First Templar Nation

by Freddy Silva

  Whether this promotion rose to her head is hard to say, but soon she sought to expand her territory and pursue a larger share of her family’s Leónese inheritance. Unfortunately, this meant “Queen” Tareja found herself at war with a real queen—her half sister Urraca of Castilla e León—or forming alliances with her enemies, whichever proved the most expedient or convenient.

  A simpler solution was to find a close and stable ally. He materialized in the form of Count Fernán Péres de Traba, the most powerful Galician nobleman, a sensitive fellow who took a brief moment to consider the widow’s proposal, then, upon assessing her ample Portuguese property, promptly dumped his own wife and became Tareja’s lover.

  But life did not turn out all wine and roses for Tareja. After several wars with her half sister, she was finally besieged and captured and only through a coordinated brokerage between the archbishops of Braga and Santiago de Compostela was Tareja freed. The treaty saved the government of Portugale, but the price for her freedom meant the Portuguese county was once again held as a fief of Castilla e León.

  It was bad enough that the Portuguese nobles should continue tolerating life as vassals to a foreign court, but things got uglier for Tareja herself when she foolishly awarded her paramour the governorship of the cities of Porto and Coimbra. Fernán Péres de Traba developed delusions of his own grandeur, his character changing for the megalomaniac, beginning with the assumption that her assets now belonged to him, to the point where he even considered himself Lord of Portugale. He effectively placed important Portuguese cities under the control of Galicians, who were allowed to infiltrate every aspect of Portuguese society. The situation deteriorated further after the death of Urraca, when Tareja moved to form an alliance with the new king of Castilla e León, who also happened to be her nephew. It seemed as though the Portuguese county would never be free of outside interference. Even worse, Tareja, under Fernán’s lover’s charm, sought to usurp the sovereignty of Portugale from her own son and merge the county with Galicia and Castilla e León.

  One person who certainly had had enough was her headstrong son, Afonso Henriques, who even as an adolescent teenager was mature enough to comprehend political intrigue and the repercussions of the ongoing travesty between that Galician and his mother. Perhaps Viriato’s fighting spirit was speaking through his genes; Afonso shared the same birthplace in Viseu with the great Lusitanian warrior whose tactics once stonewalled the Roman takeover of his kingdom. As far as Afonso was concerned it was not simply a matter of foreigners laying claim to his territory; his own mother also was gambling with lands he would inherit on his fourteenth birthday, the legal age when he would be considered ruler of the county.

  Kids certainly grew up very fast in those days. They had to.

  Finding little in common with his mother, young Afonso developed a close bond with his principal mentor, Payo Mendes. Payo was a native of the nearby town of Leça, where he had been involved with a number of property transactions on behalf of the Knights Hospitaller,1 including the hospital he received from that brotherhood in Braga, which he promptly transferred to the Order of the Temple shortly before Afonso’s father passed away.2

  In 1118 Payo Mendes was appointed archbishop of Braga, coincidentally at the same time Baudoin II was proclaiming the Knights Templar in Jerusalem. Although not a learned man—even the clergy in those days were required to take up arms in favor of books—Payo was prudent and resolute, stubborn, and a keen defender of individual rights.3 His ethics had made him friends with Afonso’s father, and indeed it was Payo who resumed the construction of the cathedral begun by Count Dom Henrique. Actually, his enthusiasm got the better of him and he transformed it into a major architectural work, possibly in homage to the Knights Templar, seeing as building work resumed as soon as the Order was officially announced in Jerusalem.4

  No doubt Payo also adopted the continuation of his former sovereign’s ideals when he became councilor to the impressionable Afonso, whose view of the world and of Portugale already differed greatly from that of his mother, so much so that it made both men foes of the queen.

  It was probably this close bond that incited the suspicious Tareja to have the archbishop imprisoned, even though, with humorous irony, it meant she was also imprisoning her own councilor!

