History of the Knights Templar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The
history of the Knights Templar incorporates about two centuries during the
Middle Ages, from the Order's founding in the early 12th century, to when it was disbanded in the early 14th century.
Rise
The
Knights Templar trace their origin back to shortly after the
First Crusade. Around 1119, a
French nobleman from the
Champagne region,
Hugues de Payens, collected eight of his knighted relatives including
Godfrey de Saint-Omer, and began the Order, their stated mission to protect
pilgrims on their journey to visit
the Holy Places. They approached King
Baldwin II of Jerusalem, who allowed them to set up headquarters on the
Temple Mount.
The Dome of the Rock, at the centre of the Mount, was understood to
occupy the site of the Jewish Temple. Known to Christians throughout the
Muslim occupation of Jerusalem as the Holy of Holies, the Dome of the
Rock became a Christian church, the Templum Domini, the Temple of the
Lord. But the Templars were lodged in the
Aqsa Mosque,
which was assumed to stand on the site of Solomon's Temple. Because the
Aqsa mosque was known as the Templum Solomonis, it was not long before
the knights had encompassed the association in their name. They became
known as the
Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici – the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, which was eventually shortened to "Knights Templars".
The original order consisted of Hugues de Payens and eight knights,
two of whom were brothers and all of whom were his relatives by either
blood or marriage:
Godfrey de Saint-Omer,
Payne de Monteverdi,
Archambaud de St. Agnan,
Andre de Montbard,
Geoffrey Bison, and two men recorded only by the names of
Rossal and
Gondamer.
The ninth knight remains unknown, although some have speculated that it
was Count Hugh of Champagne himself — despite the Count returning to
France in 1116 and documentary evidence showing that he joined the
Knights on his third visit to the Holy Land in 1125.
Little was heard of the Order for their first nine years. But in
1129, after they were officially sanctioned by the church at the
Council of Troyes,
they became very well known in Europe. Their fundraising campaigns
asked for donations of money, land, or noble-born sons to join the
Order, with the implication that donations would help both to defend
Jerusalem, and to ensure the charitable giver of a place in Heaven. The
Order's efforts were helped substantially by the patronage of
Bernard of Clairvaux,
the leading churchman of the time, and a nephew of one of the original
nine knights. The Order at its outset had been subject to strong
criticism, especially of the concept that religious men could also carry
swords. In response to these critics, the influential Bernard of Clairvaux wrote a multi-page treatise entitled
De Laude Novae Militae
("In Praise of the New Knighthood"), in which he championed their
mission and defended the idea of a military religious order by appealing
to the long-held Christian theory of
just war,
which legitimated “taking up the sword” to defend the innocent and the
Church from violent attack. By so doing, Bernard legitimised the
Templars, who became the first "warrior
monks" of the
Western world.
[citation needed] Bernard wrote:
- [A Templar Knight] is truly a fearless knight, and secure on every side, for his soul is protected by the armor of faith, just as his body is protected by the armor of steel. He is thus doubly-armed, and need fear neither demons nor men.[1]
Saint Bernard de Clairvaux, the Order's patron
Shortly after its foundation in Jerusalem and due to possible previous links of the founding knights with the crusader
Count Henry of Borgundy (or with the
House of Burgundy),
and possible due to the House of Burgundy`s family links with Bernard
of Clairvaux, the knights Templar were already in the western edge of
Europe, in the
County of Portugal,
at least since May 1122. The Templars settled there first, where the
Order received donations and bought lands during the successive years of
1122, 1123, 1125, and 1126 (donated by
D. Theresa), and 1127-28.
[2]
Donations to the Order were considerable. The
King of Aragon, in the
Iberian Peninsula,
left large tracts of land to the order upon his death in the 1130s. New
members to the Order were also required to swear vows of
obedience, chastity, piety and poverty,
and hand over all of their goods to the monastic brotherhood. This
could include land, horses and any other items of material wealth,
including labor from serfs, and any interest in any businesses.
