Guardians of the Holy Grail, collectors of ancient secrets, connoisseurs of the most sophisticated methods of sorcery… There are many legends that have been told about the Templars. legends that still continue in the popular imagination and that are often believed as if they were historical truths. However, what is true in all of this? Who really were the Templars?
The Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, the full name of the Templar order, were born in the 12th century to protect pilgrims who came to the Holy Land. To do this, the Templars specialized in the art of war, in addition to keeping the vows typical of any monastic order. It was about the birth of a new type of monk, in accordance with the new times: the warrior monk.
Soon, the Temple order began to accumulate excess wealth and power, something that many European rulers did not like at all; especially to Philip IV, French monarch, who was also terribly indebted to the order. That was the beginning of a shameful process, dotted with inconsistencies and falsehoods, that led the Templars to their tragic end. Today we tell you the true story of the Temple order beyond the myth.
To understand precisely why these warrior-monks appeared, we must go back to the year 1099, when Jerusalem fell into Christian hands with the First Crusade. This is a true triumph for the Christian world, since, after five centuries of Muslim domination of the Holy Places, Christian pilgrims were once again guaranteed free access to the city.
Deus vult!
After the conquest of Jerusalem, an unstable kingdom is formed, the so-called Kingdom of Jerusalem, linked to the West and whose first monarch will be Baldwin of Boulogne (1058-1118), who will go down in history as Baldwin I of Jerusalem. This knight was one of those who formed the Christian expedition of the First Crusade, which he had joined, along with his brothers Godfrey and Eustace, by virtue of the call of Pope Urban II, who exhorted the faithful to carry out the “ holy war”. As a reward, the pontiff promised atonement for a lifetime of sins, which, together with the possibility of obtaining riches and titles, encouraged many knights and ordinary men to set out for Jerusalem.
Of course, many of these pilgrims who came to the Holy Land to fight against the “infidels” had no idea how to handle a weapon, much less what the art of war consisted of. To the unanimous cry of Deus vult! (God willing!), these unfortunates left en masse for the Holy Places, but few of them returned to tell the tale.
Many dangers awaited them not only in Palestine; There was also the possibility of encountering fearsome hordes of bandits during the journey or falling victim to some disease. As a consequence, Jerusalem was taken not without difficulty and, at the end of the conquest, the new monarch asked himself how he should defend territories that were still surrounded by Muslims and, especially, how he could guarantee the free movement of pilgrims.
The poor knights of Christ
This is when the Templars enter the story. It was clear that, to help these pilgrims, not only was a religious order necessary, but also the military assistance of knights who were trained in the art of war. The solution to the problem came with the creation of an order that united both concepts, the religious and the military: the Order of the Temple, whose knights were, in addition to warriors, monks.
An important figure of the time had a lot to do with the creation of the Temple: the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153). This influential monk was a relative of the first master of the order, Hugues de Payns, so he intervened for it at the Council of Troyes (January 1129), where Pope Honorius II legitimized the Templar order and, in addition, showered it with privileges. . During their centuries of history, the Templars accumulated some 9,000 orders in Europe, which provided them with great income. In addition to this, they began to be treasurers and lenders to the great European monarchs, which further increased their wealth. So is it legal to call them “poor gentlemen”?
Strictly, on an individual level, yes. Because, like any religious order, the Templars did not own anything individually. What is clear is the growing power they accumulated as an order during their almost three centuries of history, a power that was not only economic, but also political (remember that they only owed obedience to the pope). An explosive mixture that, in the end, led them to their end.
Austere, chaste and fierce warriors
The Knight Templar was, above all, a monk, so he had to observe certain rules relating to this social group. Among them was, of course, poverty (we have already commented how the wealth of the Temple was collective, not personal), obedience (which they only owed to their master and, ultimately, to the pope of Rome) and, finally, chastity Despite this, on this last point the Templar communities used to be quite lax, as long as the fact in itself did not represent a scandal for the order. This laxity, as we will see, could be one of the reasons for his fall.