  The man of the cloth was released soon enough on written orders from the pope, who also informed Tareja that such conduct toward a member of the clergy was unacceptable. So Tareja resolved the delicate impasse by exiling him instead. As for her son, rather than do the disciplinary-motherly thing and have him sent to his room in the tower, she exiled him too. The fact that Afonso was fast reaching his legal age may have played into her calculations.

  If Tareja was under any illusions that she would usurp control of Portugale from her son, circumstances would soon deny her. Afonso may have been a mere thirteen years of age, but even so he had already gained allies among the nobility of Portugale;5 for one thing, they too had had enough of Tareja, Fernán, Galicia, Castilla, León, and the steady erosion of the administrative power of Portugale to incoming Galicians. Plus, Afonso was nephew to Duke Odo I of Burgundy, and many of the Portuguese nobles maintained family ties with said duchy.

  Even Archbishop Mendes lost his patience with the Galicians, specifically his counterpart Diego Gelmírez, the Benedictine archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, whom he saw as an impostor making dubious claims of the discovery of relics of Saint James, conveniently in his hometown, by which he hoped to turn the Galician city into a major pilgrimage center and suck authority from all other cathedrals in the Iberian Peninsula. And as a by-product, receive a fatter purse from the pope.

  Payo had a good point. The spit between the Diocese of Braga and Santiago de Compostela centered on the stealing of the former’s holy relics by Diego Gelmírez himself during a visit to Braga. They were the most valued items in the old metropolitan city and symbols of her tradition and prestige; some of those relics even signified past religious glories. They were much loved by the people, yet despite protests by the Portuguese, even the Galicians, the relics did not budge from Compostela and remain there to this day.6 It can be validly argued, therefore, that the international status enjoyed by Santiago de Compostela is due to stolen goods.

  But we digress. If there had been a dream since the days of Count Dom Henrique to create an independent nation, backed by his Burgundian and Templar connections, the opportunity was rapidly approaching with Afonso’s coming of age. Under Payo Mendes’s guidance, Afonso Henriques sailed with the archbishop up the river Douro in the direction of the holy town of Zamora, where, prior to his imprisonment, Mendes had spent a mysteriously long time, making his absence from his diocese in Braga arouse the neurosis of Countess Tareja. Mendes had long been suspected of working with the Knights Templar, and a paper trail of property transactions established this; the Hermitage of Saint Mark in Braga, as well as a hospital, was donated to the Order of the Temple by a man called Pelagius, the name by which Payo Mendes signed his documents.7

  The holy city of Zamora.

  If Mendes’s job was to protect and groom the future king, the placid sail upriver would have seen Afonso briefed on his place in the bigger scheme of things.

  The two men were a remarkably good fit. Like Afonso, Payo was an independent and headstrong fellow with little tolerance for the arrogance and corruption of power. Soon after his rise to archbishop he was in contempt of the privilege of the Roman Church when he presumed to consecrate the successor of the deceased bishop of Coimbra, even though the See of Coimbra was subject to that of Compostela—and Payo’s nemesis, Diego Gelmírez. Mendes’s actions incurred a curt letter from the pope, stating that “it had been the pleasure” of the Roman pontiff to honor Diego and give him power over Coimbra, to which Payo responded by consecrating yet another bishop. Two further letters from Rome went unanswered.8 And so the continuing love of all things Roman and Spanish and Galician were shared between mentor and prince.

  They navigat
ed the truculent waters around the steep and curvaceous Douro valley. The view of the numerous steeples of Zamora around the river bend must have seemed like déjà vu for Mendes.

  Zamora was referred to as the “eye of the river Douro,” the place of numerous military entanglements between Muslims and Christians, but also a fabulously holy city boasting the greatest number of Romanesque churches in Europe, a city of pious kings. It was also the city where “Queen” Tareja and Queen Urraca had once agreed to a rare—and brief—pact of peace. Clearly the location in which to exalt Afonso’s manhood could not have been better chosen.