In 1139, even more power was conferred upon the Order by Pope
Innocent II, who issued the
papal bull,
Omne Datum Optimum.
It stated that the Knights Templar could pass freely through any
border, owed no taxes, and were subject to no one's authority except
that of the Pope. It was a remarkable confirmation of the Templars and
their mission, which may have been brought about by the Order's patron,
Bernard of Clairvaux, who had helped Pope Innocent in his own rise.
The Order grew rapidly throughout Western Europe, with chapters appearing in France,
England, and
Scotland, and then spreading to
Spain and
Portugal.
The Crusades and the Knights Templar
The Knights Templar were the elite fighting force of their day,
highly trained, well-equipped and highly motivated; one of the tenets of
their
religious order
was that they were forbidden from retreating in battle, unless
outnumbered three to one, and even then only by order of their
commander, or if the Templar flag went down. Not all Knights Templar
were warriors. The mission of most of the members was one of support –
to acquire resources which could be used to fund and equip the small
percentage of members who were fighting on the front lines. There were
actually three classes within the orders. The highest class was the
knight. When a candidate was sworn into the order, the initiation made
the knight a monk. They wore white robes. The knights could hold no
property and receive no private letters. He could not be married or
betrothed and cannot have any vow in any other Order. He could not have
debt more than he could pay, and no infirmities. The Templar priest
class was similar to the modern day military chaplain. Wearing green
robes, they conducted religious services, led prayers, and were assigned
record keeping and letter writing. They always wore gloves, unless they
were giving Holy Communion. The mounted men-at-arms represented the
most common class, and they were called "brothers". They were usually
assigned two horses each and held many positions, including guard,
steward, squire or other support vocations. As the main support staff,
they wore black or brown robes and were partially garbed in chain mail
or plate mail. The armor was not as complete as the knights. Because of
this infrastructure, the warriors were well-trained and very well armed.
Even their horses were trained to fight in combat, fully armored.
[3]
The combination of soldier and monk was also a powerful one, as to the
Templar knights, martyrdom in battle was one of the most glorious ways
to die.
The Templars were also shrewd tacticians, following the dream of
Saint Bernard who had declared that a small force, under the right
conditions, could defeat a much larger enemy. One of the key battles in
which this was demonstrated was in 1177, at the
Battle of Montgisard. The famous Muslim military leader
Saladin
was attempting to push toward Jerusalem from the south, with a force of
26,000 soldiers. He had pinned the forces of Jerusalem's King
Baldwin IV, about 500 knights and their supporters, near the coast, at
Ascalon. Eighty Templar knights and their own entourage attempted to reinforce. They met Saladin's troops at
Gaza,
but were considered too small a force to be worth fighting, so Saladin
turned his back on them and headed with his army towards Jerusalem.
Once Saladin and his army had moved on, the Templars were able to
join King Baldwin's forces, and together they proceeded north along the
coast. Saladin had made a key mistake at that point – instead of keeping
his forces together, he permitted his army to temporarily spread out
and pillage various villages on their way to Jerusalem. The Templars
took advantage of this low state of readiness to launch a surprise
ambush directly against Saladin and his bodyguard, at Montgisard near
Ramla. Saladin's army was spread too thin to adequately defend
themselves, and he and his forces were forced to fight a losing battle
as they retreated back to the south, ending up with only a tenth of
their original number. The battle was not the final one with Saladin,
but it bought a year of peace for the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the
victory became a heroic legend.
Another key tactic of the Templars was that of the "squadron charge".
A small group of knights and their heavily armed warhorses would gather
into a tight unit which would gallop full speed at the enemy lines,
with a determination and force of will that made it clear that they
would rather commit suicide than fall back. This terrifying onslaught
would frequently have the desired result of breaking a hole in the enemy
lines, thereby giving the other Crusader forces an advantage.
