ legendary treasure.

The theology within Freemasonry (and its revolutionary politics on the continent) led to hostility with Roman Catholicism. Von Hammer-Purgstall, a servant of the Catholic Austrian Chancellery, wrote of the guilt of the Templars, apparently wishing to discredit Freemasonry by association. He reproduced obscene Gnostic ceremonies, and mystic symbolism found in Templar buildings, and tried to prove links between the two. He suggested that the Knights Templar were originally orthodox, but at some stage were converted or corrupted. He supposed there to have existed a secret Rule, containing their secret knowledge, perhaps of ancient Egyptian origin. The Order gave itself over to pride and cupidity, selling out to the Infidel and the Devil. This Devil, in the Templars’ trials, took the name of Baphomet. The occultist Elephas Levi produced a fatuous illustration of Baphomet as a hermaphroditic, winged demon, with the head of a goat. After this image entered wider circulation, the diabolical image of the Templars found popular acceptance.

W F Wilcke, meanwhile, believed the Templars secretly practised Islamic-style monotheism. Another writer of the nineteenth century, Hans Prates, believed the alleged practices of spitting on the Cross and denying Christ were simply tests of obedience, the purpose of which was later forgotten under the influences of various heresies – the failure of the Crusades having undermined the brotherhood’s faith in Christianity.

After the French Revoluton of 1789, the last prison of the French royal family was the dungeon of the Paris Temple, the medieval tower which had been the Templars’ chief stronghold in Europe. In 1808 the tower was demolished, ironically, because it had become a shrine for Royalists. Two years later, following Napoleon’s conquests in Italy, the papal archives were brought to Paris. The playwright, lawyer and historian François Raynouard spent years scouring them for references to the Templars, finding nothing conclusive regarding mystical practices or Gnostic religious rites.

There was never conclusive material evidence for a secret, fearful and wicked cult within the Order. Subsequent archaeological finds, such as those from Templar-related sites in England, have been questionable. In 1837 one Dr Oliver excavated the Preceptory at Temple Bruer, which stood in ruins in Lincolnshire. He claimed to have found hidden vaulted chambers of stone, containing burnt and mutilated skeletons, which he linked to monstrous Templar rituals. Subsequently, however, any trace of these skeletons vanished. It seems the site was re-excavated by one William St John-Hope, who found the trapdoor Oliver described, although the stairs to the vault appeared to have been mysteriously removed. He saw a small oblong chamber and oven, but recorded no human remains. An underground room found in the Temple Church, London, has, meanwhile, been identified variously as a secret treasury or Chapter house, where secret rites may have been performed. Then there is the cave at Royston, near Baldock, Hertfordshire, carved in medieval times with curious religious imagery and arcane symbols, and approached through a passage, reminiscent of those described in some of the testimonies given at the trials of the Templars. Similar, bell-shaped caverns were to be found in the Holy Land, their purpose and function long forgotten.

In 1842 Charles G Addison, a Member of the Middle Temple (one of the two law societies that took over the former headquarters of the Knights Templar in London), wrote an accomplished history of the Templars, arguing with much common sense in their defence. He called von Hammer-Purgstall’s charges ‘extraordinary and unfounded’, whilst Wilcke’s German history seemed to have incorporated ‘all the vulgar prejudices against the fraternity’. The Templars, Addison concluded, were ‘plundered, persecuted and condemned to a cruel death by those who ought in justice to have been their defenders and supporters’.2 Henry Charles Lea, the American writer of a history of the Inquisition, and H Finke sought, likewise, at the turn of the century, to prove the Templars’ innocence; that the Templar confessions, as Bologna, their advocate, had said, proved only ‘… the helplessness of the victim, no matter how highly placed, when once the fatal charge of heresy was pressed against him … through the agency of the Inquisition.’3

Modern scholarship has generally continued to view the accusations made against the Order as false – the grafting of a pre-existing concept of a secret Devil-worshipping conspiracy onto an organisation innocent of such things. Instead, the Templars are seen as having been guilty of arrogance, intransigence and obsolescence. Norman Cohn argues that similar defamatory allegations had been falsely made to demonise earlier groups, such as the Waldensian and Cathar sects, and the Jews. Cohn attributes Philip IV’s motives to deluded religious mania.

