How our Templars were spared the bonfire

Knights tried in Dublin for heresy faced gory executions

DUBLIN, February 6, 1310. It was almost two years to the day since the last of the Knights Templar had been rounded up and placed in custody in Dublin Castle.

Across the seas in France and beyond, the Templars were facing violent annihilation – complete dispossession, extreme torture and burning at the stake. Judgment Day had come upon one of Europe’s most powerful military orders, and King Philip of France was on the cusp of a famous and chilling victory.

Now, the inquisition of the Irish Templars was about to begin in earnest as the accused men were hauled into St Patrick’s Cathedral to answer 85 charges including denying Christ, spitting on the cross, worshipping false idols, and homosexuality.

The very concept of the Knights Templar has captivated people ever since the order was founded in 1119. As historian Dan Jones relays in his powerful new book, The Templars, the original purpose of this uber-wealthy paramilitary order was to protect pilgrims from being mugged and murdered by brigands on the roads leading into the Holy City of Jerusalem, which was then under Norman control. To this end, they were given a licence to kill by the Pope.

Their official name was the ‘Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon’, a nod to the close proximity of their headquarters to the reputed ruins of the Temple of Solomon.

The order came to prominence during the Second Crusade when they saved the French king’s life and, by the time the CambroNorman invasion of Ireland began in 1169, the Templars formed the elite of the crusading armies (which they also funded).

THEY also served as both bankers and counsellors to many European monarchs, offering a remarkable range of financial services including large-scale estate management, raising of loans, tax collection, security vaults and the safe transportation of vast sums of money. It was possible to deposit money in one Templar preceptory in return for a letter of receipt, which could be used to withdraw money from another preceptory. At their peak, the Templars had 4,000 people working at their financial headquarters in Paris. Not surprisingly, the Master of the Knights Templar in Ireland was also one of the auditors of the Irish Exchequer.

Among the most powerful Templars in England was Geoffrey FitzStephen, its master from 1180 to 1185. It is tempting to suppose that he was a close kinsman of Robert FitzStephen, who led the vanguard of Strongbow’s mercenary force into Ireland in 1169. Sadly, the order’s Irish activities are outside the scope of Mr Jones’s otherwise extensive narrative, but other sources date the first documented evidence of Templars in Ireland to 1177, when ‘Matthew the Templar’ witnessed an Irish charter.

In about 1183, Walter de Riddlesford, Lord of Bray, became the first of 13 Masters of the Knights Templar in Ireland. His wife Amabilis FitzHenry was a granddaughter of King Henry I of England and a niece of Robert FitzStephen. Riddlesford, who was also part of the initial Norman invasion force, is said to have founded a Knights Templar preceptory at Castledermot, Co. Kildare. He lived at nearby Kilkea Castle – built by Hugh de Lacy, Lord of Meath.

De Lacy was a formidable castle builder whose other legacies include Trim Castle in Co. Meath and Clontarf Castle, the headquarters of the Knights Templar in Ireland. His father Gilbert de Lacy was the ‘crafty and sharp’ precentor of the Knights Templars in Tripoli (Libya). In 1301, Hugh’s daughter Matilda gifted the Templars a large estate on the Cooley Peninsula in Co. Louth.

Riddlesford’s appointment coincides with a grant of land in about 1180 when Henry II gave the Templars the ‘vills’ (or taxable settlements) of Clontarf and Crook, Co. Waterford, along with 1,200 acres of land. The Templars owned at least 11 other preceptories and manor estates in Munster and Leinster, as well as their most westerly stronghold at Temple House in Co. Sligo. Their role in Ireland was primarily to generate income to support the ongoing campaigns in the Holy Land. Indeed, the men who ran these estates and collected the rents may well have been ‘retired’ Templars whose fighting days were over. They converted pasture into profitable cornfields, bred horses and encouraged the Irish cloth industry. By 1308, their Irish holdings were worth £400 per annum.

