The Templars
World History
E. Napp
Name: _________________
Date: _________________
Historical Context:
“Templar, also called Knight Templar, [was a ]member of the Poor Knights of
Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, a religious military order of knighthood
established at the time of the Crusades that became a model and inspiration for
other military orders. Originally founded to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy
Land, the order assumed greater military duties during the 12th century. Its
prominence and growing wealth, however, provoked opposition from rival orders.
Falsely accused of blasphemy and blamed for Crusader failures in the Holy Land,
the order was destroyed by King Philip IV of France.
Following the success of the First Crusade (1095–99), a number of Crusader states
were established in the Holy Land, but these kingdoms lacked the necessary military
force to maintain more than a tenuous hold over their territories. Most Crusaders
returned home after fulfilling their vows, and Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem
suffered attacks from Muslim raiders. Pitying the plight of these Christians, eight or
nine French knights led by Hugh de Payns vowed in late 1119 or early 1120 to
devote themselves to the pilgrims’ protection and to form a religious community for
that purpose. Baldwin II, king of Jerusalem, gave them quarters in a wing of the
royal palace in the area of the former Temple of Solomon, and from this they
derived their name.
Although the Templars were opposed by those who rejected the idea of a religious
military order and later by those who criticized their wealth and influence, they
were supported by many secular and religious leaders. Beginning in 1127, Hugh
undertook a tour of Europe and was well received by many nobles, who made
significant donations to the knights. The Templars obtained further sanction at the
Council of Troyes in 1128, which may have requested that Bernard of Clairvaux
compose the new rule. Bernard also wrote In Praise of the New Knighthood (c. 1136),
which defended the order against its critics and contributed to its growth. In 1139
Pope Innocent II issued a bull that granted the order special privileges: the
Templars were allowed to build their own oratories and were not required to pay
the tithe; they were also exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, being subject to the
pope alone.
The rule of the order was modeled after the Benedictine Rule, especially as
understood and implemented by the Cistercians. The Knights Templar swore an
oath of poverty, chastity, and obedience and renounced the world, just as the
Cistercians and other monks did. Like the monks, the Templars heard the divine
office during each of the canonical hours of the day and were expected to honor the
fasts and vigils of the monastic calendar. They were frequently found in prayer and
expressed particular veneration to the Virgin Mary. They were not allowed to
gamble, swear, or become drunk and were required to live in community, sleeping
in a common dormitory and eating meals together. They were not, however, strictly
cloistered, as were the monks, nor were they expected to perform devotional reading
(most Templars were uneducated and unable to read Latin). The knights’ primary
duty was to fight. The Templars gradually expanded their duties from protecting
pilgrims to mounting a broader defense of the Crusader states in the Holy Land.
They built castles, garrisoned important towns, and participated in battles, fielding
significant contingents against Muslim armies until the fall of Acre, the last
remaining Crusader stronghold in the Holy Land, in 1291. Their great effectiveness
was attested by the sultan Saladin following the devastating defeat of Crusader
forces at the Battle of Ḥaṭṭīn; he bought the Templars who were taken prisoner and
later had each of them executed…
The Templars were originally divided into two classes: knights and sergeants. The
knight-brothers came from the military aristocracy and were trained in the arts of
war. They assumed elite leadership positions in the order and served at royal and
papal courts. Only the knights wore the Templars’ distinctive regalia, a white
surcoat marked with a red cross…Although women were not allowed to join the
order, there seems to have been at least one Templar nunnery.
The Templars eventually acquired great wealth. The kings and great nobles of
Spain, France, and England gave lordships, castles, seigniories, and estates to the
order, so that by the mid-12th century the Templars owned properties scattered
throughout Western Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Holy Land. The
Templars’ military strength enabled them to safely collect, store, and transport
bullion to and from Europe and the Holy Land, and their network of treasure
storehouses and their efficient transport organization made them attractive as
bankers to kings as well as to pilgrims to the Holy Land.