Malcolm Barber shows that the French Templars confessed after appalling suffering. He concludes that their confessions proved only the power of torture over an individual’s mental and physical resistance. He, like Addison, cites the relationship between the confessions made in France and the denials from elsewhere (where less torture was applied) as proof of Templar innocence. He concludes that the notorious rituals, described in the articles of accusation, were merely appropriated from folklore concerning heretical groups. Barber attributes Philip IV’s conviction that the Templars were heretics to self-deception. His diabolism veiled his true agenda – that of gaining land, power and money.

Yet there was always a clandestine aspect to the Templars, cloaking the Order in mystery. The brethren did close themselves off from society, and conducted their ceremonies and Chapters with all outsiders excluded, and thereby they invited sinister conclusions to be drawn. Moreover, the accusations made against the Templars, as we shall see, contained a peculiar aspect absent from the accusations made either against any earlier heretics or against later ‘Witches’ and ‘Satanists’. This singular allegation, the adoration of a sacred, severed head, will be one of the things that this book will endeavour to explain, as well as addressing the circumstances surrounding the trials of the Templars. However, the story of the Order’s rise to prominence is no less intriguing, or revealing of the times, than that of their fall. The story must be explored in order to account for the Templars’ eventual demise. It begins with the ancient cult of Jerusalem, the Holy City, the capital of the Promised Land, without which the Templars would never have come to be.

NOTES

1  Maxwell-Stuart, P G, Chronicles of the Popes, p. 96.

2  Addison, Charles G, The History of the Knights Templars, p. 25.

3  Barber, Malcolm, The Trial of the Templars, p. 139.

PART ONE

Beauseant!

I

Holy War

The Biblical King David, after smiting numerous enemies, conquered Jerusalem from the Jebusites, in the tenth century BC. Under his rule, the city became spiritually important for the Jews. It was not merely a capital city, it was the centre of the world. David brought to Jerusalem the mythical Ark of the Covenant, a box overlaid with pure gold, associated with Moses and invested with the power of the God of Israel. It contained the two stone tablets bearing the Ten Commandments that Moses had received from God, after he brought the Hebrew nation out of Egypt (Exodus 25:10–21). The Ark itself was given miraculous attributes: it could bring victory in battle against the enemies of the chosen people, bring blessings to the godly, or smite the ungodly with supernatural plagues and pyrotechnics. Guarded by winged cherubim of gold, it was installed by Solomon, the son of David, in a fabulous Temple above the city, built with assistance from Hiram, King of Tyre. Innumerable animals were sacrificed at its consecration, and the glory of the Lord filled the Temple in the form of a cloud.

In 722 BC the Assyrians crushed the northern kingdom of Israel. They later conquered all the surrounding lands, even Egypt. The small king dom of Judah (later called Judaea) stood alone and encircled. The population of its capital, Jerusalem, swelled with refugees from the north. This was perhaps the first real holy war. The Hebrews destroyed the shrines of all other gods on their land, and put all their faith in their God. Yet, by the turn of the seventh century BC, the time of Jeremiah, Jerusalem alone remained defiant. At this time the Torah (holy book) of God first emerged; writings telling that the land was the Lord’s gift, but that if the people disobeyed God and committed sins ‘the land itself [would] vomit out her inhabitants’ (Leviticus 18: 25).

The Assyrian Empire was eventually swallowed up by that of Babylon. Judah also fell. In 587 BC Solomon’s Temple was demolished by Nabuchadnezzar, who took the Jews into exile in Mesopotamia. It was at this time that the remaining Old Testament books were largely written, but nowhere was the fate of the Ark recorded. On the Jews’ return from exile, King Zerubbabel built a new, but presumably Arkless, Temple on Mount Moriah, the site of the old one. This Temple, in turn, was plundered by the invading Syrians in 169 BC. Jerusalem was recovered for the Jews by Judas Maccabeus, but lost to the Romans who invaded under Pompey in 63 BC. The greatest and last Temple was that of Herod the Great, who ruled the Jews as a client of the Roman Empire. Levite priests were even trained as masons and carpenters to build the edifice (according to Josephus), so that the new shrine need not be profaned by laymen.

Herod’s Temple was the scene of a massacre as the Jewish revolt began. In AD 70 the Roman general and later Emperor, Titus Vespasianus put down the Zealots and the Jews, who had temporarily won back their land, soaking Jerusalem in blood. He demolished the Temple, but for a portion of the west wall of its outer court, which he left as a monument to the Jewish defeat. (This remnant, known as the Wailing Wall, has remained deeply sacred in Judaism to this day.) Rather than submit to the Romans, the last Hebrew rebels, besieged at their mountain fortress of Masada, selected ten men to kill all their company; which they did before killing themselves. The remaining Jews, banished from Zion, were dispersed throughout the Empire.

