First Templar Nation

by Freddy Silva

  Even though Count Dom Henrique succeeds in reconquering Portuguese lands all the way south to Lisbon, his untimely death puts a temporary hold on plans discussed with the proto-Templars until such time as his young son, Afonso, is old enough to rule. In the meantime, the prince’s mentoring is undertaken by Payo Mendes, archbishop of Braga and prior of the Knights Hospitaller.

  Back in Jerusalem the proto-Templars move on to Temple Mount in 1118 and become the Knights Templar. Hugues de Payns develops a close relationship with Arnaldo da Rocha, who has become the abbot of the Ordre de Sion; Cistercian chroniclers claim him to be a previously unknown founder Templar knight.

  In 1125 the Templars discover something on Temple Mount. Hugues de Payns sends five Templar Procurators—three French, two Portuguese—to establish a Portuguese crown. Thanks to long-standing connections within Portugale, the Templars set up permanent residence in and around the city of Braga and nominate a regional Master, Guilherme Ricard. Three years before they receive official acknowledgment by the pope at the Council of Troyes, the Templars receive strategic properties in Portugal and continue to do so there at a faster rate than anywhere else in Europe.

  Afonso Henriques comes of age and is secretly ordained into the Order of the Temple shortly before engaging in a war against his mother to regain control of his rightful territory, with open support from the Knights Templar.

  Five months after their official proclamation in Troyes, the Knights Templar assist Afonso Henriques in securing the country’s independence; eleven years later, following Afonso’s victory at the battle of Ourique, they are instrumental in establishing Portugal as Europe’s first independent nation-state.

  These are the facts so far.

  The big question is, why would a group of knights and monks venture all the way from the Frankish and Flemish duchies to Jerusalem, only to establish a new territory 2,500 miles to the west?

  Did the Templars and the Cistercians really believe they could build a temporal New Jerusalem in a remote corner of Europe?

  Why would they constantly reference John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, Isis, ancient places of veneration, and pagan feast days?

  Were their motives related to the secret they uncovered in Jerusalem, a secret that required special protection from the church and one that the knights would rather die than reveal?

  And if so, did they deposit this secret in Portugal?

  27

  1867. JAFFA. A MULE TRAIN HEADING TOWARD JERUSALEM . . .

  On the afternoon of February 15, a team of British excavators landed at the pier despite the convulsions of the waters of the Mediterranean. After unpacking various crates filled with spades, handspikes, crowbars, theodolites, and sextants, they headed east on the dirt road to Jerusalem at 4 a.m. to the accompaniment of a piercing cold wind that at times was forceful enough to blow over the laden mules. Corporals Birtles, Phillips, and Hancock, together with Captains Warren and Wilson, were seasoned to such inclement weather. What they were not prepared for was the creeping pace of their party, which accomplished the 33-mile journey in an unreasonable thirteen hours.

  Upon finally reaching Jerusalem, Captain Wilson presented himself to the British consul, and together they called on Governor Izzet Pacha, who regretted to inform the captain that a necessary letter had not arrived, and that pending its appearance he would be happy to grant Wilson authority to dig anywhere except inside al-Haram ash-Sharif—the Noble Sanctuary, the Dome of the Rock. The Moslems were jittery about the engineers digging on Temple Mount to begin with, especially es Sakhra (Sacred Rock), for it was tradition that beneath this foundation stone all the rivers of the earth’s energy sprang, and prying into this holy site could bring calamity upon the country. The world, even.

  Digging beneath Jerusalem.

  Nevertheless, the letter requesting archaeological approval finally arrived, asking that the men be afforded “the necessary facilities in respect of the object of the mission, and permission and all possible facilities to dig and inspect places after satisfying the owners . . . with the exception of the Noble Sanctuary and the various Moslem and Christian shrines.”1

  The digging was slow, cumbersome, uncomfortable, and dragged on for years. It consisted mostly of square shafts sunk into runny shingle and hard limestone and layers of debris of ancient cities piled one on top of the other. Sometimes the Royal Engineers encountered ancient sewage that would fester any blister on the digger’s hands. The working trenches were sometimes no more than two feet wide and in soil so loose it would widen into holes large enough to swallow an ox.

  Warren and his team found encouragement whenever they broke through unexpected galleries and chambers. And there were many. Some had formed by the natural force of water acting on the porous limestone, yet others were clearly shaped by men from a bygone era. Who had been deranged enough to dig tunnels under Temple Mount in air so vitiated that even candles found it difficult to breathe?