[4]
The Templars, though relatively small in number, routinely joined
other armies in key battles. They would be the force that would ram
through the enemy's front lines at the beginning of a battle, or the
fighters that would protect the army from the rear. They fought
alongside King
Louis VII of France, and King
Richard I of England.
[5] In addition to battles in
Palestine, members of the Order also fought in the
Spanish and
Portuguese Reconquista.
Bankers
Though initially an Order of poor monks, the official papal sanction
made the Knights Templar a charity across Europe. Further resources came
in when members joined the Order, as they had to take
oaths of poverty,
and therefore often donated large amounts of their original cash or
property to the Order. Additional revenue came from business dealings.
Since the monks themselves were sworn to poverty, but had the strength
of a large and trusted international infrastructure behind them, nobles
would occasionally use them as a kind of bank or
power of attorney.
If a noble wished to join the Crusades, this might entail an absence of
years from their home. So some nobles would place all of their wealth
and businesses under the control of Templars, to safeguard it for them
until their return. The Order's financial power became substantial, and
the majority of the Order's infrastructure was devoted not to combat,
but to economic pursuits.
By 1150, the Order's original mission of guarding pilgrims had
changed into a mission of guarding their valuables through an innovative
way of issuing letters of credit, an early precursor of modern banking.
Pilgrims would visit a Templar house in their home country, depositing
their deeds and valuables. The Templars would then give them a letter
which would describe their holdings. Modern scholars have stated that
the letters were encrypted with a cipher alphabet based on a
Maltese Cross;
however there is some disagreement on this, and it is possible that the
code system was introduced later, and not something used by the
medieval Templars themselves.
[6][7][8]
While traveling, the pilgrims could present the letter to other
Templars along the way, to "withdraw" funds from their accounts. This
kept the pilgrims safe since they were not carrying valuables, and
further increased the power of the Templars.
The Knights' involvement in
banking grew over time into a new basis for
money,
as Templars became increasingly involved in banking activities. One
indication of their powerful political connections is that the Templars'
involvement in
usury
did not lead to more controversy within the Order and the church at
large. Officially the idea of lending money in return for interest was
forbidden by the church, but the Order sidestepped this with clever
loopholes, such as a stipulation that the Templars retained the rights
to the production of mortgaged property. Or as one Templar researcher
put it, "Since they weren't allowed to charge interest, they charged
rent instead."
[9]
Their holdings were necessary to support their campaigns; in 1180, a
Burgundian noble required 3 square kilometres of estate to support
himself as a knight, and by 1260 this had risen to 15.6 km². The Order
potentially supported up to 4,000 horses and pack animals at any given
time, if provisions of the rule were followed; these horses had
extremely high maintenance costs due to the heat in
Outremer (Crusader states at the
Eastern Mediterranean),
and had high mortality rates due to both disease and the Turkish bowmen
strategy of aiming at a knight's horse rather than the knight himself.
In addition, the high mortality rates of the knights in the East
(regularly ninety percent in battle, not including wounded) resulted in
extremely high campaign costs due to the need to recruit and train more
knights. In 1244, at the battle of La Forbie, where only thirty-three of
300 knights survived, it is estimated the financial loss was equivalent
to one-ninth of the entire Capetian yearly revenue.
[citation needed]
The Templars' political connections and awareness of the essentially urban and commercial nature of the
Outremer communities led the Order to a position of significant
power, both in Europe and the
Holy Land.
[citation needed]
They owned large tracts of land both in Europe and the Middle East,
built churches and castles, bought farms and vineyards, were involved in
manufacturing and import/export, had their own fleet of ships, and for a
time even "owned" the entire island of
Cyprus.
[10]
Decline
Their success attracted the concern of many other orders, with the two most powerful rivals being the
Knights Hospitaller and the
Teutonic Knights.
Various nobles also had concerns about the Templars as well, both for
financial reasons, and nervousness about an independent army that was
able to move freely through all borders.
