First Templar Nation

by Freddy Silva

  The net result was that the forces commanded by Afonso Henriques ultimately prevailed on the battlefield of São Mamede. Both his mother and Fernán were imprisoned, yet despite having Tareja clapped in irons she still managed to send word to her nephew Affonso VII to come rescue her. Which he did, along with the combined armies of Castilla e León, Aragon e Galicia, and, like his aunt, he too was vanquished in battle.

  Afonso finally banished his mother to a convent in Galicia, although not before she put a curse on him as a parting gift; as for her husband, he was released back into the wilds of Galicia and disappeared into obscurity. Some say he went abroad.

  And so on June 24, 1128, the battle of São Mamede established the de facto independence of Portugal. The ancient lands bordered by the rivers Minho and Mondego, once known as Lusitania, are finally united and no longer subordinate to anyone—all of this a mere five months after the Council of Troyes, where the Knights Templar were formally recognized as a sovereign organization.

  A jubilant Afonso Henriques entered Guimarães as de facto prince of Portugal and reissued the city’s charter, effectively reestablishing the rights and concessions made earlier by his late father, while amplifying the rights of its dwellers in acknowledgment of the support they gave him.4

  Afonso has been described as a shrewd diplomat, erudite of speech, prudent in his deeds, tenacious, and prepared to defend his country against all threats, and the wording on the charter of Guimarães is an indication of such qualities. Not only is the document a declaration of independence from the yoke of Spanish influence, but also, scribed upon its caramel parchment are unmistakable signals as to who was behind the events that remolded Portugale from a county into an independent state. In its wording, Afonso claims his authority extends throughout his territory ab omni pressura alienus (free from any outside interference), an echo of the words employed by his uncle Bernard de Clairvaux in describing the protection afforded the Templars on their return to Champagne with their secret.5 It is perhaps the most overt statement acknowledging the invisible hand played by the head of the Cistercian Order in paving the way for a new, model Christian kingdom and an indication that whatever secret the Templars had been working with in Jerusalem was equally at play in Portugal.

  But Afonso’s passionate words are subordinate to the symbol around which they wrap and to which the eye is indubitably drawn: the unmistakable cross of the Knights Templar. It dominates the vellum, a seal of approval by the Order, implemented by one of its own brothers. After all, to all ends and purposes, Afonso Henriques had been the administrator of the Knights Templar in Portugal.6

  Charter of Guimarães.

  24

  1129. MARCH. AFONSO REVEALS HIMSELF . . .

  According to the historical account, “Knowing of this donation [Souré], and intending himself to be the landlord of this property, so as not to let down the members of the Order (to whom he was greatly obligated) by rescinding the donation, he thus granted the donation of said castle, but this time in his own name.”1

  Afonso Henriques nullified the previous donation of Souré and within the year replaced it with an expanded donation in his own name, without the restrictions imposed in the original document.2

  Afonso’s wording on the reconstituted charter to the Knights Templar evokes the passion of a young, focused man, referring to his new position as “only by the mercy of God, Prince of the Portuguese,” but also unequivocally reveals why he was so “greatly obligated” to the Order of the Temple: “I make this donation, not by force or by persuasion, but for the love of God, and for the good of my soul, and of my parents, and by the cordial love that I have for you, and because within your Brotherhood and in all your works I am a Brother.”3

  It was not unusual for the inner members of the Order of the Temple to address each other informally as “brothers”; the highest-ranking member himself is addressed as such in the Rule, “Master, Brother Hugues de Payens.”4 Thus, Afonso Henriques reveals that at the age of twenty he is a fully fledged member of the brotherhood of the Knights Templar, and probably had been since his knighting ceremony in Zamora, as suspected.

  Beside his name on the vellum document is inscribed the unmistakable Templar logo.

  Afonso Henriques.