  Afonso’s presence on this strategic military and ecclesiastical hill declared his intentions to the region. It sent a defiant message and a provocative middle finger to the enforced bonds and fiefs between Portugale, Galicia, and Castilla e León. As he strode widely into the cathedral of Zamora, it was remarked how Afonso was unusually tall, a giant of a man-child, possessed of qualities that led him to be described as the “Christian Viriato.”9 And so on May 25, 1125, Afonso Henriques was celebrated with an official knighting ceremony, a ritual heavy with significance and symbolism, representing as it did his passage into full adulthood and, more importantly, all the rights of inheritance.10 The new leader of the new Lusitanians took the ceremonial cloth and the sword and arose a knight.

  A number of accounts and traditions declare that he “took the order of knighthood” and the “order of the militia,” giving rise to speculation that he was ordained not as an ordinary knight but as a Templar knight.11 Be that as it may, it was around the time of the ceremony that many knights belonging to the Order of the Temple requested to join Afonso in raising an army, just as they had offered his father before him.12 The prince took them up on their generous proposal and, suitably empowered, set forth reclaiming his rightful lands from his mother and her rich Galician count.

  Payo Mendes assisted by offering several more homes in the city of Braga to members of the Knights Templar to use as their base. And well he should, for in addition to playing the role of Afonso’s mentor, Payo Mendes was also a Procurator of the Knights Hospitaller13 and, later, their third prior, a title equivalent to that of Templar Master.14

  There comes a point in every people’s history when circumstances force a defining moment, when some button is pressed just deep enough to turn on a light within their collective will. In Portugale it happened in 1125.15 Tajera’s tiresome dealings with the Galicians were one thing, but now Castilla e León had a new king in Affonso VII, and he was under the illusion that the entire Iberian Peninsula should be one kingdom.

  His.

  And to leave no doubt as to his intentions, Castillian armies began carving away chunks of Portuguese territory.

  So just to make sure cousin Affonso VII also got the message, Afonso Henriques’s ceremony in Zamora took place exactly on the same day the king of Castilla e León had himself been granted the same ceremony in the cathedral of Compostela.16

  14

  1126. CLAIRVAUX. A VERY, VERY, VERY MODEST ABBEY IN CHAMPAGNE . . .

  It was early autumn when the relatively new monastery of Clairvaux received two bearded visitors clad in anonymous old clothing,1 yet beneath their couture there could not have been two more distinguished men: Brother Gondemare and André de Montbard, two Knights Templar.

  André was uncle to the man they had traveled all the way from Jerusalem to see, Bernard de Clairvaux, head of the Cistercian Order and the most influential and respected figurehead in all Christendom. Bernard had not seen his uncle for a good decade, and for this alone the visit was joyous enough.

  Still, there was other good news, particularly with regard to the burgeoning Templar fraternity. The brotherhood had been diligently following God’s work on Temple Mount, and just the previous year King Baudoin II had acknowledged Hugues de Payns as the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, citing him as magister Templi on a grant of privileges to the Venetians.2

  The two Templars came bearing a letter from the king to Bernard. It read:

  The Templar brothers . . . desire to receive apostolic approval and also their own Rule. . . . Since we know well the weight of your intercession with God and also with His Pontiff [the Pope] and with the other princes in Europe, we give into your care this two-fold mission, whose success will be very welcome to us. Let the constitution of the Templars be such as is suitable for men who live in the clash and tumult of war, and yet of a kind which will be acceptable to the Christian princes, of whom they have been the valuable auxiliaries. So far as in you lies and if God pleases, strive to bring this matter to a speedy and successful issue.3

  That the Templars had come with a “two-fold mission” was not entirely accurate. Baudoin II’s letter was opportunistic; he sought to expand his campaign against the Arabs, and for that he needed men and arms and money. A papal decree would free up these requirements just as surely as it had done for the First Crusade, and Bernard was in a position to champion his cause to the pope.

  But this had nothing to do with the Templars’ principal motive for their dispatch to Champagne. Their leader Hugues de Payns was not a fief of Baudoin II, nor did the knight owe him any favors; nor did the two bearers, neither of whom were in Baudoin’s employ but in the Grand Master’s.