The long-famed military acumen of the Templars began to stumble in the 1180s. On July 4, 1187 came the disastrous
Battle of the Horns of Hattin, a turning point in the Crusades. It again involved Saladin, who had been beaten back by the Templars in 1177 in the legendary
Battle of Montgisard near
Tiberias, but this time Saladin was better prepared. Further, the Grand Master of the Templars was involved in this battle,
Gerard de Ridefort,
who had just achieved that lifetime position a few years earlier. He
was not known as a good military strategist, and made some deadly
errors, such as venturing out with his force of 80 knights without
adequate supplies or water, across the arid hill country of Galilee. The
Templars were overcome by the heat within a day, and then surrounded
and massacred by Saladin's army. Within months Saladin captured
Jerusalem.
But in the early 1190s in a remarkably short and powerfully effective
campaign Richard the Lionheart, King of England and leader of the Third
Crusade, together with his allies the Templars, delivered a series of
powerful blows against Saladin and recovered much of Christian
territory. In name and number the revived Crusader states were as
before, but their outlines were diminished. There was the Kingdom of
Jerusalem, though its capital was at Acre, which the Templars made their
new headquarters. To the north was the County of Tripoli. But the
Muslims retained control of the Syrian coast around Latakia for some
time, and so the Principality of Antioch further to the north was now no
longer contiguous to the other Crusader states. Nevertheless the Third
Crusade, in which Richard relied heavily on the Templars, had saved the
Holy Land for the Christians and went a long way towards restoring
Frankish fortunes. In this he was abetted by the military orders whose
great castles stood like islands of Frankish power amid the Muslim
torrent. More than ever the Crusader states were relying on the military
orders in their castles and on the field of battle, and the power of
the orders grew. In fact at no point in their history would the Templars
be more powerful than in the century to come.
But after the
Siege of Acre in 1291, the Templars were forced to relocate their headquarters to the island of
Cyprus.
Jacques de Molay,
who was to be the last of the Order's Grand Masters, took office around
1292. One of his first tasks was to tour across Europe, to raise
support for the Order and try to organise another Crusade. He met the
newly invested
Pope Boniface VIII, who agreed to grant the Templars the same privileges at Cyprus as they had held in the Holy Land.
Charles II of Naples
and Edward I also pledged varying types of support, either continuing
to exempt the Templars from taxes, or pledging future support towards
building a new army.
[11]
Final attempts to regain the Holy Land (1298–1300)
In 1298 or 1299, the military orders (the Knights Templar and
Knights Hospitaller) and their leaders, including
Jacques de Molay,
Otton de Grandson
and the Great Master of the Hospitallers, briefly campaigned in
Armenia, in order to fight off an invasion by the Mamluks. They were not
successful and soon the fortress of
Roche-Guillaume in the
Belen Pass, the last Templar stronghold in Antioch, was lost to the Muslims.
In 1300, the Templars, along with the
Knights Hospitaller and forces from
Cyprus attempted to retake the coastal city of
Tortosa. They were able to take the island of
Arwad, near Tortosa, but lost it soon after. With the loss of Arwad, the Crusaders had lost their last foothold in the Holy Land.
[12]
Though they still had a base of operations in Cyprus, and controlled
considerable financial resources, the Order of the Templars became an
Order without a clear purpose or support, but which still had enormous
financial power. This unstable situation contributed to their downfall.
Fall
King Philip had other reasons to mistrust the Templars, as the
organization had declared its desire to form its own state, similar to
how the
Teutonic Knights had founded
Prussia. The Templars' preferred location for this was in the
Languedoc of southeastern France, but they had also made a plan for the island of
Cyprus. In 1306, the Templars had supported a coup on that island, which had forced
King Henry II of Cyprus to abdicate his throne in favor of his brother,
Amalric of Tyre. This probably made Philip particularly uneasy, since just a few years earlier he had inherited land in the region of
Champagne, France,
which was the Templars' headquarters. The Templars were already a
"state within a state", were institutionally wealthy, paid no taxes, and
had a large standing army which by papal decree could move freely
through all European borders. However, this army no longer had a
presence in the Holy Land, leaving it with no battlefield. These
factors, plus the fact that Philip had inherited an impoverished kingdom
from his father and was already deeply in debt to the Templars, were
probably what led to his actions.
