The true history of the Knights Templar
Speculation, myth and legend has surrounded this military order since it was disbanded in 1312. So what is the truth about its mission?
Traced by Edward West
On 18 March, 1314, the people of Paris were treated to some entertainment gruesome even for the time when four old men, among the most celebrated knights of the age, were burned to death on the “Isle of Jews” on the Seine. Seven years earlier, France’s king, Philip IV, had stunned Christendom with an order to arrest all 15,000 members of the Knights Templar in France for crimes “horrible to contemplate, terrible to hear of... an abominable work, a detestable disgrace, a thing almost inhuman, indeed set apart from all humanity”. Now Jacques de Molay, the group’s Grand Master, along with three other members of the military order, were tied to stakes on a pile of wood and, in front of an awestruck, silent crowd, incinerated.
The Templars were accused of all sorts of crimes, such as selling their souls to the devil, sexual depravity involving both men and demons, and drinking a powder made from the ashes of dead members and their own illegitimate children. The charges were implausible, although most of the Templars confessed – but then most people probably would after prolonged torture by the Holy Inquisition. Among the methods authorised by the Church were the rack, the strappado (whereby a man was raised over a beam by a rope tied to his wrists and bound behind his back) and rubbing fat on the soles of the victim’s feet and placing them before a fire. Dozens were burned to death and Molay’s demise would be the finale; but as the fire lapped up the Grand Master (according to legend) he issued a “summons” to King Philip and Pope Clement, ordering them to join him within a year and issuing a curse on the king’s house.
It was the most spectacular downfall in medieval history, for a group once so prestigious, respected and rich. The order had been founded in 1119, 20 years after the Latin Christians had conquered Jerusalem in the First Crusade, following a request by the Byzantine Emperor for help against the Seljuk Turks. Hugh de Payns was a soldier from Champagne who, nearing 50, felt it was time to retire to a monastery. Instead, he was persuaded to create a monastic order to protect pilgrims and so, along with eight other knights, he founded The Poor Fellow-soldiers of Christ on Christmas Day in the Holy City. The Christian King of Jerusalem had used the city’s al-aqsa Mosque for a palace but had now built a new one so he gave it to the Poor Fellow-soldiers to use; as the alaqsa had been built on the biblical Temple of Solomon, that’s how they came to be known.
The Templars had to “defend pilgrims against brigands and rapists”, according to theologian James of Vitry, and also observe “poverty, chastity and obedience according to the rules of the ordinary priests”. Like the Cistercian order of monks by whom they
were influenced, they wore white to signify “purity and complete chastity”. Members had to sleep “dressed in shirts and breeches and shoes and belt”, to help them fight at short notice, and rose at 4am to spend their day praying and training. They had to cut their hair short but were not allowed to shave, nor to wear fur or pointed shoes and shoelaces as “these abominable things belong to pagans”. In their conversations they were to avoid “idle words and wicked bursts of laughter”, nor could they boast about their previous military exploits or sexual conquests. If a Templar was caught wrongdoing – such as turning his back to the enemy – he might be whipped, placed in irons or forced “to eat like a dog off the floor” for a year.
The Templars were immediately popular among European royalty. The King of Jerusalem, Fulk V, gave them property in his native Anjou and in Paris they were granted a large chunk of land in what is now the Marais district (this magnificent Paris Temple was later demolished by Napoleon). After visiting France in 1127, de Payns travelled to England where he was received with great honour by Henry I, who lavished them with gifts. On his deathbed, Henry gave them St Andrew’s in Holborn; later that century, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Heraclius, dedicated the new Temple Church nearby.
medieval bankers
The grand London Temple was to feature during some of the most important events of the period. In May 1215, when England teetered on the brink of civil war, King John was residing there when he was presented with the demands of his rebel barons; he was then accompanied by the London master Aymeric de St Maur to Runnymede, where the document later called Magna Carta was agreed. During the Second Barons’ War 40 years later, John’s grandson, the future Edward I, raised money by committing an outrageous armed robbery on the Temple, which also served as a bank.
By this stage, the Templars were indeed very rich. Uniquely owning bases across the Mediterranean world, with military muscle to protect themselves, and a reputation for probity, they became a sort of multinational bank, with a system of credit notes so money could be deposited in one house and taken out from another. They got around the Church’s prohibition of lending at interest by charging for “administration and expenses”, and it was through the London Temple that the English kings built up crusading funds.