  Their tenacity was rewarded as they came across halls and vaults and archways flanking the subterranean foundations bearing the sanctuary’s walls. Arches were supported by more arches beneath, creating a labyrinth of chambers. This was easily the oldest masonry in Jerusalem, or under it, some overlaid with later Saracenic architecture.

  One chamber above all stood out from the rest and merited Warren to be lowered by rope into its rectangular form, thirty feet by twenty-three, the walls built of square stones and joined without mortar, each corner marked with a pillar topped by a capital; in the center arose a column. One such room adjacent to the Temple of Solomon itself was once described in the Talmud as a secret chamber reserved for special ceremonies.

  Then the engineers came across tunnels cut centuries earlier in which were found artifacts belonging to the Knights Templar: a cross and sword as well as a spur and remnants of a lance.

  The artifacts made their way to a Templar archivist in Edinburgh, the grandson of a friend of Captain Parker, one of the Royal Engineers who’d assisted Warren in the digs; he was also given a letter written by Parker explaining that during one of the excavations beneath Herod’s Temple he discovered a secret room beneath Temple Mount with a passageway leading to a wall. When he broke through the stonework he found himself briefly inside the Mosque of Omar, in the south courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. His astonishment was curt, however, as he was immediately chased by an angry mob of devout Muslims praying inside the mosque.2

  Among the many findings by the Royal Engineers was one of the shafts sunk by the Templars beneath Temple Mount, eighty feet in depth through solid rock before branching out horizontally in a series of laborious radial tunnels. Like the British, the Templars before them had obviously dug surreptitiously to avoid a confrontation with the Muslims, who continued to be granted access to their sacred sites even after their defeat in 1100.

  Almost a century elapsed before the next significant excavations were conducted by a group of Israeli archaeologists, who also stumbled upon a tunnel dug by the Knights Templar:

  The tunnel leads inward for a distance of about thirty metres from the southern wall before being blocked by pieces of stone and debris. We know that it continues further, but we had made it a hard-and-fast rule not to excavate within the bounds of the Temple Mount, which is currently under Moslem jurisdiction, without first acquiring the permission of the appropriate Moslem authorities. In this case they permitted us only to measure and photograph the exposed section of the tunnel, not to conduct an excavation of any kind. Upon concluding this work . . . we sealed up the tunnel’s exit with stones.3

  Tunnels beneath Temple Mount.

  Without question, the Templars had dug their way to the most sacred parts of Jerusalem—the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the es Sakhra of the Muslims, the Shetiyya of the Jews—the very foundation stone of the sacred mount where Solomon’s Temple had once stood. But what specifically had they been looking for, and how had the Templars known where to dig?

  28

  1146. COIMB
RA. AT HOME WITH AFONSO AND HIS NEW BRIDE . . .

  Afonso Henriques must have paused for breath because he suddenly became aware he was thirty-seven years of age and single. Maybe he was finally letting down his guard after the pope’s emissary convinced him that to engage in further hostilities with his brutish northern neighbor Affonso VII of Castilla e León—whom Afonso defeated in Guimarães but who’d since regained his fighting spunk—only benefited their common enemy, the Moors. And so the two sparring cousins, Afonso and Affonso, finally shook hands in peace, ironically back in the holy city of Zamora, where the Portuguese king was knighted.

  Now here he was, in the prime of his life, monarch, Templar brother, creator of Europe’s first independent nation-state, surely a magnet for any number of eligible noble women wandering the European circuit seeking good aristocratic stock. His lineage from the dukes of Burgundy probably had some part to play in his decision to stiffen his resolve and propose to Mafalda, a cousin of the Duke of Burgundy, who gladly accepted, and the two distant blood relatives were joined in matrimony.

  The newlyweds enjoyed a relatively brief moment of conjugal bliss because on March 10, 1147, upon receiving a letter from Clairvaux, Afonso marched his troops out of Coimbra without giving them the vaguest idea where they were headed. They stopped in Souré to pick up its resident Templar militia, and four days later, in the middle of the night, a select group of 120 knights sneaked into the Moorish-held city of Santarém.1 By sunrise, the well-fortified city was taken with the minimum of resistance.2 Removing Santarém from the hands of the Moors was sweet recompense for the Templars’ defeat at Souré three years earlier at the hands of Santarém’s Arab governor, Abu-Zakaria, who leveled the town and brought half its population back with him as slaves.

  On the charter issued to the city, Afonso made a solemn promise to the Templars.

