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| Knights Templar Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici Hierosolymitanis |
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| Active | c. 1119–1312 |
| Allegiance | The Pope |
| Type | Western Christian military order Christian finance |
| Role | Protection of Christian Pilgrims |
| Size | 15,000–20,000 members at peak, 10% of whom were knights[2][3] |
| Headquarters | Temple Mount, Jerusalem |
| Nickname | The Order of Solomon's Temple |
| Patron | St. Bernard of Clairvaux |
| Motto | Non nobis Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam (Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy Name give glory) |
| Attire | White mantle with a red cross |
| Mascot | Two knights riding a single horse |
| Engagements | The Crusades, including: Siege of Ascalon (1153), Battle of Montgisard (1177) Battle of Marj Ayyun (1179) Battle of Hattin (1187), Siege of Acre (1190–1191), Battle of Arsuf (1191), Siege of Al-Dāmūs (1210) Battle of Legnica (1241), Siege of Acre (1291) Reconquista |
| Commanders | |
| First Grand Master | Hugues de Payens |
| Last Grand Master | Jacques de Molay |
 to the Knights Templar series |
Officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church around 1129, the Order became a favoured charity throughout Christendom and grew rapidly in membership and power. Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades.[5] Non-combatant members of the Order managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom,[6] innovating financial techniques that were an early form of banking,[7][8] and building fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land.
The Templars' existence was tied closely to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the Order faded. Rumours about the Templars' secret initiation ceremony created mistrust and King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Order, took advantage of the situation. In 1307, many of the Order's members in France were arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake.[9] Under pressure from King Philip, Pope Clement V disbanded the Order in 1312. The abrupt disappearance of a major part of the European infrastructure gave rise to speculation and legends, which have kept the "Templar" name alive into the modern day.
Contents
[hide]History
Main article: History of the Knights Templar
Rise
After the First Crusade recaptured Jerusalem in 1099, many Christians made pilgrimages to various Holy Places in the Holy Land. However, though the city of Jerusalem was under relatively secure control, the rest of Outremer was not. Bandits and marauding highwaymen preyed upon pilgrims who were routinely slaughtered, sometimes by the hundreds, as they attempted to make the journey from the coastline at Jaffa into the interior of the Holy Land.[10]In 1119, the French knight Hugues de Payens approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem and proposed creating a monastic order for the protection of these pilgrims. King Baldwin and Patriarch Warmund agreed to the request, probably at the Council of Nablus in January 1120, and the king granted the Templars a headquarters in a wing of the royal palace on the Temple Mount in the captured Al-Aqsa Mosque.[11] The Temple Mount had a mystique because it was above what was believed to be the ruins of the Temple of Solomon.[5][12] The Crusaders therefore referred to the Al Aqsa Mosque as Solomon's Temple, and it was from this location that the new Order took the name of Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, or "Templar" knights. The Order, with about nine knights including Godfrey de Saint-Omer and André de Montbard, had few financial resources and relied on donations to survive. Their emblem was of two knights riding on a single horse, emphasising the Order's poverty.[13]
The first headquarters of the Knights Templar, on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Crusaders called it the Temple of Solomon and from this location derived their name of Templar.
With its clear mission and ample resources, the Order grew rapidly. Templars were often the advance shock troops in key battles of the Crusades, as the heavily armoured knights on their warhorses would set out to charge at the enemy, ahead of the main army bodies, in an attempt to break opposition lines. One of their most famous victories was in 1177 during the Battle of Montgisard, where some 500 Templar knights helped several thousand infantry to defeat Saladin's army of more than 26,000 soldiers.[17]
A Templar Knight is truly a fearless knight, and secure on every
side, for his soul is protected by the armour of faith, just as his body
is protected by the armour of steel. He is thus doubly armed, and need
fear neither demons nor men."