[11][12]
However, recent studies emphasize the political and religious
motivations of the French king. It seems that, with the “discovery” and
repression of the “Templars' heresy,” the Capetian monarchy claimed for
itself the mystic foundations of the papal theocracy. The Temple case
was the last step of a process of appropriating these foundations, which
had begun with the Franco-papal rift at the time of Boniface VIII.
Being the ultimate defender of the Catholic faith, the Capetian king was
invested with a Christlike function that put him above the pope : what
was at stake in the Templars' trial, then, was the establishment of a
"royal theocracy".
[13]
At dawn on Friday, October 13, 1307, scores of French Templars were
simultaneously arrested by agents of King Philip, later to be tortured
in locations such as the
tower at Chinon, into admitting
heresy
and other sacrilegious offenses in the Order. Then they were put to
death. There were five initial charges lodged against the Templars. The
first was the renouncement and spitting on the cross during initiation
into the Order. The second was the stripping of the man to be initiated
and the thrice kissing of that man by the preceptor on the navel,
posteriors and the mouth. The third was telling the neophyte (novice)
that unnatural lust was lawful and indulged in commonly. The fourth was
that the cord worn by the neophyte day and night was consecrated by
wrapping it around an idol in the form of a human head with a great
beard, and that this idol was adored in all chapters. The fifth was that
the priests of the order did not consecrate the host in celebrating
Mass.
[14][15]
On August 12, 1308, the charges would be increased and would become
more outrageous, one specifically stated that the Templars worshipped
idols, specifically made of a cat and a head, the latter having three
faces. The lists of articles 86 to 127[3] would add many other charges.
[16][17]
The majority of these charges were identical to the charges that had
been earlier issued against the inconvenient Pope Boniface VIII:
accusations of denying Christ, spitting and urinating on the cross, and
devil worship. Of the 138 Templars (many of them old men) questioned in
Paris
over the next few years, 105 of them "confessed" to denying Christ
during the secret Templar initiations. 103 confessed to an "obscene
kiss" being part of the ceremonies, and 123 said they spat on the cross.
Throughout the trial there was never any physical evidence of
wrongdoing, and no independent witnesses; the only "proof" was obtained
through confessions induced by torture.
[9]
The Templars reached out to the Pope for assistance, and Pope Clement
did write letters to King Philip questioning the arrests, but took no
further action.
Despite the fact that the confessions had been produced under duress,
they caused a scandal in Paris, with mobs calling for action against
the blaspheming Order. In response to this public pressure, along with
more bullying from King Philip, Pope Clement issued the bull
Pastoralis Praeeminentiae, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.
[18] Most monarchs simply didn't believe the charges, though proceedings were started in England,
Iberia,
Germany,
Italy, and Cyprus,
[19] with the likelihood of a confession being dependent on whether or not torture was used to extract it.
The dominant view is that Philip, who seized the treasury and broke
up the monastic banking system, was jealous of the Templars' wealth and
power, and frustrated by his enormous debt to them, sought to seize
their financial resources for himself by bringing blatantly false
charges against them at the
Tours
assembly in 1308. It is almost impossible to believe, that, under the
influence of his carefully chosen advisors (the same that had persecuted
Boniface), he actually believed the charges to be true. It is widely
accepted that Philip had clearly made up the accusations, some nearly
identical to those made against Boniface, and did not believe any of the
Templars to have been party to such activities. It is a fact that he
had invited Jacques de Molay to be a pall-bearer at the funeral of the
King's sister on the very day before the arrests.
