The Templars

by Michael Haag

  The Crusaders had about 1200 knights and 15,000 able-bodied men; their force was insufficient to effectively surround the city; but they had an unshakeable conviction that under divine protection their moment of victory had come. On 13 June they launched a general attack with great fervour and overran the outer defences, but they had too few ladders to scale the walls in several places simultaneously, and after a long morning of desperate fighting they withdrew. They needed siege engines and more ladders, but the Crusaders lacked the bolts and ropes and mangonels, and the area around Jerusalem had few trees. But then they had a stroke of luck: the Muslims had left Jaffa unprotected and six ships had sailed into the port, two from Genoa, four from England, carrying arms and food supplies and all the equipment necessary for building siege machines.

  On the night of 13–14 July the attack resumed, simultaneously from north and south. The fighting continued throughout the day and on into the following night as against terrific resistance the Crusaders managed to move their machines closer to the walls. Around noon on 15 July Godfrey of Bouillon forced his way onto the northern battlements, and soon Tancred and his men surged deep into the city’s streets towards the Temple Mount, that is the Haram al-Sharif surmounted by the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque, where the Muslims were retreating, intending it as their last redoubt. To the south the Fatimid governor paid Raymond of Toulouse an immense treasure in return for sparing his life and that of his bodyguard; they were escorted out of the walls and rode off to safety with the Muslim garrison at Ascalon. They were the last Muslims in Jerusalem to be spared their lives. Those on the Temple Mount surrendered to Tancred, who accepted and gave them his banner for protection, but the next morning the Tafurs killed all of them, ten thousand people according to one version, which outraged Tancred when he found out, and they set alight the synagogue where the Jews had taken refuge, burning them all within for having been allies of the Muslims.

  Raymond of Aguilers, who was a chronicler attached to Raymond of Toulouse and entered Jerusalem with the Crusaders, gives this often-quoted account: ‘Piles of heads, hands, and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one’s way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what happened at the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious services are ordinarily chanted. What happened there? If I tell the truth, it will exceed your powers of belief. So let it suffice to say this much, at least, that in the Temple and porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers, since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies.’

  But modern historians do not take Raymond of Aguilers very seriously; he was something of a credulous apocalyptic and described all sorts of visions and miracles, and his accounts of the undoubted slaughter at Jerusalem may be overdrawn. What is more, contemporary letters written by Jews living in the Eastern Mediterranean make it clear that not all Jews and Muslims in the city were killed; and indeed the contemporary Arab writer Ibn al-Arabi estimated the number of Muslim dead at Jerusalem at only three thousand.

  When it was over, the knights went ‘rejoicing and weeping’ to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to give thanks to God at the site of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

  Part 2

  The Rise 1099 to 1150

  Origins of the Templars

  The New Knighthood

  Christianity was founded on a pacifist ideal, and strong voices within the Church continued to be raised against the use of violence in any circumstances. But instead of chasing the impossible ideal of the total abolition of violence, the Papacy had spent much of the eleventh century trying to control and channel violence, for example trying to limit feudal warfare by promoting a set of rules called the Truce of God. Part of Pope Urban’s thinking in launching the First Crusade was to usefully externalise this aggression by redirecting it against the Muslim threat.

  The use of force against a deadly enemy and in the service of Christ had already been justified in the fifth century by no less a figure than Saint Augustine of Hippo, who in The City of God described the necessity of repelling the pagan barbarian invasion of Italy. Similarly Christians saw the First Crusade as an entirely just war. But however much the First Crusade may have brought about a widespread acceptance of warfare in the name of God, what was new and exceptional was that the need to provide security for pilgrims to Jerusalem gave rise to a body of armed knights who were also monks.

  The Kingdom of Jerusalem

  On 17 July 1099, two days after the reconquest of Jerusalem, the Crusader barons met to choose a leader. This was against the wishes of the Tafurs, who hourly awaited the Second Coming and wanted no government at all. The favourite choice among the barons would have been Adhemar, bishop of Le Puy, but he had died of illness a year earlier at Antioch. In his stead, the crown was offered to Raymond of Toulouse; his age, wealth, experience and his closeness to both Adhemar and the Byzantine Emperor Alexius made him the almost necessary choice. But Raymond knew he was unpopular, and his own soldiers wanted to return home, so reluctantly he refused. Of the other candidates, Bohemond had already made himself prince of Antioch after leading the attack on that city; Tancred was regarded as merely an appendage of his uncle; and Robert of Normandy had let it be known that he wanted to return to Europe. And so on 22 July the crown was offered to Godfrey of Bouillon, who delicately replied that he would wear no crown where Jesus had worn the crown of thorns, nor would he presume to bear the title of King in Christ’s holy city, but he would accept kingly powers under the title of Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri, the Defender of the Holy Sepulchre.

  There were some, and perhaps Godfrey was among them, who wanted Jerusalem to be governed as a theocracy under a patriarch appointed by the Pope in Rome. But within a year Godfrey was dead and the crown passed to his brother, who had no qualms about ruling over a secular Kingdom of Jerusalem as Baldwin I. For his palace he used the al-Aqsa mosque, which was assumed to stand on the site of Solomon’s Temple, while the Dome of the Rock, which does occupy that site, became a Christian church, the Templum Domini, the Temple of the Lord, surmounted by a cross, and served also as the residence of the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem.

