The Death Blow to the Templars in the Holy Land
The Templars clung on to some parts of the Holy Land for another century. Their final downfall came in the spring of 1290, when an Egyptian army led by Caliph Al-Mansur Qalawun and his son, Al-Ashraf Khalil, moved to lay siege to the city of Saint-Jean d’Acre (the modern Acre) which was in the hands of the crusading knights and regarded as the last bastion of the so-called crusading Christian states.
With its fortified wall and its back to the sea, Acre's reputation as a crusader stronghold was legendary. But now, after almost three centuries of warfare between Christians and the Muslims, the bulk of the crusading states had been severely weakened. Undermanned and drastically low on supplies, Acre was about to face the full brunt of the Muslim forces. There was a moment of hope when it was announced that Caliph Qalawun had suddenly died, as though felled by the hand of God, just before reaching the walls of Acre. But his son and successor Al-Ashraf Khalil, kept a cool head and immediately took control of the Arab army, By 6 April 1290 Acre was thoroughly under siege, with the only way out being from the sea.
Within the high walls the knights braced themselves for the worst, as it was now clear to all just how massively the Arabs outnumbered them. There were terrible scenes of panic as the populace scrambled for places on the few ships available, and many old people and children drowned in the mad scuffle to evacuate the doomed city. On 15 May the Arabs breached the walls and stormed inside. An awful carnage ensued, even by medieval standards. The Knights Templar fought to the last like mad lions, knowing full well the gruesome fate that awaited them if they were captured alive. Amazingly, they held on in a redoubt for a further twelve days and when the fighting was finally over the city looked like a giant butcher's floor.
Infuriated by the insane resistance of the Templars, Al-Ashraf Khalil ordered Acre razed to the ground and all prisoners – male and female, young and old, civilian or military – put to death ‘under the Prophet's sword’. The Church of St. Andrew, renowned throughout Christendom, was demolished; its heavy Gothic door, weighing several tons, was taken as booty to Cairo to adorn the mausoleum of Al-Ashraf Khalil's brother. As the Arabs rode off from the smoldering stench and the terrible carnage, the already dark and somber mood of the Christian world deepened. The adventure of the crusades, of heroic tales and gallantry to ‘protect’ the Holy Land from the ‘heathen’, was finally over.
Nemesis
The fall of Acre marked the beginning of the end for the Templars. Within less than a decade of the disaster most of the knights had returned to Europe. Some went to England, where they were absorbed by the many long-established Templar preceptories there. The order's headquarters in England was located in London just north of the Thames to the east of Holborn in the district that is still called ‘Temple’ today. Some of the returning Templars went to Germany and to Spain. Many went to France, particularly to Paris and to the Port of La Rochelle where again, there were large numbers of existing Templar institutions to receive them. Thousands also chose to settle in Occitania which, by 1300, was increasingly being absorbed into France, and which had hosted a strong and continuous Templar presence for more than 150 years.
By the beginning of the 14th century the papacy's long and corrupt dependence on the French crown to provide a ‘final solution’ to the problem of the Cathar heresy had not only resulted in the annexation of Occitania into France but also in a steady diminution in the powers of the pope. So much was this the case that from 1309 until 1377 (a period referred to by Catholic historians as the ‘Babylonian Captivity’), the papacy was not based in Rome but in Avignon where it was almost totally under the control of the French monarchy.
The pope who made the move to Avignon in 1309 was Clement V. Formerly Raymond Bertrand de Got, archbishop of Bordeaux, he was elected pope in 1305 and crowned at Lyons in the presence of King Philip IV of France, known as Philip the Fair. Two years later Clement laid grave charges of heresy against the Templars and authorized Philip to bring the knights to trial. The charges were in many cases identical to those that had been repeatedly brought against the Cathars by the Inquisition during the 13th century and included accusations of secret ceremonies in which initiates were required to spit on or break crosses – accusations that aroused feelings of righteous horror amongst orthodox Catholics.