[20]
The arrests caused some shifts in the European economy, from a system of
military fiat back to European
money, removing this power from Church orders. Seeing the fate of the Templars, the
Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem and of Rhodes were also convinced to give up banking at this time.
Dismantling
In 1312, after the
Council of Vienne,
and under extreme pressure from King Philip IV, Pope Clement V issued
an edict officially dissolving the Order. Many kings and nobles who had
been supporting the Knights up until that time, finally acquiesced and
dissolved the orders in their fiefs in accordance with the Papal
command. Most were not so brutal as the French. In
England, many Knights were arrested and tried, but not found guilty.
Much of the Templar property outside of France was transferred by the
Pope to the Knights Hospitaller, and many surviving Templars were also
accepted into the Hospitallers. In the
Iberian Peninsula, where the king of
Aragon was against giving the heritage of the Templars to the
Hospitallers (as commanded by Clement V), the
Order of Montesa took Templar assets.
The order continued to exist in
Portugal, simply changing its name to the
Order of Christ. This group was believed to have contributed to the first naval discoveries of the Portuguese. Prince
Henry the Navigator led the Portuguese order for 20 years until the time of his death.
Even with the absorption of Templars into other Orders, there are
still questions as to what became of all of the tens of thousands of
Templars across Europe. There had been 15,000 "Templar Houses", and an
entire fleet of ships. Even in France where hundreds of Templars had
been rounded up and arrested, this was only a small percentage of the
estimated 3,000 Templars in the entire country. Also, the extensive
archive of the Templars, with detailed records of all of their business
holdings and financial transactions, was never found. By papal bull it
was to have been transferred to the Hospitallers.
A popular thread of
conspiracy theory originating with
Holy Blood, Holy Grail has it that the Templars used a fleet of 18 ships at
La Rochelle
to escape arrest in France. The fleet allegedly left laden with knights
and treasures just before the issue of the warrant for the arrest of
the Order in October 1307.
[21][22]
This, in turn, was based on a single item of testimony from serving
brother Jean de Châlon, who says he had "heard people talking that
[Gerard de Villiers had] put to sea with 18 galleys, and the brother
Hugues de Chalon fled with the whole treasury of the brother Hugues de
Pairaud."
[23]
However, aside from being the sole source for this statement, the
transcript indicates that it is hearsay, and this serving brother seems
to be prone to making some of the wildest and most damning of claims
about the Order, which have led some to doubt his credibility.
[24]
In
Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the knights that allegedly boarded
these ships then escaped to Scotland, but in some versions the Templars
are even claimed to have left for North America, burying a treasure in
Oak Island, Nova Scotia, Canada (a story taken up in the 2004 movie
National Treasure starring
Nicolas Cage).
[25]
However, many historians have questioned the plausibility of this
scenario. For example, historian Helen Nicholson has argued that
- The Templars did have ships to carry personnel, pilgrims and
supplies across the Mediterranean between the West and East and back,
but if the Hospital after 1312 is any guide they did not have more than
four galleys (warships) and few other ships, and if they needed more
they hired them. They certainly could not spare ships to indulge in
world exploration ... [T]he records of the port of La Rochelle show that
the Templars were exporting wine by ship. This was not a fleet in any
modern sense: again, those would have been transport vessels rather than
warships, and the Templars probably hired them as they needed them,
rather than buying their own. ... The ships would have been very small
by modern standards, too shallow in draught and sailing too low in the
water to be able to withstand the heavy waves and winds of the open
Atlantic, and suited for use only in the relatively shallow waters of
the continental shelf. What was more, they could not carry enough water
to be at sea for long periods.[26]
Heresy, blasphemy, and other charges
There were five initial charges lodged against the Templars. The
first was the renouncement and spitting on the cross during initiation
into the Order. The second was the stripping of the man to be initiated
and the thrice kissing of that man by the preceptor on the navel,
posteriors and the mouth. The third was telling the neophyte (novice)
that unnatural lust was lawful and indulged in commonly. The fourth was
that the cord worn by the neophyte day and night was consecrated by
wrapping it around an idol in the form of a human head with a great
beard, and that this idol was adored in all chapters. The fifth was that
the priests of the order did not consecrate the
host in celebrating Mass.