In 1219 the Knights Templar achieved a major PR coup when William Marshal, the richest knight in Britain or Ireland, was buried in the Temple Church, London, where his tomb can be seen today. Marshal’s wife Isabel de Clare was the sole heiress of that famous marriage between Strongbow and Aoife, the daughter of Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster. As such, Marshal was the Lord of Leinster, and built castles at Kilkenny, Carlow, Ferns and Enniscorthy, as well as several abbeys in Wexford and Kilkenny. Marshal also appointed a Templar as his almoner – responsible for ensuring charity was distributed to the poor on his behalf.

The Templars continued to be a powerhouse for the remainder of the 13th century, serving as advisers to popes and kings, but their immense wealth inevitably diluted their initial brief to promote obedience, poverty and chastity. Moreover, the waning influence of the Christians in the Middle East reached a new nadir in 1291 when Saladin, the Mamluk Sultan, captured the city of Acre, thus removing the last traces of a Crusader state. The Templars were now effectively devoid of a purpose.

The Templars’ foremost enemy was Philip the Fair, the ironically named king of France, who had borrowed a good deal of money from the order. Having already expelled 100,000 Jews from France, the psychotic monarch now turned his eyes on eliminating his own bankers. On Friday, October 13, 1307, the purge began with mass arrests of Templars across France. Less than four months later, Edward II, King of England and Lord of Ireland, followed suit. John de Wogan, Justiciar of Ireland, was instructed to place 14 of Ireland’s 20 or so Templar knights Last crusade: Templar knights and, above, Jacques de Molay in custody and to make an inventory of their possessions.

The inquisition of these Irish Templars was presided over by a troika of papal delegates from England. The most controversial aspect of the trial concerned Henry Danet who had taken office as (the last) Master of the Templars in Ireland just two days before the arrests began. Danet, a veteran of Cyprus and Syria, had been a favourite of Jacques de Molay, the order’s disgraced grand master. Subjected to torture, De Molay had already confessed to various heresies. Richard Balybyn (a Dominican, who later became constable of Drogheda castle) and Brother Roger (Prior of the Augustinian friary in Dublin’s Temple Bar) added fuel to the fire by suggesting that Danet and De Molay had engaged in sodomy. Danet’s cryptic defence comprised of damning the order’s practices in faraway lands but insisting there had been no untoward behaviour on his account. One can but imagine the tittle-tattle going through Dublin as these monks assembled day after day for the trial in St Patrick’s Cathedral.

AT least five Templars were not interrogated, including William de Warrenne, the former Master, who was then commanding the preceptory at Clonoulty, Co. Tipperary. He is assumed to have been spared because he was a kinsman of Edmund Butler, Wogan’s successor as Justiciar.

Meanwhile, the situation for the Templars in Europe had gone from bad to worse when Pope Clement V, a puppet of the French king, dissolved the order in July 1311. Grand Master de Molay was among nearly 100 Templars burned at the stake for their ‘abominations’.

The Irish Templars strongly denied all charges and, unlike their brethren on the Continent, they were not subjected to torture. Moreover, it transpired that there was no real evidence of heretical wrongdoing.

When the trial concluded on June 6, 1310, the accused were ordered to do penance and, once absolved, they were simply pensioned off into monastic retirement. Danet was released on bail. The Templars’ estates were nonetheless seized and ultimately handed over to their rivals, the Knights Hospitaller.

One notable legacy of the Templar trials concerns a Franciscan friar called Richard Ledrede, who was at the papal court in France when the Templars were being suppressed.

In 1317, he became Bishop of Ossory in Ireland. Seven years later, he oversaw the trial in Kilkenny of Dame Alice Kyteler and others for witchcraft; the suspects were subjected to similar torture to the Templars and one woman, Petronilla di Midia, was burned at the stake, with Ledrede watching through the roaring flames.

The Templars, by Dan Jones, is published by Head of Zeus and retails at €35.