In Jerusalem a sect had existed called the Nazarenes, or the Jerusalem Church. They adhered to the teachings of Jesus, who they believed had been a descendant of David and the long-prophesied Jewish Messiah. Jesus’s message boiled down to ‘Love God, love your neighbour’. He had wandered Galilee healing, performing miracles, teaching forgiveness and preaching repentance so that souls might become worthy of the expected Kingdom of Heaven. His career, however, had ended with his crucifixion by the Jewish priests and the Roman authorities, as a blasphemer and rabble-rouser. His body was taken down from the Cross, and put in a tomb given by a wealthy Jew named Joseph of Arimathea. Christians believe he rose again, appearing first to Mary Magdalene, then to the disciples delivering the teachings that could save mankind from death and the Devil, before ascending to Heaven.

Paul of Tarsus was an individual somewhat estranged from the original Christians, whom he had actively persecuted before his conversion, following his vision on the road to Damascus. Subsequently, he began preaching about Jesus Christ, who was Lord God, who had become man, lived a faultless life, and died in an act of sacrifice that made eternal life possible for mankind. Paul believed Jesus had literally risen from death, a view by no means unanimously upheld in the Jerusalem Church. Paul preached tirelessly to the Gentiles, and won converts in Rome, Greece and Asia Minor. The creed he espoused was, however, influenced by his own prejudices. It reflected, for example, some of the misogyny inherent in both Classical and Hebrew culture:

Let your women keep silent in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they learn anything, let them ask it of their husband at home … (1 Corinthians 14: 34–35)

Paulian Christianity began to spread through the Roman world. Christians, as they became more numerous, were periodically persecuted by the pagan authorities, and driven underground. By their refusal to acknowledge the divinity of the Emperor, and to fight in his wars, they were guilty of sedition. They were additionally accused of conducting ghastly rituals, where obscene kisses were exchanged, child-sacrifice, cannibalism and blood drinking occurred and wild orgies were engaged in. The insane Emperor Nero inaugurated a general persecution of Christians in AD 67, blaming them for a fire which had earlier destroyed much of Rome. Hundreds were tortured, crucified and burned, or fed to wild beasts.1 Saint Paul himself was beheaded, that same year, in Rome. Many Christians died bravely for their beliefs, and inspired others by the way they embraced martyrdom. Christianity’s spread continued, therefore. Believers in Christ formed a Church across the Empire, with priests emerging to administer to the spiritual needs of their flock, and to preach what they regarded as the word of God.

The Gospels of the evangelists Matthew, Mark and Luke appeared after about AD 70, containing accounts of the life and teachings of Christ. Mark’s was the oldest, the others derivations produced in Syria, though all were based on a vanished original. Later came the more mystical Gospel of John, probably a Greek, who also wrote the book of Revelation, containing cryptic prophecies about the reign of the demonic Antichrist, the Last Judgement, the Heavenly Jerusalem and the Second Coming of Jesus; subjects that would obsess Christian minds through the centuries, and that would significantly influence their actions. These texts were accepted, along with the Jewish Old Testament, for inclusion in the Christian Bible. Other writings were rejected as apocryphal.

Tertullian, in the second century, defined heresy as putting one’s own judgement above the teachings of the priests of the Church, and deviating in one’s beliefs from the doctrines which the apostles received from Christ. In AD 330, under the Emperor Constantine, Christianity became the official religion of the Empire. Constantine gave the Empire a new, Christian capital in Byzantium on the Bosphorus which he renamed Constantinople. Here he presided over a succession of religious councils, to establish the doctrines of the Church. Church fathers built on the work of St Paul to construct a hierarchical ideology that supported the established social order, thereby gaining acceptability with the conservative ruling classes. The priesthood, especially bishoprics, became a preserve of the aristocracy. Obedience was a central tenet.

From Peter’s and Paul’s fear of women arose a belief that sex was of the Devil. Therefore Eve’s daughters were soon forbidden to be priests and priests and the religious were expected to be celibate. Meanwhile others, including the disenfranchised poor, and many women, were drawn to other forms of faith, such as Arianism, Montanism, Gnosticism and Manichaeism. These could offer a more direct spirituality (free of highly structured, mediating priesthoods) and put less emphasis on the knowing of one’s place. Catholic Christianity saw such ideas as dangerous and heretical.