Thus it was that on Friday 13 October 1307 all members of the order within reach of Philip's forces – including all the Templars in Occitania – were arrested. Since more than 15,000 of them were rounded up in this way it is clear that the operation must have been exceptionally well-planned and well-coordinated, and implemented by large numbers of the king's men. We know that simultaneous dawn swoops on hundreds of Templar properties were carried out and that in most cases the arrests were secured without a struggle.28
In the months that followed, the Templars were savagely tortured by the Inquisition. And as with the Cathars before them, and Bruno after them, this torture – which was of exceptional brutality, even by Inquisition standards – was specially authorized by the pope. Moving quickly to follow up the arrests in France, Pope Clement V also issued a bull, Pastoralis praeeminentiae, dated 22 November 1307, which ordered the arrest of all other Templars throughout the Christian world. Proceedings followed as far afield as England, Spain, Germany, Italy and Cyprus and, in 1312, another bull from the puppet pope, Vox in excelso, officially suppressed the order. Meanwhile thousands of Templars were subjected to the most gruesome tortures and many were subsequently burned at the stake.
The agonizing death of the last Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay, came on 18 March 1314, and was recorded for posterity by a monk who was an eyewitness to the event: At the hour of vespers [late afternoon], on a small island on the Seine situated between the gardens of the king and the church of St. Augustine, they [Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Templar Preceptor of Normandy, Geoffroi de Charnay] were condemned to be burnt … They were seen so resolute to endure the ordeal of the fire, with such willingness, that they gained the admiration and surprise of all who witnessed …29
Such descriptions inevitably remind us of the calm fortitude of the Cathar perfecti when they faced similarly terrible deaths at the stake, and later of Giordano Bruno, the Hermetic magus who was burned for his beliefs in Rome in February 1600. But Jacques de Molay was a fighting man and he went out fighting. Twisting in horrible pain as he roasted in the midst of a slow fire, the last Templar Grand Master found the strength to call down a curse on the French monarchy for 13 generations and to prophesy that Clement V and Philip the Fair would both meet him for judgement before the throne of God within the year. Weirdly Clement V died just one month later, in April 1314, and Philip the Fair died inexplicably in November 1314.30 The climax of the story comes many generations later with the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 and the public beheading by guillotine of the unfortunate Louis XVI in 1793. Allegedly as the king's head rolled into the basket a French Freemason darted forward, dipped his fingers in the blood and scattered it over the crowd, shouting: ‘Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged!’31
Templar survivals and the long quest for Utopia
When Jacques de Molay was burned in 1314 many say that the Templars ceased to exist. This is true in the legal sense, for the order was suppressed. But practically speaking it did survive in a number of places. One was the Scotland of Robert the Bruce which liberated itself from English occupation at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Another was Portugal where the Templars were tried but found to be free of guilt, and thus neither tortured nor imprisoned. There, though their order was officially dissolved in 1312 as elsewhere, it was able to reconstitute itself under a different name – the Militia of Jesus Christ (also known as the Knights of Christ or the Order of Christ).32
A persistent rumour down the centuries hints at a great mystery concerning the large and well-appointed Templar fleet that had been anchored in the French Atlantic port of La Rochelle on the night of 13 Octob
er 1307 when the mass of Templars were rounded up. Historians accept that the fleet was there the day before but gone the next morning, eluding the king's forces that came to take possession of it. Clearly, therefore, good numbers of Templars – enough at any rate to man and sail the fleet – did escape arrest in France.