Like regular monastic orders, they also made money by breeding sheep, wool being England’s largest export, and had estates across the country but especially in Yorkshire.
The organisation became so wealthy that its grand master bought Cyprus for 100,000 Byzantine bezants off Richard the Lionheart after he had conquered the island en route to the Third Crusade.
The knights, however, paid in blood. In the course of their history, six of 23 grand masters died in battle or captivity and at least 20,000 Templars were killed in the line of duty. On one occasion, the great Muslim leader Saladin had 230 decapitated and in 1250 some 280 out of 282 died fighting at Al Mansurah against the Egyptians; of the survivors, one had withdrawn after losing an eye.
order disbanded
However, the Latins finally lost the crusades in 1291 and with this defeat the Templars found themselves vulnerable. Some already suspected them of heresies brought back from the east, or of Catharism, the rather depressing sect that had arisen in the south of France and which held that all matter was sinful and discouraged eating meat or sexual intercourse (and yet, despite this, the religion was popular among the French). Now the ambitious, greedy Philip IV, the Iron King, wanted the Templars’ money and used their secretive rituals as an excuse. Pope Clement, then resident in Avignon just outside the kingdom, was easily intimidated and in 1312 officially disbanded the group and ordered their land to be handed over to another order, the Knights Hospitaller; this was despite the pontiff believing them
to be innocent, as was only discovered in a document that turned up in 2001.
This was met with disbelief by most European rulers, among them Philip’s sonin-law, Edward II of England, who dismissed the charges as ridiculous. Eventually, a typically English compromise was reached so that each Templar was allowed to make a statement saying “I am gravely defamed” by the accusations and to go and live in a monastery (which certainly beats the strappado). The month following Molay’s execution, the Pope died suddenly, aged just 50; afterwards, lightening struck the church in which his body was lying, almost burning it down. Then, in November, King Philip was hunting just outside of Paris when he suffered a stroke, expiring a few days later; his three sons and grandson then died in quick succession, ending Philip’s Capetian dynasty.
fact and fiction
In England, many former members, as elsewhere, found it difficult to adapt and absconded, often becoming mercenaries. The London Temple was handed over to the Hospitallers but from 1347 it was rented out to lawyers, which is how the Inns of Courts in Holborn came to be known as the Inner Temple and Middle Temple. Today, all that survives is the magnificent Temple church off Fleet Street, although there are still a handful of other churches built by the group, including All Hallows by the Tower of London, which has an altar in crypt that the Templars are supposed to have brought from their last foothold in the Holy Land. There is also the town of Baldock, off the A1, which was founded by Knights Templar in the 1140s on land granted by Gilbert de Clare, the first Norman to invade Ireland. Its original name was Baghdad, then the most prestigious and prosperous town in the world, and it was hoped it would emulate it. In Scotland, there is Old Temple Kirk in the village of Temple in Midlothian but the most famous “Temple” centre in Britain, Rosslyn Chapel nearby, had absolutely nothing to do with them. It was only built in 1456 and almost everything written about it in Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code, is untrue.
And yet that many believe otherwise is due to the Templars’ strange afterlife as a magnet of junk history. Most Templar archives were kept in Cyprus and these were all destroyed by the Turks in 1571; it’s for that reason that relatively little is known of them and so crackpots have filled the void. Many came to believe the story that the Templars had learned the mysteries of Egypt, through the masons of the Temple of Solomon, and passed it on to the Freemasons. Alternative theories suggest that they were infiltrated by Cathars, another that they protected the descendents of Jesus and Mary or that they were custodians of secret relics. The more mundane truth is that the Templars were more like a rather aggressive bank and, like most bankers, aroused the jealousy of their contemporaries.
Their biggest legacy in England was probably the long-term impact of the crusades. According to a 2015 Stanford University paper, “crusader mobilisation had important implications for European state formation” and “areas with large numbers of Holy Land crusaders witnessed increased political stability and institutional development”. That’s probably less interesting than The Da Vinci Code or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but has the advantage of being true.
Most Templar archives were kept in Cyprus and destroyed by the Turks in 1571