One former heretic was Augustine who was turned from his early ways by reading St Paul’s warnings against sexual licentiousness. Augustine became Bishop of Hippo in North Africa in AD 391. Hitherto, the Church had advocated absolute pacifism. Christ had said:

You have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5: 38–39)

Christ’s message was to love your enemies, bless them that curse you and do good to them that hate you. Therefore, as St Martin expressed it a century before Augustine’s time: ‘I am a soldier of Christ, I must not fight.’ Augustine, however, argued that a defensive war could be justified and that God also sanctioned holy wars against unbelievers.2 Augustine went on to influence monasticism, where communities of brothers could live apart from the temptations of society armed in Christ to conquer the cravings of the body. Augustine’s writings later inspired a Rule (set of instructions) to govern the conduct of these monks. His writings became enormously influential, especially on St Benedict, who in AD 529 founded the first Monastic Order to become part of the Church in the west. Certain clerics, meanwhile, began to accuse the members of rival sects of the same abominable rites as the pagan Romans had accused the early Christians of, and soon the Christian establishment, likewise, began to persecute its theological and political foes.

With the conversion of Emperor Constantine, Jerusalem became Christianity’s foremost Holy City. There was a desire among the faithful to trace the course of Christ’s Passion on Earth. Pilgrims journeyed there to pray at the Holy Sepulchre, the tomb of Christ, and to venerate the True Cross, miraculously unearthed nearby by Constantine’s mother, the Empress Helena. The Emperor soon ordered the building of a great church, housing both the Cross and the tomb. It was called the Church of the Resurrection. Many also beat a path to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, enshrining the birthplace of Jesus.

The Roman Empire gradually lost its western provinces to invading tribes of pagan Goths – Germanic peoples whom the Romans considered barbarians, displaced from their own lands north of the Imperial frontier by the marauding Huns. Rome itself was sacked by one such tribe, the Visigoths, in AD 400. After the fall of Rome, however, Jerusalem and the Holy Land remained in the hands of the Eastern, or Byzantine Empire, and the traffic of pilgrims continued without interruption. Rome, meanwhile, survived as the seat of the most powerful bishops, called Popes, who dispatched monks to convert the Frankish and Germanic chiefs, and to re-establish Christianity in the west.

The Arab prophet Muhammad began preaching in AD 622 in Mecca. This was the holy city of the Quraysh tribe, containing an ancient shrine called the Ka’ba, that was supposedly built by the prophet Abraham. Muhammad claimed to have received revelations from the Archangel Gabriel – revelations that were subsequently set down in the Holy Book, the Koran. Acting on his divine inspiration, Muhammad purged the Ka’ba of all idols, except for a black stone, sacred to a singular God, Allah. The Koran directed believers to have no qualms about resisting evil:

Fight for the sake of God those that fight against you, but do not attack them first, God does not love aggressors. Slay them wherever you find them, drive them out of the places from which they drove you. Idolatry is more grievous than bloodshed. Do not fight them in the precincts of the holy mosque unless they attack you there. If they attack you put them to the sword. Thus shall the unbeliever be rewarded. But if they mend their ways, know that God is forgiving and merciful.

Fight against the unbeliever until idolatry is no more, and God’s religion supreme. But if they desist, fight none except against evil doers. (The Koran, The Cow or Al Baqarah 2: 182–3)

In time the Meccans drove Muhammad and his followers out of the city, forcing them to remove to Medina. However, Muhammad returned to Mecca with an army, as an aggressor, raiding their camel caravans, then taking Mecca itself by storm. Peaceful means had failed to win people over to Allah. Muhammad decided that it was necessary to convert them by force.

In the years that followed, his preaching inspired the nomadic peoples of Arabia to embark on their great enterprise of evangelical imperialism. Islam, the new religion, emphasised submission to the will of Allah, moral behaviour, ritualised prayer, pilgrimage to Mecca, fasting during Ramadan, charity and hospitality. It also subordinated women. ‘Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other and because they spend their wealth to maintain them’ (Koran, Women, or Al Nisa, 4:34). The religion also permitted slavery and blood vengeance: ‘Believers, retaliation is decreed for you in bloodshed, a slave for a slave, a female for a female …’ (The Koran, The Cow; 2: 178–9).

Jihad was the holy war that Muhammad’s preaching unleashed. Some Muslims interpreted their duty to Allah, the beneficent, the merciful, as being to convert the world to his worship by the sword. Jihad promised these holy warriors material rewards: booty, concubines and slaves, while greater rewards awaited the fallen. Many envisaged a paradise harem where seventy alluring houris would ensure that each martyr would live eternally in bliss. On all sides they would be offered golden vessels and cups filled with all that their appetites could desire.