  Outremer and Its Muslim Neighbours

  The Crusader states, or Outremer as they were collectively called, French for ‘overseas’, formed a series of contiguous territories that were linked to Europe by Byzantine Asia Minor and reached as far south as Egypt and the Red Sea.

  The Kingdom of Jerusalem closely corresponded in extent to the kingdom of David and Solomon, that is all of what is today the state of Israel, plus the east bank of the Jordan river, western Jordan, southern Lebanon and southwestern Syria including the Golan Heights.

  Dependent on Jerusalem were the feudal Crusader states of Antioch, Edessa and Tripoli. Bohemond had established the Principality of Antioch in 1098 as the Crusaders were still advancing towards Jerusalem, while Baldwin of Boulogne (the future Baldwin I of Jerusalem) had carved out the inland County of Edessa in that same year. Raymond of Toulouse began the conquest of northern Lebanon and coastal Syria in 1102, which when completed under his successors in 1109 would form the County of Tripoli.

  The soldiers and rulers of Outremer were European, largely French in origin, and the commercial class was mainly Italian. During the first decades many of these Franks, as the Westerners were known, conquerors, traders, settlers and pilgrims, mingled with the indigenous inhabitants, adopted their dress and customs, were tolerant towards Muslims and intermarried with local Christians.

  Fulcher of Chartres, a chronicler of the First Crusade, who died in Jerusalem in 1127, was a first-hand observer: ‘Now we who were Westerners have become Easterners. He who was Italian or French has in this land become a Galilean or a Palestinian. He who was a citizen of Rheims or Chartres is now a Tyrian or an Antiochene. We have already forgotten our birthplaces. Most of us d
o not know them or even hear of them. One already owns home and household as if by paternal and hereditary right, another has taken as wife not a compatriot, but a Syrian, Armenian, or even a baptised Saracen woman. He who was an alien has become a native, he who was an immigrant is now a resident.’

  Divisions in the Islamic world–not only the rivalry between the Fatimids in Egypt and the Baghdad caliphate which had been taken over by the Seljuk Turks, but divisions among the Seljuks themselves–meant that the Middle East was fragmented into numerous Muslim emirates. The Crusader states fitted into this mosaic and, from the Muslim point of view, were no more disturbing than any other emirates. The Franks fought against Muslims, but also made alliances with them; the fighting, which was on a minor scale, was no more than had been taking place in recent centuries among Muslims themselves. The fact that Christians were involved was of no great significance in a region where a large number of Christians had been a factor all along. If anything, Outremer was a source of fruitful interchange of goods and ideas between Latin Europe and the Muslim East.

  The Crusaders and Byzantium

  With the help of the Crusaders, the Emperor Alexius I Comnenus had recovered Asia Minor for the Byzantine Empire, and in exchange for subsidising the Westerners he assumed that he would get back Syria too. But Antioch, which had been taken from the Byzantines by the Seljuks as recently as 1085, was claimed by Bohemond instead. Bohemond was a Norman, and the Normans had long had designs on Constantinople, wanting to add it to their string of conquests in England, southern Italy and Sicily. Nor were the rest of the Crusaders interested in sharing their conquests in Syria and Palestine.

  Behind this was the long-developing rift–religious, political and economic–between Western Europe and the East Roman Empire. This deeply aggrieved Alexius and prevented the formation of a united Christian front against the Muslims such as existed in the West against the Arab occupation of Spain. As previously noted, the Crusaders had arrived in the Middle East at a time when there were deep divisions among the Muslims, not only between Sunni and Shia, but also as the Arabs were being subjected to domination by the newly arrived Turks, who themselves were increasingly at odds with one another. But should that situation ever change, the Crusader states would find themselves alone, dependent on their command of the sea, their supply lines to the West, and what defences they could put in place against a unified Muslim power.

  Fear and Massacre on the Roads

  Many of those who came on the First Crusade went home when it was over, and few of the pilgrims who followed in their wake chose to settle in the Holy Land. Owing to insufficient Frankish immigration, the Crusader states would always be short of fighting men. The King of Jerusalem, the prince of Antioch and the counts of Edessa and Tripoli could between them raise no more than two thousand knights. The towns were made secure, but travellers along the roads were vulnerable to brigands and sudden enemy raids.

  Saewulf of Canterbury, who visited the Holy Land in 1102, described how parties of pilgrims landing at Jaffa were exposed to attack as they journeyed along the mountain road to Jerusalem. Pilgrims who wearied and fell behind, or groups that were vulnerably small, were prey to bands of nomadic Bedouin who lived in the surrounding wilderness. The bandits did not hesitate to kill to get at the money sewn into travellers’ clothes. Corpses were left to rot along the route up to Jerusalem because it was too dangerous for their companions to leave their party to give them a proper Christian burial.