Bernard de Clairvaux, c. 1135,
De Laude Novae Militae—In Praise of the New Knighthood[18]
De Laude Novae Militae—In Praise of the New Knighthood[18]
Based on this mix of donations and business dealing, the Templars established financial networks across the whole of Christendom. They acquired large tracts of land, both in Europe and the Middle East; they bought and managed farms and vineyards; they built churches and castles; they were involved in manufacturing, import and export; they had their own fleet of ships; and at one point they even owned the entire island of Cyprus. The Order of the Knights Templar arguably qualifies as the world's first multinational corporation.[17][20][21]
Decline
The Templars were forced to relocate their headquarters to other cities in the north, such as the seaport of Acre, which they held for the next century. It was lost in 1291, followed by their last mainland strongholds, Tortosa (Tartus in what is now Syria) and Atlit in present-day Israel. Their headquarters then moved to Limassol on the island of Cyprus,[23] and they also attempted to maintain a garrison on tiny Arwad Island, just off the coast from Tortosa. In 1300, there was some attempt to engage in coordinated military efforts with the Mongols[24] via a new invasion force at Arwad. In 1302 or 1303, however, the Templars lost the island to the Egyptian Mamluks in the Siege of Arwad. With the island gone, the Crusaders lost their last foothold in the Holy Land.[17][25]
With the Order's military mission now less important, support for the organisation began to dwindle. The situation was complex, however, since during the two hundred years of their existence, the Templars had become a part of daily life throughout Christendom.[26] The organisation's Templar Houses, hundreds of which were dotted throughout Europe and the Near East, gave them a widespread presence at the local level.[3] The Templars still managed many businesses, and many Europeans had daily contact with the Templar network, such as by working at a Templar farm or vineyard, or using the Order as a bank in which to store personal valuables. The Order was still not subject to local government, making it everywhere a "state within a state"—its standing army, though it no longer had a well-defined mission, could pass freely through all borders. This situation heightened tensions with some European nobility, especially as the Templars were indicating an interest in founding their own monastic state, just as the Teutonic Knights had done in Prussia[19] and the Knights Hospitaller were doing in Rhodes.[27]
Arrests, charges and dissolution
In 1305, the new Pope Clement V, based in Avignon, France, sent letters to both the Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Hospitaller Grand Master Fulk de Villaret to discuss the possibility of merging the two Orders. Neither was amenable to the idea, but Pope Clement persisted, and in 1306 he invited both Grand Masters to France to discuss the matter. De Molay arrived first in early 1307, but de Villaret was delayed for several months. While waiting, De Molay and Clement discussed criminal charges that had been made two years earlier by an ousted Templar and were being discussed by King Philip IV of France and his ministers. It was generally agreed that the charges were false, but Clement sent the king a written request for assistance in the investigation. According to some historians, King Philip, who was already deeply in debt to the Templars from his war with the English, decided to seize upon the rumors for his own purposes. He began pressuring the Church to take action against the Order, as a way of freeing himself from his debts.[28] The French king's motivations went beyond merely financial though. By charging the Templars with heresy, the monarchy was also claiming for itself a charism proper to the papacy. The Templar case was another step in a process of appropriating these foundations, which had begun with the Franco-papal rift at the time of Boniface VIII.
Convent of Christ Castle in Tomar, Portugal. Built in 1160 as a stronghold for the Knights Templar, it became the headquarters of the renamed Order of Christ. In 1983, it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.[29]
Relenting to Phillip's demands, Pope Clement then issued the papal bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae on 22 November 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.[36] Pope Clement called for papal hearings to determine the Templars' guilt or innocence, and once freed of the Inquisitors' torture, many Templars recanted their confessions. Some had sufficient legal experience to defend themselves in the trials, but in 1310, having appointed the archbishop of Sens, Philippe de Marigny, to lead the investigation, Philip blocked this attempt, using the previously forced confessions to have dozens of Templars burned at the stake in Paris.[37][38][39]
With Philip threatening military action unless the pope complied with his wishes, Pope Clement finally agreed to disband the Order, citing the public scandal that had been generated by the confessions. At the Council of Vienne in 1312, he issued a series of papal bulls, including Vox in excelso, which officially dissolved the Order, and Ad providam, which turned over most Templar assets to the Hospitallers.[40]
With the last of the Order's leaders gone, the remaining Templars around Europe were either arrested and tried under the Papal investigation (with virtually none convicted), absorbed into other military orders such as the Knights Hospitaller, or pensioned off and allowed to live out their days peacefully. By papal decree, the property of the Templars was transferred to the Order of Hospitallers, which also absorbed many of the Templars' members. In effect, the dissolution of the Templars could be seen as the merger of the two rival orders.[45] Some may have fled to other territories outside Papal control, such as excommunicated Scotland or to Switzerland. Templar organisations in Portugal simply changed their name, from Knights Templar to Knights of Christ.[46]
Chinon Parchment
Main article: Chinon Parchment
In September 2001, a document known as the "Chinon Parchment" dated 17–20 August 1308 was discovered in the Vatican Secret Archives by Barbara Frale,
apparently after having been filed in the wrong place in 1628. It is a
record of the trial of the Templars and shows that Clement absolved the
Templars of all heresies in 1308 before formally disbanding the Order in
1312,[47] as did another Chinon Parchment dated 20 August 1308 addressed to Philip IV of France,
also mentioning that all Templars that had confessed to heresy were
"restored to the Sacraments and to the unity of the Church". This other
Chinon Parchment has been well known to historians [48][49][50] having been published by Étienne Baluze in 1693,[51] and by Pierre Dupuy in 1751.[52]The current position of the Roman Catholic Church is that the medieval persecution of the Knights Templar was unjust, that nothing was inherently wrong with the Order or its Rule, and that Pope Clement was pressed into his actions by the magnitude of the public scandal and by the dominating influence of King Philip IV, who was Clement's relative.[53][54]
Organization
Main article: List of Knights Templar
Templar chapel from the 12th century in Metz, France. Once part of the Templar commandery of Metz, the oldest Templar institution of the Holy Roman Empire.