Muhammad’s successors began by conquering Persia. Byzantium at this time was already beset from the north by the Avars and Bulgars, and could not defend its middle provinces against the Muslims. Moreover the Syrian, Palestinian and Egyptian Christians mainly adhered to Monophysitism, the doctrine that Jesus had a singular, divine nature (as opposed to the prevailing orthodoxy that Christ had both a human and a divine nature; the human aspect necessary for his sacrifice to have meaning). The Byzantine Emperor Justinian had tried and failed to reconcile these views which had threatened the religious unity of his Empire, and subsequently the Monophysites had been persecuted as heretics. Such was the resulting resentment of the Byzantine Greeks among their middle subjects that the Monophysites did little to resist the invading Muslims.

After Muhammad, the spiritual and temporal rulers of Islam were the Caliphs. Caliph Omar conquered Syria in AD 636, taking Jerusalem the following year. It became a Holy City for Islam. Omar’s successors built the Dome of the Rock Mosque, where once had stood Solomon’s Temple. The rock it enclosed, once the foundation stone of the Jewish Temple’s Holy of Holies, was sacred to Muslims also. From it, they believed, Muhammad had flown in spirit to Heaven. Omar’s successor, Othman, captured Cyprus and attacked Constantinople itself, burning the Byzantine fleet into the water.

The succeeding Umayyad Empire, centred on Damascus, spread Islam as far as Afghanistan in the east, while in the west it overwhelmed north Africa and, by AD 711, Spain. The Jihad advanced well beyond the Pyrenees. Muslim armies sacked Bordeaux in 732, and burned its churches. They were only checked by the Franks at the Battle of Poitiers. Muslim pirates, meanwhile, harried the coastal regions of Italy. They took Sicily and, in 846, even landed an army of raiders in Italy and drove the Pope from Rome.

For all their militancy, the Umayyads and later the Abbasids, the dynasty of Caliphs who ruled Islam from Baghdad, permitted their conquered people to practise their chosen religions – at the price of paying an extra tax. The Koran forbade believers to have friendships with Christians and Jews. It did, however, accord them some respect as fellow ‘people of the book’ and conceded that the Bible contained some light. Omar had formally guaranteed to Patriarch Sophronius the safety of Christians and to respect the sanctity of their churches. His successors had the wisdom to leave alone the pilgrims, who continued to visit the Holy Sepulchre, and were a useful source of revenue. Meanwhile, heterodox varieties of Christianity actually flourished in Islamic dominions, free of persecution by the established Churches of Byzantium and Rome.

Christian Europe initially did little to stave off the encroaching forces of Islam. Although there were campaigns to expel the Arabs from northern Spain, in which Norman knights participated, the concept of a Christian holy war was not yet born. Rather there was increasing tension between the western lands, who looked to the Pope in Rome for their spiritual leadership, and the Greek Byzantines, with a divinely appointed Emperor and an Orthodox Patriarch in Constantinople. A schism divided the churches of east and west in 1054. After this rift the hostilities festered. Norman mercenaries had made themselves powerful, championing the Pope in Italy, and taking Sicily for themselves from the Arabs. They began to covet the wealth of Byzantium also, and plotted an invasion of Greece.

In the meantime, the Seljuk Turks were overwhelming the Middle East. The Turks were warlike marauders, one of the nomadic tribes periodically belched out of the Steppes of Asia. They adopted Islam after their conquest of Baghdad. The Arab Caliph became a mere figurehead, with a Turkish Sultan taking the real power in a Great Seljuk Empire. In 1065 the Turks became masters of Jerusalem, decimating the population. They began to persecute, rob and terrorise Christian pilgrims. Stories were told that Turkish swordsmen turned devotees back from the gates of the Holy Sepulchre if they could not pay the gold demanded. It was also said that they dragged the Partiarch away by his hair, and held him for ransom. Soon other Turkomans had moved into Anatolia (central Turkey). They slaughtered the Byzantine army at Manzikert in 1071, and soon afterwards consolidated their domination of Asia Minor by capturing Nicaea. They called their state the Sultanate of Rum, because the Byzantines they subjugated had considered themselves Romans. The Turks were on the doorstep of Constantinople, the greatest Christian metropolis. The Byzantine Emperor Alexius wrote to Pope Urban II, requesting western military aid, emphasising the plight of Jerusalem and the threat to all Christendom posed by the Turks.