  25

  1139. OURIQUE. PREPARING TO BATTLE THE MOORS . . .

  A mid his new duties as head of an independent state, Afonso never forgot the importance of the role played by his mentor, the Templar sympathizer Payo Mendes. A month after taking up residence in Guimarães, the ebullient prince made a generous property donation to his friend in anticipation of the day “when I have acquired the land of Portugal.”1

  If Afonso was under any illusion that the day he would own the remaining Portuguese territory would come easily or soon, it was quickly dispelled. Although the threat from the armies of Castilla e León in the north was temporarily in check, the Moors had reoccupied Portuguese lands south to the river Tejo once liberated by his father, including the city of Lisbon. A definitive blow had to be delivered to the Arabs, and that day arrived eleven years later on the plains of Ourique.

  The Moors obviously viewed the impending skirmish as a potentially defining moment in Portuguese solidarity, given how they mustered the combined forces of no less than five caliphs. In the decade since the Portuguese had taken the city of Guimarães, the Arabs painfully watched the successful southward reconquest of territory, so much so that Afonso Henriques was able to move the seat of power eighty miles south to Coimbra, a historic city abutting the frontier territory currently under Arab dominion. The move gave Afonso room for a fresh start, a break with the old politics of the established territories of the north and the dense intricacies of aristocratic privilege that hampered forward progress in building a nation-state.2

  No sooner had he settled into his new abode when, contrary to military preparedness, his first major activity in the city was to attend to the founding of the monastery of the Holy Cross for a community of regular canons of Saint Augustine, which would feature as a major urban property along the city’s walls. By conventional military terms this was an odd endeavor in a time of war, and war there was aplenty, starting with the thousands of gathering Moorish forces whose swelling ranks gradually masked the contours of the rolling plains around Ourique.

  The Portuguese army began preparations around July 22, the feast day of Mary Magdalene. Three days later, the tall figure of Afonso Henriques walked pensively toward the head of his army, his mind oscillating between the demands of military preparation and the prophetic dream he had experienced the previous night, in which he was convinced his armies would prevail on the battlefield. His reverie was interrupted by a contingent of nobles and knights approaching him, among them Guilherme Ricard, the first Templar Master of Portugale, who took the prince by surprise with an unexpected proposition. Following a secret meeting of the gathered lords, it was their unanimous wish that Afonso be declared king of Portugal before the commencement of hostilities.3 Afonso was startled: “My brothers, it is my honor to be your lord, and I feel well served and protected by you, and because I am satisfied with this I do not wish to be called “king,” nor to be one, but as your brother and friend I will help you with my body to defeat these enemies of the faith.”4

  Battle of Ourique.

  But the knights insisted. Not only was it their desire, but given the insurmountable odds faced by the Portuguese troops against a vastly superior Arab army, the men would doubtless be encouraged at the prospect of marching into battle behind a monarch.

  Afonso reluctantly accepted the honor, like an echo of his predecessor Godefroi de Bouillon when he too was offered the title of king of Jerusalem without his solicitation and during the same time span of July 22 to 25.*14 Following a brief ceremony on the battlefield, Afonso’s horse was brought forward, covered with his customary white mantles; his knights rode left and right and took charge of their respective flanks, and the battle to rout the Moors commenced.

 
Hostilities raged for three hours beyond midday in the stifling heat of July, both sides made indistinguishable by the orange dust propelled skyward by hands and feet engaged in fevered combat. Against all odds, the Moors were vanquished.

  By July 25, the triumph was complete. Afonso commemorated the event by amending the shield of Portugale he carried with him, an inheritance from his late father—the blue cross over a field of white—to incorporate thirty silver bezants, a reminder of the symbolic entry requirement into the Templar Order.5

  Three days after the cessation of hostilities, Afonso returned to Coimbra and the monastery of the Holy Cross, where he met with its prior, Dom Telo, for advice on the issue regarding prisoners of war, not to mention the scores of Arab citizens who in a twist of fortune suddenly found themselves under Portuguese domain. The aged prior suggested to the victorious king the honorable course of action would be to take the high ground: show mercy, for even the Cistercians would acknowledge that to fight a war for war’s sake defeated the purpose of the spiritual warrior. By setting an example, in time one’s enemies may become friends.