[14]
Subsequently, the charges would be increased and would become,
according to the procedures, lists of articles 86 to 127[3] in which
will be added a few other charges, such as the prohibition to priests
who do not belong to the order.
[16]
The incontrovertibility of the evidence that the Templar priests did
not mutilate the words of consecration in the mass is furnished in the
Cypriote proceedings by ecclesiastics who had long dwelt with them in
the East.
[27]
The manuscript illustration (c. 1350) alludes to the accusation of "obscene kisses" at the base of the spine
Debate continues as to whether the accusation of religious
heresy had merit by the standards of the time. Under
torture, some Templars admitted to
sodomy and to the
worship of heads and an idol known as
Baphomet.
[28] Their leaders later denied these admissions, and for that were executed. Some scholars, such as
Malcolm Barber, Helen Nicholson and Peter Partner, discount these as forced admissions, typical during the
Medieval Inquisition.
The majority of the charges were identical to other people being
tortured by the Inquisitors, with one exception: head worship. The
Templars were specifically charged with worshipping some type of severed
head; a charge which was made only against Templars. The descriptions
of the head allegedly venerated by the Templars were varied and
contradictory in nature. Quoting Norman Cohn:
Some describe it as having three faces, others as having four feet,
others as being simply a face with no feet. For some it was a human
skull, embalmed and encrusted with jewels; for others it was carved out
of wood. Some maintained that it came from the remains of a former grand
master of the order, while others were equally convinced that it was
Baphomet – which in turn was interpreted as 'Mohammed'. Some saw it as
having horns.[29]
Barber has linked this charge to medieval folklore about magical
heads, and the popular medieval belief that the Muslims worshipped
idols.
[30] Some argue it referred to rituals involving the alleged
relics of
John the Baptist,
[31] Euphemia,
[32] one of
Ursula's eleven maidens,
[33] and/or
Hugues de Payens[34] rather than
pagan idols.
The charges of heresy included
spitting, trampling, or urinating on the cross; while naked, being
kissed obscenely by the receptor on the lips, navel, and base of the spine;
heresy and worship of idols;
institutionalized sodomy; and also accusations of
contempt of the Holy Mass and denial of the sacraments.
Barbara Frale has suggested that these acts were intended to simulate
the kind of humiliation and torture that a Crusader might be subjected
to if captured by the Saracens. According to this line of reasoning,
they were taught how to commit
apostasy with the mind only and not with the heart.
[35]
The accusation of venerating
Baphomet
is more problematic. Karen Ralls has noted, "There is no mention of
Baphomet either in the Templar Rule or in other medieval period Templar
documents".
[36] The late scholar
Hugh J. Schonfield speculated that the
chaplains of the Knights Templar created the term
Baphomet through the
Atbash cipher to
encrypt the
Gnostic term
Sophia (Greek for "
wisdom") due to the influence of hypothetical
Qumran Essene scrolls, which they may have found during
archaeological digs in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
[37]
Roman Catholic Church's position
The papal process started by
Pope Clement V,
to investigate both the Order as a whole and its members individually
found virtually no knights guilty of heresy outside of France.
Fifty-four knights were executed in France by French authorities as
relapsed
heretics after denying their original testimonies before the papal
commission; these executions were motivated by Philip's desire to
prevent Templars from mounting an effective defence of the Order. It
failed miserably, as many members testified against the charges of
heresy in the ensuing papal investigation.