The response was the First Crusade, called in AD 1095 by the Pope at the council of Clermont. The huge crowds massed in a field to hear him speak. Urban II called for an armistice between Christian barons so they could unite and fight for Christ. They should abandon sinful wars and embark on a holy war which in itself would cleanse away all their sins. The property of those who ‘took the Cross’, that is to say those who swore to fight in the crusade, would be protected by the Church. The Church would exempt them from taxes and guarantee their salvation. Zion, the mystical Holy City, waited for them, the birthright of Christ, usurped by the Saracen or foreigner. The Pope’s audience responded with shouts of ‘God wills it!’

Some 30,000 knights and civilians, monks, holy hermits and ordinary people answered the call, of which around two thirds ultimately perished. Among those who sewed cloth crosses to their clothes and left for the Holy Land were the mighty, who had kingdoms to gain, and the meek, who had nothing to lose. Some participants were opportunistic knights in it primarily for plunder and glory. For such men, the Crusade offered a timely outlet for their passion for warfare (the defining characteristic of the Frankish ruling class) as well as a moral justification for it. For ages the knightly cult of warrior pride, with its code of honour that demanded violent retribution in kind, had been irreconcilable with the teachings of the Church. Ironically it would have accorded more easily with the Islamic attitude to fighting. Now, though, any religious dilemma had been conveniently removed, and many knights were eager to start killing the Infidel on behalf of Christ. Many Crusaders, however, undertook the enterprise at great cost. Knowing and dreading the risks involved, and how they would suffer, they fought for the Holy Sepulchre as a pious sacrifice. They were motivated by sincere religious conviction, and saw the Crusade as a divine mission. Others probably just did not want to miss the great adventure. Most of them knew little about the Muslims, except that they had been the enemies of the legendary heroes Charlemagne and Roland and had a particular reputation for ferocity and courage. The Muslims were also erroneously supposed to be idol worshippers.

The first Crusaders to set off were a mass of ordinary civilians, led by a ragged visionary from Picardy named Peter the Hermit. Many poor peasants went, leaving regions ravaged by famine, and taking their whole families. The cult of poverty was crystalising and some knights had sold up in order to accompany the poor pilgrim army, and to protect ‘God’s poor’.3 The ‘People’s Crusade’ stole from and killed the Jews and others they found on their route through the Rhineland and the Near East, to fund their progress. Most of Peter’s followers were in turn killed by the Turks in Anatolia, two months before the more organised armies of the warrior barons began to muster at Constantinople. The Byzantine Emperor sought oaths of allegiance from the Latin commanders before ferrying their forces to Anatolia, surely aware that they privately desired to conquer principalities for themselves.

Somehow the ill co-ordinated venture progressed. Initially the Latin Crusaders co-operated with the Byzantines, whose fleet assisted in the capture of Nicaea. Then the Turks, who had scorched the earth before the Christians, attacked in force at Dorylaeum. The Normans, under the warlord Bohemond, were trapped by the Sultan’s mounted archers, but held firm until relieved by the armies of Godfrey de Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine and Raymond de Saint Gilles, Count of Toulouse, who routed the enemy. Several other battles followed, as the Crusade pushed on through Anatolia and Armenia. Early in 1098, however, Alexius heard false reports from deserters (including Stephen of Blois, the cowardly son-in-law of William the Conqueror) that the Crusaders had been wiped out by hunger and fighting, outside the formidably defended city of Antioch in northern Syria. Alexius turned back to Constantinople with his reinforcements. In fact, the half-starved Crusaders had gained entry to Antioch, only to be besieged in turn by a Muslim relief-force. Inspired by visions of saints, the Crusaders launched out and, by some miracle, repulsed the enemy. In January 1099 they marched on to their goal, believing that God was with them still, even if the Byzantines were no longer there. The Crusaders carved out four Latin Christian realms around Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli in Syria and, eventually, Jerusalem.

Temporary Muslim disunity was a considerable factor contributing to this otherwise unlikely outcome. The Turkish (Sunni Muslim) rulers of Damascus, Mosul and Aleppo, were jealous of each other, and bore little love for the Fatimid (Shi’a Muslim) Egyptians, who had recently taken Jerusalem, with tacit Byzantine approval. Many lesser Emirs (Muslim lords), meanwhile, simply bribed the Crusaders to pass on, such was the terror these invaders inspired. The beleaguered pilgrim-army reached the Holy City on 7 June 1099.