  The new king listened. A pardon was announced and Muslim prisoners were released.6

  Afonso then rode north to gather the first assembly of the estates-general, and in a cathedral ceremony at Lamego—a stone’s throw from the first Cistercian monastery he once helped a group of monks from Clairvaux to found in Portugale—Afonso Henriques was officially crowned King of Portugal by none other than Payo Mendes.

  When he arises, he does so not just as head of an independent country but also as king of Europe’s first nation-state.7

  26

  1139. CLAIRVAUX. EARLY DAWN, OUTSIDE THE CHAPEL . . .

  Bernard was in the middle of conducting matins when the crunching sound of horse hooves on gravel announced the arrival of two excited, albeit tired knights—Afonso’s half brother Dom Pedro and one of the original Knights Templar, Brother Roland, who had rushed from Portugal bearing a letter announcing the success at the battle at Ourique, the crowning of a king, and the birth of a nation.1

  Bernard sat down and opened the letter bearing good news, in which Afonso addressed him as his close relative.2 Uncle Bernard would have been equally pleased to learn that despite his nephew’s rise as leader of a nation, Afonso had not succumbed to the lust of power; he had honored his vows, and no sooner was he awarded the crown of Portugal than he demonstrated his gratitude to his supporters by donating yet more properties to the Knights Templar, the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher, and the Cistercian Order.3

  The Templars were equally pleased. Their devotion to this bold young man had paid off, as did their decades of patience in this geopolitical enterprise. However, their involvement in the battle of Ourique came at a heavy price: the first Templar Master, Dom Guilherme Ricard, fell in battle defending his Templar brother and king. Afonso ensured continuity by appointing the next Templar Master, Hugh Martin. He additionally ordained several knights into the Templar Order while on the battlefield, including Gualdino Paes, one of the five Preceptors sent by Hugues de Payns to “establish the Portuguese crown.”4 Only a man who was already a high-ranking member within the Knights Templar would have had the power and authority to make such appointments.

  A year after the battle, another figure who helped steer the course of events from the onset, the indefatigable archbishop Payo Mendes, was also laid to rest,*15 but true to his style, not before making his nemesis, Archbishop Diego Gelmírez of Compostela, recognize the new Portuguese bishop of Porto and relinquish the Galician church’s influence over this, the most Portuguese of all cities. Ironically, the new bishop would replace Payo a year later, upon his autumn funeral, almost as if Payo had had a premonition of his own passing.

  Payo also bequeathed his estate to the Knights Templar.

  Another illustrious figure who did not live to see the manifestation of a temporal New Jerusalem was the Templar Grand Master Hugues de Payns, who passed away in Jerusalem in 1136.5

  Nevertheless, 1139 proved to be a watershed for the Templars. In France, the Order received one of its most important donations, one that would play a pivotal role in the efficient movement of resources—and ultimately their treasure—the port of La Rochelle, “entirely free and quit of all custom,” donated by a most enlightened woman of the period, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Meanwhile in Rome, the long fight for the recently vacant papal throne was finally won by the painstaking diplomatic efforts of Bernard de Clairvaux, whose protégé Innocent II was elevated to the status of pope. Given that Innocent had been a former monk at Clairvaux, it will come as no surprise that no sooner had he ascended the highest chair in Christendom than he issued Omne datum optimum, a papal bull underwriting the Knights Templar’s privileges.

  The bull asserted the knights owe no allegiance to any secular order or ecclesiastical authority other than the pope himself, and since the pope was a Cistercian, the decree may as well have stated the Templars owed allegiance only to Clairvaux. Their power would now be totally independent from kings and prelates and free of interference from political or religious authorities. To all intents and purposes, the Order was now an autonomous international corporation. In time, the Templars would collectively become the richest order in Europe, surpassing even the incalculable coffers of the church, and yet paradoxically, its first generation of knights renounced all wealth and lived in austere conditions.

  They were, however, rich in real estate, for one of their brotherhood was now king of a entire nation-state.