[citation needed]
Despite the poor defense of the Order, when the papal commission
ended its proceedings on June 5, 1311, it found no evidence that the
Order itself held heretical doctrines, or used a "secret rule" apart
from the Latin and French rules. On October 16, 1311, at the General
Council of Vienne held in Dauphiné, the council voted for the
maintenance of the Order.
[citation needed]
But on March 22, 1312, Clement V promulgated the
bull Vox in excelsis
in which he stated that although there was not sufficient reason to
condemn the Order, for the common good, the hatred of the Order by
Philip IV, the scandal brought about by their trial, and the likely
dilapidation of the Order that would result from the trial, the Order
was to be suppressed by the pope’s authority over it. But the order
explicitly stated that dissolution was enacted, "with a sad heart, not
by definitive sentence, but by apostolic provision."
[38]
This was followed by the papal bull
Ad Providum on May 2, 1312, which granted all of the Order's lands and wealth to the
Hospitallers
so that its original purpose could be met, despite Philip's wishes that
the lands in France pass to him. Philip held onto some lands until
1318, and in England the crown and nobility held a great deal until
1338; in many areas of Europe the land was never given over to the
Hospitaller Order, instead taken over by nobility and monarchs in an
attempt to lessen the influence of the Church and its Orders. Of the
knights who had not admitted to the charges, against those whom nothing
had been found, or those who had admitted but been reconciled to the
Church, some joined the Hospitallers (even staying in the same Templar
houses); others joined
Augustinian or
Cistercian houses; and still others returned to secular life with pension. In
Portugal and
Aragon, the
Holy See granted the properties to two new Orders, the
Order of Christ and the
Order of Montesa
respectively, made up largely of Templars in those kingdoms. In the
same bull, he urged those who had pleaded guilty be treated “according
to the rigours of justice.“
[citation needed]
Two Templars burned at the stake, from a French 15th-century manuscript
In the end, the only three accused of heresy directly by the papal commission were
Jacques de Molay,
Grand Master of the Knights Templar, and his two immediate
subordinates; they were to renounce their heresy publicly, when de Molay
regained his courage and proclaimed the order's and his innocence along
with
Geoffrey de Charney. The two were arrested by French authorities as relapsed heretics and
burned at the stake in 1314. Their ashes were then ground up and dumped into the
Seine, so as to leave no relics behind.
[citation needed]
In England the Crown was also deeply in debt to the Templars, and
probably on that basis, the Templars were also persecuted in England,
their lands forfeited and taken by others, (the last private owner being
the favorite of Edward II, Hugh le Despenser). Many of Templars in
England were killed; some fled to Scotland and other places.
[39]
In France, Philip IV, who was also coincidentally in terrible financial
debt to the Templars was perhaps the more aggressive persecutor. So
widely was the injustice of Philip's rage against the Templars perceived
that the "Curse of the Templars" became legend: Reputedly uttered by
the Grand Master Jacques de Molay upon the stake whence he burned, he
adjured: "Within one year, God will summon both Clement and Philip to
His Judgment for these actions." The fact that both rulers died within a
year, as predicted, only heightened the scandal surrounding the
suppression of the Order. The source of this legend does not date from
the time of the execution of Jacques de Molay.
[40]
Chinon and Absolution
In September 2001,
Barbara Frale discovered a copy of the
Chinon Parchment dated 17–20 August 1308 in the
Vatican Secret Archives, a document that indicated that Pope Clement V
absolved the leaders of the Order in 1308. Frale published her findings in the
Journal of Medieval History in 2004
[35] In 2007, The Vatican published the Chinon Parchment as part of a limited edition of 799 copies of
Processus Contra Templarios.
[41] Another Chinon parchment dated 20 August 1308 addressed to
Philip IV of France, well-known to historians,
[42][43][44]
stated that absolution had been granted to all those Templars that had
confessed to heresy "and restored them to the Sacraments and to the
unity of the Church".
[45][46]
References
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