By this time, the Muslims, to thwart the invaders, had poisoned every well in the area outside the city, felled all the trees and expelled all the native Christians. The Crusaders besieged Jerusalem in the summer heat for over a month, without adequate food or water, and lacking siege equipment. They processed barefoot around the Holy City, and visited the Mount of Olives, praying and singing psalms. To taunt them, the Muslim soldiers of the Egyptian governor raised on the walls crosses, torn from the city’s churches. They spat on them, and subjected them to abuse and mockery.

Some fresh supplies arrived by sea, from English and Genoese ships that sailed into Jaffa, a Levantine port abandoned by the Muslims. Wood was found and siege towers built. The Crusaders commenced a determined assault, but were repeatedly repelled by burning pitch called ‘Greek fire’ being hurled down at them from the walls. Several days later, on 15 July 1099, Jerusalem fell bloodily to the armies of Geoffrey de Bouillon and Raymond de Saint Gilles. The preachers had aroused in the Crusaders an uncontrollable hatred of the unbelievers. This hatred had been inflamed by the suffering they had endured and the sacrilege they had witnessed during the siege. The victorious Crusaders rampaged through the Holy City, killing and looting. The chiefs could not or would not control the blood-lust of their men. Some of them massacred the Muslims who retreated to the Al-Aqsa mosque on Temple Mount. The Mount had been captured by a Norman knight, Tancred de Hauteville, a nephew of Bohemond. Tancred had seized the treasures of the mosques there, and had accepted offers of a great ransom in exchange for the lives of the refugees. He had raised his banner over the sanctuary to show that it was under his protection. It did not stop other Crusaders turning the mosque into a slaughterhouse.

Other men, in their morbid frenzy, set fire to the Jews in their synagogues, or killed indiscriminately in the streets. ‘They desired,’ wrote Fulcher of Chatres, ‘that this place so long contaminated by the superstitions of the pagan inhabitants, should be cleansed from their contagion.’4Accounts tell of mountains of mutilated and dismembered bodies. With the massacre still raging, the Crusader nobles went to the Holy Sepulchre to offer up thanks to Heaven. Of the Muslims, only the Egyptian Governor and his men, who surrendered the Citadel of David and its treasure to Count Raymond, were spared.

Raymond refused the throne of Jerusalem. Geoffrey declined to call himself King in the city where Jesus had worn the Crown of Thorns, but reigned with the title of Protector of the Holy Sepulchre. Geoffrey was succeeded a year later by his brother, Baldwin of Edessa, who had no such scruples. King Baldwin ruled until 1118 when he died, leaving the throne to his cousin, Baldwin of le Bourg.

A Catholic Patriarch was installed in Jerusalem, and a feudal kingdom rapidly established, dominated by the race the Turks knew as the Firenj. These Frenchmen, through faith and arrogance, imagined they could rule a faraway land, between two great and greatly affronted Muslim powers, on their own. The territory was also called the Latin Kingdom (Latins here meaning the people of western European stock, Roman Catholic as opposed to Eastern Orthodox Christian in faith). These latest conquerors of this troubled region rejected any assistance or interference from Constantinople. Thus they snubbed the only local ally they might have had. It became clear that European commitment to the Holy Land could not end with the victories of the First Crusade.

NOTES

1  Read, Piers Paul, The Templars, p. 23 (citing the Roman historian Tacitus).

2  Ibid., p. 74; also, Oldenbourg, Zoé, The Crusades p. 47. Oldenbourg discusses the religious effects of the concept of Christ as a warrior King. In Revelation, Jesus appears as a vanquisher of evil leading armies of angels, as well as the more usual metaphor of the martyred lamb.

3  Oldenbourg, op. cit., p. 49. The cult of sacred poverty was probably related to popular apocalypticism – poverty was spiritually desirable. It seems the poor Crusaders believed that God had called them to Jerusalem to bring about and witness the triumphant second coming of Christ.

4  Jones, Terry, and Ereira, Alan, Crusades, p. 53 (quoting Fulcher of Chatres).

II

The Early Templars

When news of victory was brought back to Europe, there was a fresh wave of pilgrims to the Holy Land (known by the Crusaders as Outremer, or ‘overseas’). People believed that God’s will had triumphed, and naturally assumed that the undertaking would be less dangerous now. However, those bringing the news were most likely to be the returning veterans of the campaign who had done their sacred duty and now dreamed of home. Thus, in the aftermath, there was a critical shortage of fighting men in the Crusader states – certainly too few to both defend their borders and keep order within. This resulted in a perilous situation for the pilgrims. The Turks were still masters in Anatolia, so most of the pilgrims arrived by sea, usually on ships chartered from Genoa or Venice. Crowds of people of all sorts trod the road from the coast to Jerusalem, only to fall easy prey to bands of fugitive Muslims and bandits based in the mountains bordering the coast. Hostile Muslim elements remained at large within other parts of the Crusader state additionally, making it dangerous for pilgrims to pass on to Bethlehem, with its Church of the Nativity, or Nazareth and the Jordan, where Jesus had lived and been baptised.