But where did they go? On this there is no concensus. One theory has it that the Templars sailed to North Africa to join forces with their long-time enemies, the Muslims. Another theory has them discovering the Americas almost two centuries before Columbus. A third theory, not necessarily inconsistent with the latter as we shall see, has them sailing to Scotland and taking refuge amongst the large number of Templars already established in that country.33 There according to 18th century Masonic sources such as the Chevalier Ramsay and the Baron von Hund, they formed the core of the underground movement that would eventually blossom forth again as Freemasonry.34
There is a particularly strong association linking the Templars in Scotland, Scottish Freemasonry and the ancient Sinclair family of Rosslyn near Edinburgh. A thorough study of the subject was published by Andrew Sinclair in 1991 under the title The Sword and The Grail.35 It presents compelling evidence that Sir William Sinclair, who began construction of the spectacular Gothic chapel at Rosslyn around 1446, was himself secretly initiated as a Templar more than 130 years after the suppression of the order and was at the same time the hereditary Grand Master of Freemasonry in Scotland.36
Equally intriguing from our point of view is the evidence also presented in The Sword and The Grail of a voyage made to the northeast coast of America around 1398 – 9 by William's grandfather Prince Henry Sinclair, First Earl of Orkney and also an initiated Templar. This precocious voyage appears to have been partly memorialized in reliefs at Rosslyn Chapel, dated prior to 1450 (thus still more than 40 years before Columbus) that show American maize and aloe cactus.37 Since 1991, so much new historical and archaeological evidence has been brought forward in support of this general thesis that it is no longer, so far as we are aware, seriously disputed by scholars.
What is more remarkable is the evidence that Andrew Sinclair managed to unearth regarding the motive for Prince Henry's transatlantic expedition: There is little doubt that the Knights Templar wanted to create another Paradise and Temple of Solomon in the New World beyond the reach of Papal authority.38
Sinclair's research suggests that the underground remnants of the Templar order in Scotland at the end of the 14th century saw Prince Henry's pioneering voyage as the first step in the implementation of a long-term plan to establish a utopia. It was, in other words, a bold and very early attempt to put into action what would again be envisaged more than 200 years later by men like Campanella, Andreae and Bacon as the ideal solution to the repulsive corruption and entanglements of the Old World.
Of course it's possible that the actual adventure of a trans-Atlantic voyage in the late 14th century, and the philosophical adventures of the 17th century, could have occurred entirely independently of each other. But the involvement of powerful Templar symbolism in both periods makes us think otherwise. It is not only the recurrence of the Rosy Cross (which also appears on the tombstone of William Sinclair at Rosslyn).39 Equally indicative of a link is the way in which the early explorers and the later philosophers were all inclined to express their mission in terms of exactly the same intent (whether symbolic or otherwise) – i.e. to rebuild the ‘Temple of Solomon in the New World’.
For a variety of reasons which need not detain us here, Prince Henry Sinclair's voyage was not followed up in the way that the later voyages of Columbus were instantly followed up.40 The chance was lost. But the big question is this. At the end of the 18th century, when the opportunity to create a genuinely new and revolutionary society built on new principles offered itself a second time with the American War of Independence and the vision of a free and independent United States, how can it possibly be an accident that Templar symbolism was once again involved?
We'll return to this problem in Chapter Nineteen. Meanwhile a more pressing and so far unaddressed issue demands our attention here.
How were the Templars transformed from the pope's chosen warriors in the 12th century into heretics who had to be burnt at the stake in the early 14th century?
The scholarly consensus, much of which makes a great deal of sense, is that the round-up of the Templars in 1307 was motivated almost entirely by King Philip the Fair of France, who trumped up the accusations of heresy against them, and had his puppet pope condemn them, so that he could steal their vast wealth. Since he did in fact steal much of their wealth, and since we know that Clement V did everything Philip told him, this is generally a very plausible scenario.
We disagree fundamentally on one point, however, which is the widely accepted idea that the accusations of heresy against the Templars were trumped up. Far from that, our proposal is that they very likely were heretics, guilty as charged, and that what had turned them into secret warriors against the Church was their long exposure to Cathar culture in Occitania and the return there from the Holy Land of many of the knights at the end of the 13th century.