In fact, some members of the community were married; They were only prohibited from having relations with their wives under the roof of the encomiendas, which were something similar to monasteries. On the other hand, one of the monks’ great acts of penance, fasting, was not obligatory for the Templars. Let us remember that they were, in addition to being monks, warriors, so they had to be prepared to go into battle. The Templars not only did not fast, but they consumed meat up to three times a week.
In general, members of the Temple order had to lead a more or less austere and absolutely depersonalized life. This meant that the heraldic shields of the families to which the members belonged were “forgotten” once the person joined the order. Besides, Its members were not chosen depending on their birth, although it is obvious that origin had a lot to say in the degree to which one could rise within the community.
The theme of individuality is, in general, something foreign to the Middle Ages. The individual was aware of belonging to a much larger and more complex network, so his existence was subordinated to that something higher. The knights owed themselves to their lineage, the monks, to their orders, the peasants, to the rural community; and, in any case, each and every one of them was part of the divine fabric that made up the universe. Within this conception, there was no place for personal success. In this sense, it is quite significant that the portrait genre, as we know it, did not emerge until the end of the medieval period.
The effective Templar structure
The structure of the Templar order has often been seen as a kind of “multinational”, whose headquarters were distributed throughout Europe. Despite the anachronism of the word, we can use it to get an idea of the reach that this order had in the West.
The Knights Templar were scrupulously organized, and their structure was astonishingly efficient. Their priories, linked to lands that provided them with income, were distributed throughout the continent and, attached to them, other smaller priories. The level of specialization of these lands grew, and they came to produce certain products exclusively (in some encomiendas they produced wine; in others, oil), which caused an unprecedented specialization that increased their economic and political influence.
This entire very grand structure required, of course, monks and servants who were specialized in certain areas, such as, for example, accounting. And, of course, such a network of production and exchange needed to have an efficient system that allowed the transit of money. Thus, bills of exchange emerged, managed by the Templars and which laid the foundations for the later mercantile era.
The end of the Templar order
As it could not be otherwise, the power enjoyed by the order aroused admiration and envy in equal measure. This, together with the taking of San Juan de Acre in 1291, marked the beginning of the end for the Templars. As historian Jesús Callejo states, the order was a product of the Crusades, and without them it lost all its meaning.
Among those who owed money to the powerful order was none other than the King of France Philip IV, who, on the other hand, had been the great architect of the schism that had placed the popes in the city of Avignon, in the south of France. . Clement V, the first pope of the “Babylonian captivity” (as the Avignon period of the papacy was called) was a simple puppet in the hands of the Gallic monarch. Aware that he owed the throne of Saint Peter to the king, Clement V attempted to satisfy him, often with mixed feelings.
On Friday, October 13, 1307, there was a mass arrest of Knights Templar in the kingdom of France (and this is where, by the way, the famous superstition comes from). Philip IV pressured the pontiff to formally accuse them of charges of heresy, sodomy, blasphemy and idolatry. Among other things, they were accused of spitting on the cross, having sexual relations with each other and idolizing a certain Baphomet, who, according to some scholars, could be a bad transcription of Mahomet (Muhammad), so the Templars would be being accused of having renounced Christ and embraced Islam.
Rivers of ink have been written about this, and many things are just the fruit of legend. It seems that there was a kind of “hazing” in the Temple, which consisted of the novices actually having to spit on a cross. But, as historians Isabel Margarit and Ana Echeverría Arístegui tell us in their History and Life podcast dedicated to the Templar order, this could have simply been a test to gauge the degree of obedience of the newcomer, as well as the firmness of his faith.
Regarding the accusation of sodomy, it is well known that in male religious orders the kiss on the mouth was a sign of peace and welcome, and in no case was it related to sexual content. It may be that, as a result of this, certain rumors appeared about homosexual acts within the Temple order, but, again, we find rumors that are impossible to prove.
Be that as it may, the sentence was ratified, and Clement V ordered the arrest of all the Templars in Europe, as well as the requisitioning of their property, which went to the Hospitaller order. The last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, burned at the stake in 1314. By the way, there is also gossip about this. Both the French monarch and the pope died shortly after, giving rise to the legend of the “curse of the Templars.” As always, in the history of the Templars, it is difficult to disentangle fact from fiction.