The Templars were not without enemies, however. They had long engaged in a
bitter rivalry with the other great military order of Europe, the Hospitallers, and,
by the late 13th century, proposals were being made to merge the two contentious
orders into one. The fall of Acre to the Muslims in 1291 removed much of the
Templars’ reason for being, and their great wealth, extensive landholdings in
Europe, and power inspired resentment toward them. Although an ex-Templar had
accused the order of blasphemy and immorality as early as 1304 (though more likely
1305), it was only later – after Philip IV ordered the arrest on October 13, 1307, of
every Templar in France and sequestered all the Templars’ property in the country
– that most of the people of Europe became aware of the extent of the alleged crimes
of the order. Philip accused the Templars of heresy and immorality; specific charges
against them included idol worship (of a bearded male head said to have great
powers), worship of a cat, homosexuality, and numerous other errors of belief and
practice. At the order’s secret initiation rite, it was claimed, the new member denied
Christ three times, spat on the crucifix, and was kissed on the base of the spine, on
the navel, and on the mouth by the knight presiding over the ceremony. The
charges, now recognized to be without foundation, were calculated to stoke
contemporary fears of heretics, witches, and demons and were similar to allegations
Philip had used against Pope Boniface VIII.
The reasons why Philip sought to destroy the Templars are unclear; he may have
genuinely feared their power and been motivated by his own piety to destroy a
heretical group, or he may have simply seen an opportunity to seize their immense
wealth, being chronically short of money himself. At any rate, Philip mercilessly
pursued the order and had many of its members tortured to secure false confessions.
Although Pope Clement V, himself a Frenchman, ordered the arrest of all the
Templars in November 1307, a church council in 1311 voted overwhelmingly against
suppression, and Templars in countries other than France were found innocent of
the charges. Clement, however, under strong pressure from Philip, suppressed the
order on March 22, 1312, and the Templars’ property throughout Europe was
transferred to the Hospitallers or confiscated by secular rulers. Knights who
confessed and were reconciled to the church were sent into retirement in the order’s
former houses or in monasteries, but those who failed to confess or who relapsed
were put on trial. Among those judged guilty was the order’s last grand master,
Jacques de Molay. Brought before a commission established by the pope, de Molay
and other leaders were judged relapsed heretics and sentenced to life in prison. The
master protested and repudiated his confession and was burned at the stake, the last
victim of a highly unjust and opportunistic persecution.”
~ Britannica
What are the main points of the passage?
12345678910The Article: The Vatican and the Knights Templar; Time Magazine, October 24,
2007, David Van Biema
The reality of the saga of the Knights Templar is almost as amazing as the myths
that embellish it. On Thursday the Vatican plans to add another colorful chapter
when it publishes a long-misplaced, 699-year-old papal report on the medieval holy
warriors. Vatican publisher Scrinium will offer 799 copies (the 800th will go to the
Pope), at $8,375 apiece, of a 1308 parchment titled Processus Contra Templarios
(Trial Against the Templars), which chronicles the order’s sordid endgame: the
accusations of heresy, the Templars’ defense, and Pope Clement V’s absolution of
the order, before he did an about-face and eliminated it.
Interest in the group extends far beyond the ranks of Church historians, of course.
The tale of the Templars remains a gaudy thread woven through the religion,
politics and literature of Western civilization, with a recent boost from the
embellishments of Dan Brown, who cast the Knights as a key part of the conspiracy
to conceal Church secrets in his best-seller The Da Vinci Code.
Almost from their founding, the Templars have been rumored
a.) To still exist
b.) To be impossibly rich, and
c.) To guard the Holy Grail (the cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper)
and other Christian relics.
Most of these stories are probably baseless, although for 150 years in the high
Middle Ages, their order was incontestably one of the most powerful and creative
military and economic forces in the world.