Templars and Cathars
Looking at the dualist doctrines of the Cathars and at what is known about the initiations and beliefs of the Order of the Temple, Sir Steven Runciman notes: It may be that the secret practices of the Templars … were partly based on Dualist ideas and usages …41
It is generally accepted that the Templars were exposed to such ideas in the Holy Land – for example through their contacts with members of the ancient sect known as the Druze. Still extant today in Lebanon, Syria and Israel, the Druze are technically Shi'a Muslims but their beliefs have been characterised as ‘a mixture of Judaism, Christianity and Islam [including] elements of Gnosticism.’42 Other Shi'a splinter groups in the region such as the Nusayris also held beliefs identifiably tinged with Gnosticism.43 The Templars would have been well-placed during their long stay in the Holy Land to encounter the descendants of the Sabians of Harran, the compilers of the great Hermetic text known as the Picatrix – which contains, as we saw in Chapter Eight, an early blueprint for the utopian Hermetic city.
Having absorbed esoteric ‘Eastern’ influences far more enthusiastically than any other crusading group it is difficult to imagine that the large numbers of Templars resident in Occitania from the 12th to the 14th century were unaware of the distinctly Gnostic and dualist flavour of the local Cathar religion. It also makes sense, if their own thinking was already tinged by dualism as Runciman speculates, that they might have been favourably predisposed towards the Cathar cause – particularly so if the noble families of Occitania who were united in their support for the Cathars were also supporters of the Templars. This is highly likely. Indeed, as a leading authority on the Templars, historian Martin Barber, points out, the great expansion that the Templars enjoyed in Occitania could not have been achieved without strong support from the nobles: The establishment of new communities, and the opening up of previously uncultivated territory which was common in the 12th century owed much to an alliance between the nobles’ land and the Order's capital …44
Simple logic suggests that if the Cathars were sponsored by the noble families of Occitania, as we know they were, and if the Templars were sponsored by the same noble families of Occitania, as we know they were, then the Cathars and Templars are likely to have been on friendly terms. This could explain why even at the outset of the Albigensian Crusades in 1209, called by a pope – Innocent III – who was known to favour the Templars and who had accorded them special privileges,45 we find the Templars peculiarly reluctant to aid Innocent's cause.46 There is no suggestion that the Knights had become heretics themselves by this stage, but it is obviously puzzling that one of the few duties these heavyweight fighters did during the Albigensian Crusades was very far from being a ‘front-line’ one. In 1212, to pay for the costs of the Crusade, the pope imposed a tax of three pence per household across the length and breadth of the Languedo
c. The Templars collected it but otherwise, notes historian Aubrey Burl, they remained neutral.47
Such ‘neutrality’ amongst the pope's own chosen warriors in so crucial a holy war is highly anomalous and, in our opinion, significant. Several researchers pursuing this line of investigation have argued that as the Albigensian Crusades took their toll, and in particular after the fall of the last major Cathar fortress at Montségur in 1244, the Knights Templar became less ‘neutral’ and were increasingly influenced by Cathar doctrines. This happened says Andrew Sinclair, because: … most of the Cathar knights who escaped the slaughter were received into the Military Order of the Temple of Solomon, which was itself permeated with oriental influences.48
Similarly Arthur Guirdham sees ‘indications of some connection between the Cathars and the Templars’ in the fact that: A large number of Templar knights were recruited from Languedoc. There was an influx of recruits in the mid-13th century when the Albigensian wars were to all intents and purposes over. It is significant that the immensely powerful and ubiquitous Order of the Temple took no part in the Crusade against the Albigensians.49
Evidence of this sort is irritatingly and elusively circumstantial – ‘interesting, presumptive, but not conclusive’, as Guirdham admits.50 On the other side of the debate, however, historian Martin Barber is much more assertive: Romantics like to see connections between the two [i.e. between the Cathars and the Templars] but there were none: no fabulous treasure passed on to the Templars after the fall of the Cathar fortress of Montségur in 1244, no shared anti-Christian beliefs pervaded by esoteric cults … Inevitably some of the accusations against the Templars derive from those against the Cathars – they were, after all, embedded in the minds of those who pursued dissent.51
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