All of them were subject to the Grand Master, appointed for life, who oversaw both the Order's military efforts in the East and their financial holdings in the West. The Grand Master exercised his authority via the visitors-general of the order, who were knights specially appointed by the Grand Master and convent of Jerusalem to visit the different provinces, correct malpractices, introduce new regulations, and resolve important disputes. The visitors-general had the power to remove knights from office and to suspend the Master of the province concerned.
No precise numbers exist, but it is estimated that at the Order's peak there were between 15,000 and 20,000 Templars, of whom about a tenth were actual knights.[2][3]
Ranks within the order
Three main ranks
There was a threefold division of the ranks of the Templars: the noble knights, the non-noble sergeants, and the chaplains. The Templars did not perform knighting ceremonies, so any knight wishing to become a Knight Templar had to be a knight already.[57] They were the most visible branch of the order, and wore the famous white mantles to symbolise their purity and chastity.[58] They were equipped as heavy cavalry, with three or four horses and one or two squires. Squires were generally not members of the Order but were instead outsiders who were hired for a set period of time. Beneath the knights in the Order and drawn from non-noble families were the sergeants.[59] They brought vital skills and trades such as blacksmithing and building, and administered many of the Order's European properties. In the Crusader States, they fought alongside the knights as light cavalry with a single horse.[60] Several of the Order's most senior positions were reserved for sergeants, including the post of Commander of the Vault of Acre, who was the de facto Admiral of the Templar fleet. The sergeants wore black or brown. From 1139, chaplains constituted a third Templar class. They were ordained priests who cared for the Templar's' spiritual needs.[61] All three classes of brother wore the Order's red cross patty.[62]Grand Masters
Main article: Grand Masters of the Knights Templar
Templar building at Saint Martin des Champs, France
The Grand Master oversaw all of the operations of the Order, including both the military operations in the Holy Land and Eastern Europe and the Templars' financial and business dealings in Western Europe. Some Grand Masters also served as battlefield commanders, though this was not always wise: several blunders in de Ridefort's combat leadership contributed to the devastating defeat at the Battle of Hattin. The last Grand Master was Jacques de Molay, burned at the stake in Paris in 1314 by order of King Philip IV.[39]
Behaviour and clothing
Representation of a Knight Templar
The knights wore a white surcoat with a red cross and a white mantle also with a red cross; the sergeants wore a black tunic with a red cross on the front and a black or brown mantle.[67][68] The white mantle was assigned to the Templars at the Council of Troyes in 1129, and the cross was most probably added to their robes at the launch of the Second Crusade in 1147, when Pope Eugenius III, King Louis VII of France, and many other notables attended a meeting of the French Templars at their headquarters near Paris.[69][70][71] According to their Rule, the knights were to wear the white mantle at all times, even being forbidden to eat or drink unless they were wearing it.[72]
One of the many reported flags of the Knights Templar
Although not prescribed by the Templar Rule, it later became customary for members of the order to wear long and prominent beards. In about 1240, Alberic of Trois-Fontaines described the Templars as an "order of bearded brethren"; while during the interrogations by the papal commissioners in Paris in 1310–11, out of nearly 230 knights and brothers questioned, 76 are described as wearing a beard, in some cases specified as being "in the style of the Templars", and 133 are said to have shaved off their beards, either in renunciation of the order or because they had hoped to escape detection.[76][77]
Initiation,[78] known as Reception (receptio) into the Order, was a profound commitment and involved a solemn ceremony. Outsiders were discouraged from attending the ceremony, which aroused the suspicions of medieval inquisitors during the later trials. New members had to willingly sign over all of their wealth and goods to the Order and take vows of poverty, chastity, piety, and obedience.[79] Most brothers joined for life, although some were allowed to join for a set period. Sometimes a married man was allowed to join if he had his wife's permission,[68] but he was not allowed to wear the white mantle.[80]
Legacy
Temple Church,
London. As the chapel of the New Temple in London, it was the location
for Templar initiation ceremonies. In modern times it is the parish
church of the Middle and Inner Temples, two of the Inns of Court, and a popular tourist attraction.