The Templars were a creature of the Crusades, when various Christian forces
sailed from Europe to fight the resident Muslims for control of the biblical Holy
Land. After the first Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1096, European pilgrims began
streaming into the city, and 23 years later, two veterans of the Crusade founded an
order of monastic knights to protect the travelers. They were allotted a
headquarters in Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, viewed by Jews and many Christians
as the site of the Temple of Solomon – hence the new group’s name. Initially modest
(its coat of arms was two knights on one horse because that was all they could
afford), its fortunes skyrocketed when the Vatican extended it extraordinary
privileges, exempting it from local laws, taxes and any authority but the Pope’s.
Suddenly it was bestowed with spectacular gifts of money and land and inundated
by volunteers from some of Europe’s most noble families. Well-equipped and
trained Templar knights became one of the most formidable fighting forces in the
Holy Land – 500 Templar knights are said to have played a major role in defeating
a Muslim force of 26,000 in 1177’s Battle of Montgisard.
Their non-military exploits were more ambitious still. For the convenience of the
monied pilgrims they chaperoned through hostile turf, the Templars developed a
system whereby they left their wealth and lands at the disposal of a Templar
institution at home, in exchange for a coded invoice that was then redeemed at the
group’s headquarters in Jerusalem. Researchers believe the Templars kept any
revenues generated by the estates, effectively accruing interest – a practice
otherwise forbidden as usury by the Church at the time. The journal American
Banker wrote in 1990 that “a good case can be made for crediting [the Templars]
with the birth of deposit banking, of checking, and of modern credit practices.” It
certainly made them some of Europe’s richest and most powerful financiers. The
Templars have been described as taking crown jewels and indeed entire kingdoms
as mortgage for loans, and they maintained major branches in France, Portugal,
England, Aragon, Hungary and various Mid-Eastern capitals. The group controlled
as many as 9,000 estates, and left behind hundreds of buildings great and small.
(The London subway stop Temple is named after one of them.)
What are the main points of the passage?
12345678910But many of the myths attending the secretive order have less to do with their
financial empire than with their most famous piece of real estate. Who knew what
wonders they might have unearthed digging beneath the Mosque to the alleged
Temple of Solomon, not far from where Christ was crucified? They claimed to own
a piece of the True Cross; they may very well have possessed the Shroud of Turin,
since it was a Templar descendant’s family that first made it public; and
unsubstantiated rumor has put them in possession of both the Ark of the Covenant
and the Holy Grail. The latter claim provided an inexhaustible source of inspiration
for fabulists from medieval romance peddlers to Dan Brown.
Unless you take The Da Vinci Code as a work of history, however, the glory didn’t
last. The order lost its purpose and credibility when the Muslim warrior Saladin
drove the Crusaders from Jerusalem in 1187, setting the Templars on a path of
retreat that saw them give up their last Mid-Eastern foothold, in what is now Syria,
in 1303. From there, the decline was precipitous: The Templars failed in an effort to
take control of Cyprus, and then, in 1307, Philip IV of France found it more
convenient to order the arrest and torture of the Templars to extract confessions of
heresy than to repay his heavy debts to the order. This led to the trial under Pope
Clement, who was based in Avignon and under the protection of Philip.
The document the Vatican will release Thursday, misplaced in its archives until
2001, is reportedly the official transcript of that trial and Clement’s 1308 verdict,
which found the Templars to be immoral but not heretical. The Pope allegedly
intended to reform them. But under continued pressure from his French protector,
Clement instead disbanded them in 1312 and gave most of their riches to a rival
military order.
The notion of that much money, power and influence vanishing at a Papal
penstroke appears to have been too much for the mythic sensibility of the West,
which wanted to believe that the Templars must somehow have survived, adapted,
or been subsumed into another, even more secretive trans-national group. Over the
centuries, the allegedly still-extant order has been portrayed as malevolent, benign,
heroic and occult. Organizations all over the world, without any direct connection,
have appropriated its name. (The Freemasons reportedly have an “Order of the
Knights of Templar,” thus consummating a kind of conspiracy theorist’s dream
marriage.) Such homages should not obscure the fact that however much power
they enjoy in the realm of fiction and fantasy, it almost certainly does not equal that
which they once actually possessed – and then abruptly lost.
What are the main points of the passage?
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