  In just three decades the tiny kingdom of Portugal grew into a formidable social, political, economical, religious, and military Templar territory. In fact, the fortunes of Portugal, the Templars, and the Cistercians were intertwined, all entities rising in tandem. Still, the campaign to oust the Arab colonizers fully from Portuguese territory would occupy Afonso Henriques for a decade, even with generous assistance from both the Templars and the Knights Hospitaller, not to mention colorful infidels such as Geraldo the Fearless, who was renowned for scaling Moorish battlements unseen and hiding among the enemy at night, then just before dawn making such a frightful racket that made the townspeople believe a whole regiment was attacking. He would then raise the portcullis of the drawbridge and allow Afonso’s troops to enter while he returned to camp with a sack full of booty.

  Curiously, during these consolidating years the core Templars generally detached themselves from military affairs and instead devoted an enormous effort exclusively to one aim: the creation of a territory within Portugal where the Order would flourish based on Cistercian ideals and the knowledge gleaned from their secret work in Jerusalem. At first, the center of operations remained in and around Braga, as a document from 1151 states: “Your brothers of the Temple S. Petro Gratial & Martino Pelais, who live in Braga under the command of Dom Ugo.”6 Two years later, the Templar Order was sold a property on the river Aliste in the nearby town of Villar, followed by the sale of a property in Feira for twenty-three pieces of gold.7 “This is the charter of sale, which I wish to make to you Master Ugo, and to your brothers of the Temple, voluntarily and in peace.”8

  The eighteenth-century Franciscan historian Viterbo elegantly summarizes the importance of the events at hand: “How useful it would have been to have an entire monarchy available, founded from the dissolution of lands formerly under Spanish control.”9 For that was precisely what transpired with the independence of Portugal in 1128, followed by its sovereignty eleven years later. Except it all had not been a matter of convenience, but of patient design. The Knights Templar, in association with the Cistercians and the Ordre de Sion, achieved their objective, the creation of a prototype Christian state, and yet what they would create there would be as impressive as it was mysterious.

  The question is, why Portugal, why so far from the Templars’ point of origin? The answer would begin in the municipality of Ceras, in a dilapidated church on the edge of a ramshackle town beneath a limestone promontory bearing a passing resemblance to Mount Si
on.

  INTERMEZZO

  Let us recap the story so far. Toward the end of the eleventh century the duchies of Lorraine, Champagne, and Burgundy form a nucleus of European enlightenment. Their noble households are connected by an intricate web of lineages and marriages, the most prominent being the Merovingian bloodline, which is said to represent a tradition of enlightened priest-kings dating back to the time of Troy and Sumeria.

  At this time, a group of monks addressing themselves as the Ordre de Sion arrive at Orval and grooms a young knight named Godefroi de Bouillon, who, thanks to the convenient timing of a Crusade, journeys to “free the church of the Holy Sepulcher.” With the Ordre’s assistance he becomes princeps of the holy city. In return, he installs the monks in the dilapidated abbey on Mount Sion, where their roots allegedly began around the time of John the Baptist.

  Meanwhile, a noble named Henri of Burgundy receives the county of Portucale as a dowry and becomes its governor. As Count Dom Henrique, he journeys to Jerusalem at the time of its reconquest; with him is Pedro Arnaldo da Rocha, a Portuguese-born man of Burgundian heritage whose family has close ties with the Cistercian Order. The two men form bonds with a number of kinfolk in the holy city, including Godefroi de Bouillon, future Templar Grand Master Hugues de Payns, and Comte Hugh de Champagne, an early benefactor of both the Templars and the Cistercians.

  Under the protection of Count Dom Henrique, the proto-Templars, the Knights Hospitaller, and the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher all establish a presence in Portucale as early as 1104. As do the Cistercians, whose abbot, Bernard de Clairvaux, sends a delegation of monks in 1119 to request the founding of a monastery from the young Afonso Henriques—Bernard’s nephew and future king of Portugal. One of the monks, Brother Roland, a founder Templar knight, acts as emissary between Portugale and Clairvaux. A second monk, Brother Gondomare—also an original Templar and alleged member of the Ordre de Sion—is revealed to be Portuguese. He accepts a property donation in the city of Braga on behalf of the Order of the Temple as early as 1114.