Distinctive architectural elements of Templar buildings include the use of the image of "two knights on a single horse", representing the Knights' poverty, and round buildings designed to resemble the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.[82]
Modern organizations
Main article: Knights Templar and popular culture
The story of the persecution and sudden dissolution of the secretive
yet powerful medieval Templars has drawn many other groups to use
alleged connections with the Templars as a way of enhancing their own
image and mystery.[83]
There is no clear historical connection between the Knights Templar,
which were dismantled in the Rolls of the Catholic Church in 1309 with
the martyrdom of Jacques de Molay, and any of the modern organizations,
of which, except for the Scottish Order, the earliest emerged publicly
in the 18th century.[84][85][86][87]
There is often public confusion and many overlook the 400-year gap.
However, in 1853, Napoleon III officially recognized the "Ordo Supremus
Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani... OSMTH]]. The Order operates on the
basis of the traditions of the medieval Knights Templar, celebrating the
spirit of, but not claiming direct descent from the ancient Order
founded by Hugues de Payens in 1118 and dissolved by Pope Clement V in
1312.Freemasonry
Main article: Knights Templar (Freemasonry)
Since at least the 18th century, Freemasonry has incorporated Templar symbols and rituals in a number of Masonic bodies,[5] most notably, the "Order of the Temple"
the final order joined in "The United Religious, Military and Masonic
Orders of the Temple and of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and
Malta" commonly known as the Knights Templar. One theory of the origins
of Freemasonry claims direct descent from the historical Knights Templar
through its final fourteenth-century members who took refuge in Scotland whose King, Robert the Bruce was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church at the time, or in Portugal where the order changed its name to Knights of Christ,
other members having joined Knights of St. John. There have even been
claims that some of the Templars who made it to Scotland contributed to
the Scots' victory at Bannockburn. This theory is usually deprecated on grounds of lack of evidence, by both Masonic authorities[88] and historians.[89]The Roman Catholic Church has historically opposed Freemasonry since it began to emerge, under the belief that the group is a "Secret Society" and has a deeply hidden agenda that opposes the church and its beliefs. Members of the Church found to be Freemasons were commonly excommunicated. This has often led to the misguided belief that the Church somehow also opposed the Knights Templar, however the Church makes distinction between the Templars, a public monastic order, and "Secret Societies".
The penalty of excommunication for joining the Masonic Lodge was explicit in the 1917 code of canon law (canon 2335), and it is implicit in the 1983 code (canon 1374). Because the revised code of canon law is not explicit on this point, some drew the mistaken conclusion that the Church's prohibition of Freemasonry had been dropped. As a result of this confusion, shortly before the 1983 code was promulgated, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a statement indicating that the penalty was still in force. This statement was dated November 26, 1983 and may be found in Origins 13/27 (Nov. 15, 1983), 450.[90]
Modern popular culture
Main article: Knights Templar in popular culture
Based on Freemasonic speculation and popular literature since the
19th century, the Templars and associated "legends" or "mysteries" have
become a common trope in modern pop culture.Beginning in the 1960s, there have been speculative popular publications surrounding the Order's early occupation of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and speculation about what relics the Templars may have found there, such as the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant,[91] or the historical accusation of idol worship (Baphomet) transformed into a context of "witchcraft".[92]
The association of the Holy Grail with the Templars has precedents even in 12th century fiction; Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival calls the knights guarding the Grail Kingdom templeisen, apparently a conscious fictionalization of the templarii.[93]
Modern fictionalization of the Templars begins with Ivanhoe, the 1820 novel by Sir Walter Scott, where the villain Sir Brian de Bois-Gilbert is a "Templar Knight." The popular treatment of the Templars as a topic of esotericist "legend" and "mystery" begins in the later 20th century. Les Rois Maudits or The Accursed Kings (1973 et seq) by Maurice Druon depicts the death of the last Grand Master of the Order, and plays with the legend of the curse he laid on the pope, Philip the Fair, and Guillaume de Nogaret. Esotericist treatments become common in the 1980s. Among them, the 1982 The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail would prove most influential. The 1988 novel by Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum, a 1988, satirizes the presentation of the Templars in esotericist or pseudohistorical conspiracy theories. A revival of the 1980s themes took place in the 2000s due to the commercial success of The Da Vinci Code, the 2003 novel by Dan Brown (adapted into a film version in 2006).
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