  The central purpose of the meeting was, first of all, that Hugues de Payns was seeking a Rule for the Templars from an ecclesiastical figure of high repute that incoming members could follow, especially those knights concerned with temporal matters that inevitably brought them into close contact with the tumult that was life in the Holy Land. These were insecure times, and boys will be boys, away in a foreign land, tempted by the growing opportunities around them, with the power of a sword at the hip. It would be the first of several pleas from Hugues, who was clearly struggling to maintain discipline in the ranks, and one of his letters to the Templars stationed in Jerusalem illustrates the fragility of the situation.

  Dearest brothers, the more the devil stays awake to deceive and subvert us, the more we, through the zeal of our circumspection, ought to be particularly on our guard not only against evil but also while doing good. The first task of the devil is to draw us into sin; the second is to corrupt our intentions in good deeds; the third is that as if with the appearance of helping he should divert us from our intended act of virtue and make us falter. To guard us from the first error the Scriptures say, “Son, take care never to consent to sin.” To avoid the second error they say elsewhere, “Do good well”; for he does not do good well who seeks in the good work his own glory and not that of God. For the third error they state in yet another place, “Stay in your place”; as though he who is always diverted from that which he is obliged and duty-bound to do other things because of the lack of constancy in his mind and the capriciousness of his desires, does not want to stay in his place. . . .

  If all the members of the body had one and the same function the whole body could not survive. . . . The humblest are often the most useful. The foot touches the ground but supports the whole body. Do not deceive yourselves; each one shall receive his reward according to his work. The roofs of houses receive the rain and the hail and the wind, but if there were no roofs, what would happen to the painted galleries?4

  Many of Hugues de Payns’s discourses to the Templars indicate an interest in following a monastic life rather than involvement in military activities. He was concerned that the knights’ core purpose had been weakened by pride and ambition—the devil inside—which must be tempered with humility, duty, perseverance, and patience if a man is to stay the course; in all cases, the religious aim must supersede the temptation to fight lest it becomes an obstacle to inner contemplation.5 If the words of the Templar Grand Master were not enough to guard men against temptation, a rule establishing a code of conduct from a renowned spiritual figurehead, such as Bernard, would present the best possible management tool.

  This was the first aim of the Templar envoy to Clairvaux.

  It has been suggested
that Bernard and Hugues de Payns had known each other for many years, least of all because when Hugues resided at Chateau Payns in Champagne the two men were practically neighbors.6 In truth they were much closer: Hugues de Payns was the uncle of Bernard de Clairvaux.7

  The second aim of the envoy was a signal to Bernard that whatever the Templars had been up to on Temple Mount—which had been conducted with the utmost secrecy—had been accomplished, and preparations were now necessary to pave the way for its implementation. This plan most likely involved Brother Gondemare, as he was an alleged member of the Ordre de Sion8 and, more tellingly, the son of a Portugale family.9 Certainly, this was no casual meeting between the three men at Clairvaux. When the Knights Templar swore an oath of obedience it was not to a king or a pope or even their own Grand Master, but to this Cistercian abbot. Thus, to understand the motivation behind the Order of the Temple it is necessary to first understand their primary benefactor.

  Bernard was born in Fontaines-les-Dijon, within sight of Count Dom Henrique’s original family estate. Likewise, he was a descendent of the dukes of Burgundy,10 son to a Burgundy lord, and member of a family who belonged to the military nobility typical of the era, in which the binds of family and land were strong. Slightly built, with a sparse brown beard and tonsured head, he looked frail for his young years due to physical weakness from a gastric disorder.

  His mother Aleth had dreamed she would give birth to a healer, someone who would refresh the direction of the Catholic Church and become its watchdog. If the dream had meant to be prophetic, Bernard grew up to fulfill it, and then some, for in his lifetime he was famed as a thaumaturge.

  Bernard de Clairvaux.