William of Tyre, a later Levantine Bishop and statesman, writing in the 1170s, chronicled the birth of the Knights Templar as follows:

In this same year [1118] certain noble men of knightly rank, religious men, devoted to God and fearing him, bound themselves to Christ’s service in the hands of the Lord Patriarch. They promised to live in perpetuity … without possessions, under vows of chastity and obedience. Their foremost leaders were the venerable men Hugues de Payens and Godfroi de St Omer. Since they had no church or fixed abode, the King gave them for a time a dwelling place in the south wing of the palaces near the Lord’s Temple … Their primary duty … enjoined upon them by the Lord patriarch and other Bishops, for the remission of sins, was that of protecting the roads and routes against attacks of robbers and brigands. This they did especially in order to safeguard pilgrims.1

Presumably, Hugues de Payens (or, as his name is sometimes given, Payns) and his eight identified companions were not alone in this devout work. Hardy and resourceful as the medieval knight was, a mere nine of them could scarcely have made much difference to the security of such a kingdom. They may have had common soldiers under them whom the chroniclers considered unworthy of note.

The nine knights were of noble birth, and hailed from the vicinity of Champagne and Burgundy. Their attitudes would have been formed by their native culture, feudal and warlike, but their conviction in Christianity as they understood it, would have been absolute. The cult of sacred poverty also evidently impressed them. This spirit had earlier been exemplified by Peter the Hermit and Walter Sans-Avoir, a knight who had given away all his possessions to the poor, and who had died outside the walls of Nicaea during the Crusade. The concept was blossoming at this time into the finest ideal of Christian Chivalry: that instead of might automatically being right the great should serve the weak. The pilgrims were widely admired as people who had sacrificed worldly security for the dangers and discomforts of the journey, becoming strangers in strange lands. Pilgrimage makers became God’s poor, and in serving them, such well-born knights as the Templars aspired to serve God. Or at least, that seems to have been a major part of it.

Hugues de Payens was a vassal (and probably cousin) of Hugh the Count of Champagne, and came from a village near Troyes. He had visited Jerusalem at least twice previously, once in the company of the count himself, in 1104. There is some contention concerning whether de Payens had fought in the First Crusade, and whether he had gone on pilgrimage after the death of his wife (a lady who was, according to a Scottish Masonic tradition, a member of the Norman branch of the noble St Clair/Sinclair family). The Count of Champagne was certainly one of the greatest aristocrats of the time, and his lands were all but independent of the King of France. The count’s dynasty would contribute substantially to the leadership of later crusades, marry into the royal houses of France and Jerusalem, and patronise great poets such as the author of the first French Grail romance, Chrétien de Troyes. They were also generous patrons of the Cistercian monks.

Hugues de Payens, as the leader of the knights on Temple Mount, was styled the Master of the Temple. The brotherhood came to be known as the Knights Templar, or in full, the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. They were otherwise known as the Militia of the Temple, or simply as Templars. Emulating the pilgrims, the original Templars embraced lives of poverty. They took vows before the Patriarch, in the Church of the Resurrection, to live the lives of monks, but also to combat the Bedouin bandits and the raiders on the passes between Jaffa and the Holy City.

Baldwin II, King of Jeruslem, granted the Templars the former Al-Aqsa mosque to use as their base. A decade after the crusaders massacred the Muslim faithful there, the fourth most sacred shrine in Islam thus became the headquarters of a Christian brotherhood that existed primarily in opposition to Islam. The size and importance of this building, which the King, by some accounts, had earlier planned to make his own palace, makes it all the harder to believe that the original Templars were so few in number (unless the knights had an undeclared purpose that Baldwin was party to). Adjacent stood Beit Allah, the Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third most sacred shrine, likewise converted for Christian use, with a great gold cross erected above it where the crescent had formerly risen. Catholic priests celebrated Mass there daily. The court between these buildings was also granted to the Templars. A number of local barons and prelates pledged to support the knights with various revenues. Whatever else they were doing in Jerusalem, they surely had been seen to be acting in accordance with their professed cause.