The Templars have received far more excited attention that they deserve. They began with the success of the First Crusade, founded as a cross between a monastic order and a group of knights. That is, they lived like monks, chaste, sharing everything, with no personal possessions, obedient to a Master. And yet rather than spending their days in prayer or copying manuscripts or doing useful chores around the monastery, they spent their days riding out to protect pilgrims.
The image below, of two knights riding one horse, was also used for their official seal. It emphasized both their military prowess and their poverty--they could only afford the one horse.
There were two of these Crusading Orders, the Hospitallers and the Templars, the first attached to the “Hospital” of Saint John (we would call it a hostel rather than a hospital) and the latter having their headquarters near the ruins of Solomon’s Temple (on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the ruins are the so-called Wailing Wall). For whatever reason, the Templars get all the attention.
The Templars came out of the idea that knights could use their knightly skills to save their souls rather than to lose them, if they used these skills properly in defending Christians. The idea was pushed by the influential Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, who also got the Second Crusade off the ground. The first Master of the Templars was Bernard’s uncle.
After the fall of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187, the Templars, along with just about everybody else, headed back to western Europe, primarily to France (a few lingered for another generation or two). The Templars established houses, essentially monasteries (though called commanderies), extremely austere. Here, rather uneasily, they settled down to become monks, but they never quite succeeded at being monks. They were still knights, and they would go after bandits and try to protect travelers. But without Muslims to fight they rather lost their mission.
However, they soon found a new mission, becoming bankers. By the late thirteenth century they had banking houses all over western Europe and were reputed to be extremely wealthy.
In the early fourteenth century, King Philip IV “the Fair” of France decided that some of that wealth would suit him just fine, especially as he was fighting the English and needed money for his armies. (Philip is called the Fair for his hair color, not his temperament.) He trumped up some heresy charges against the Master of the Templars, tried him, and, what a surprise, found him guilty, even though the Master refused to confess.
The charges against the Templars included that they denounced God and spat on the cross, that they engaged in homosexual behavior, and especially that they had a disembodied head in a box which talked to them and from which they sought counsel, clearly something demonic. Some Templars confessed to these things under torture, which made a sensation.
The pope, who at this point wanted to be the little friend of the French king, officially dissolved the Templars in 1312. In 1314, the Master died under torture, and a number of other Templars were burned at the stake, in spite of recanting their earlier confessions. King Philip went to seize all the Order’s wealth, and was grievously disappointed to find there was extremely little there. There have been rumors ever since of vast “Templar treasure” hidden someplace or other.
Another story is the curse that the dying Master of the Templars supposedly put on Philip as he was being tortured, that the king’s line would end with him. Philip laughed this off, because he had three sons. But in fact his three sons each became king in turn and died without sons of their own. The Capetian line thus officially came to an end, and the throne went to Philip’s nephew (his brother’s son), first of the Valois line.
The Templars have continued to excite the imagination ever since. Several modern groups (like the Masons) consider themselves the heirs to the Templars, though it’s hard to account for a gap of well over 400 years. It is nothing but a fantasy that the Templars continue the secret blood-line of Jesus and Mary Magdalene (if you think this, you’ve been reading too much Da Vinci Code).
© C. Dale Brittain 2018
For more on the Templars and other aspects of medieval history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon.
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