  There was danger not only from brigands but from Turkish forces in the north and Egyptians in the south. A Russian recounting his pilgrimage in 1106–07 was referring to the Fatimid Egyptians who held Ascalon, south of Jaffa, when he wrote of his visit to the church of Saint George at Lydda on the Jaffa-Jerusalem road: ‘There are many springs here; travellers rest by the water but with great fear, for it is a deserted place and nearby is the town of Ascalon from which Saracens sally forth and kill travellers on these roads.’

  The Russian’s journey to Galilee, which took him near the town of Baisan, was no less hazardous: ‘Seven rivers flow from this town and great reeds grow along these rivers and many tall palm trees stand about the town like a dense forest. This place is terrible and difficult of access for here live fierce pagan Saracens who attack travellers at the fords on these rivers.’ An especially shocking attack took place at Easter 1019 when a large party of seven hundred unarmed pilgrims, both men and women, set out from Jerusalem for the river Jordan. They were travelling, in the words of a German chronicler, ‘in joy and with a cheerful heart’ when they were set upon by an Egyptian sortie from Ascalon. Three hundred pilgrims were killed and another sixty were captured to be sold as slaves.

  The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon

  The formation of the Templars arose out of these conditions of insecurity on the roads and the murder, rape, enslavement and robbery of unarmed pilgrims. Only recently a group of nine French knights, most prominently Hugh of Payns, a knight from Champagne who had fought in the First Crusade, and Godfrey of Saint-Omer in Picardy, had proposed to the Patriarch of Jerusalem Warmund of Picquigny and King Baldwin II, who had succeeded his cousin in 1118, that for the salvation of their souls they form a lay community or perhaps even withdraw into the contemplative life of a monastery. Instead Baldwin, alive to the urgent dangers confronting travellers in his kingdom, persuaded Hugh of Payns and his companions to save their souls by protecting pilgrims on the roads, or as one chronicler put it, they were to take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience but were also ‘to defend pilgrims against brigands and rapists’. The Easter massacre along the road to the river Jordan persuasively drove home the King’s view, and on Christmas Day 1119 Hugh and his companions took their vows before the Patriarch in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, calling themselves in Latin the Pauperes commilitones Christi, the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ.

  The King and Patriarch probably saw the creation of a permanent guard for travellers as complementary to the work of the Hospitallers who were providing care for pilgrims arriving at Jerusalem. Already in 600 Pope Gregory the Great had commissioned the building of a hospital at Jerusalem to treat and care for pilgrims, and two hundred years later Charlemagne, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, enlarged it to include a hostel and a library, but in 1005 it was destroyed as part of the Fatimid caliph Hakim’s violent anti-Christian persecutions. In 1170 merchants from Amalfi obtained permission from the Fatimids to rebuild the hospital, which was run by Benedictine monks and dedicated to Saint John the Almsgiver, a charitable seventh-century patriarch of Alexandria. But after the First Crusade the hospital was released from Benedictine control and raised an order of its own, the Hospitallers of Saint John, which was recognised by the Pope in 1113 and came under his sole jurisdiction.

  Official acceptance of the new order came at Nablus in January 1120 when the nine members of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ were formally introduced to an assembly of lay and spiritual leaders from throughout the lands of Outremer. In this year too they first attracted the attention of a powerful visitor to Outremer, Fulk V, count of Anjou, who on his return home granted them an annual revenue, an example that was soon followed by other French nobles, which added to the allowance they were already receiving from the canons of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Yet altogether these amounted to only a modest income, and individually the Poor Fellow-Soldiers were genuinely poor and dressed only in donated clothes, meaning they had no distinctive uniform–the white tunic emblazoned with a red cross came later. Their seal alludes to this brotherhood in poverty by depicting two knights, perhaps Hugh of Payns and Godfrey of Saint-Omer, having to share a single horse.

  They were also given the use of another hand-me-down. After the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, the King had made do with the al-Aqsa mosque for his palace, but now he had built a new palace to the west and he gave what had been the mosque to the Poor Fellow-Soldiers. They made it their headquarters, residing there and using it to store ar
ms, clothing and food, while stabling their horses in a great underground vault at the southeast corner of the Temple Mount. As the vaults were thought to have been Solomon’s stables, and the al-Aqsa mosque was known as the mosque of the Templum Solomonis because it was believed to have been built on the site of Solomon’s Temple, 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; or, in a word, the Templars.

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  Digging Up Secrets

  A story much put about these days in books like The Da Vinci Code and The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is that the Templars were founded not to protect pilgrims or to defend the Holy Land but to undertake secret excavations beneath the surface of the Temple Mount. This argument takes advantage of gaps and uncertainties in the historical record, and it turns unknowns into mysteries–or into conspiracies. Why were there only nine Templars? Because they had a secret to keep, and so the fewer the better. Why do we know so little about the military activities of the Templars in their early years? Because really they were digging holes in the Temple Mount. Why did the Templars become so powerful? Because they found a huge treasure or discovered an explosive secret beneath the Temple Mount which they used to blackmail the Church. Why were the Templars destroyed? Because they knew too much.