  When I began that journey to that castle which is called Santarém, I made a proposition in my heart, and I took a vow, that if God in his mercy should permit me, I would give all the ecclesiastical possessions to God and to the military brothers of the Temple of Solomon, established in Jerusalem for the defense of the Holy Sepulcher, part of which [Order] was established with me in the same country. And since God made such honor to me and well fulfilled my wish, I Afonso, above-named king, together with wife, Mafalda, make the charter to the above-mentioned knights of Christ for every church in Santa Irene [Santarém], that they and all their successors might have and possess in perpetual right, so that no cleric or layman can question this. But if by chance it happens that at any time God, in his mercy, gives to me that city which is called Lisbon, they are to agree with the bishop on my advice. Should anyone attempt to annul my gift, he may not do so on any condition, and should anyone want to contest it may he be removed from the fellowship of the Holy Church, and may he not share the joys of Jerusalem.3

  The document was corroborated and accepted by the current Templar Master of Portugal, Hugh Martin (Hugo Martiniens, as the Portuguese knew him),4 and with Santarém secured, the Templars moved their base of operations out of Braga.

  Oddly, despite Santarém being of prime strategic importance—the bulwark of the frontier of the burgeoning Portuguese kingdom and the doorstep to the great city of Lisbon—the Templars showed little interest in guarding their new ecclesiastical seat against retaliation by the Moors. Their singular focus centered on the city’s ecclesiastical holdings, specifically the main church the king granted them. They moved into the mosque, dedicated it to John the Baptist,5 then put the greatest effort into building a new temple in the form of the church of Our Lady of Alcaçova, founded by no lesser a figure than the mysterious Arnaldo da Rocha.6 A dedication stone above the main door of the church reads, “This church was founded in honor of the Virgin Mary . . . by the soldiers of the Temple of Jerusalem, by order of Master Ugonis, this edifice under the care of Petrus Arnaldo.”*167 It would have been a fitting tribute to Prior Arnaldo given that this city was his birthplace.8

  It is strikingly odd that Afonso Henriques, new king of a new nation, having expended resources and personal effort in both conquering and defending it from the Moors, should persistently and effortlessly donate enormous tracts of land, churches, and strategic castles to the Templars. Such actions only make sense when one considers he was the administrator of the Templar Order in Portugal and without doubt the leader of its military arm.9 Still, it makes one wonder why the Templars should require so much territory. The inheritances were vast and certainly beyond their capacity to both administer or protect. Writing in the eighteenth century, the chronicler Bernardo da Costa described the enormous quantity of donations made to the Knights Templar in Portugal at this time and how “copying all of them down would make this story too large.” Obviously, he had access to far more contemporary documents than are now available, because a devastating fire in Viseu destroyed the Cistercian central archive in 1841.

  Even more bizarre, the Templars showed extraordinary indifference to the rights they were awarded, nor did they take advantage of the exceptional property they were given, as though they were executing a preconceived plan or pursuing something of far greater value, something intangible and nonmaterial.

  Afonso was equally kind to his uncle Bernard de Clairvaux, with whom he maintained a healthy correspondence.10 The Cistercians received extensive donations of land from the Portuguese king, such as the forty-four thousand hectares on the mountain of Candeeiros;11 the hermit João Cirita (who had once petitioned a young Afonso, along with the group of monks from Clairvaux) visited the now grown-up king to request another monastery, at Alafões, for which Afonso gladly issued a new charter in 1146; and when the See of Porto once again became vacant, it was offered to a Cistercian monk named Pedro.12 Thanks to these and further donations in the area around the king’s birthplace of Viseu,13 the Cistercians thrived in his new Portugal and contributed to the profound change in agricultural and educational fortunes, the two central tenets of Cistercian philosophy.14

  Perhaps the biggest surprise to Bernard de Clairvaux was the day when a messenger arrived at his abbey with a letter from Afonso requesting the aging abbot send monks to take charge of a present to which Bernard replied, “May you in perpetuity receive infallible signs from heaven for the use of your kingdom,” and thanking him for the gift of land for a new monastery.15 He immediately dispatched five monks from Clairvaux to Portugal armed with lengths of rope marking the measurements of various rooms, so they could reproduce on the virgin parcel of land an accurate outline of said abbey. Located at the confluence of two rivers, the land was thickly wooded and impenetrable and horrible. Just the way the Cistercians liked it. But it would herald one of Europe’s most magnificent Cistercian monasteries, the elegance of its architecture surpassing even that of the Order’s mother abbey at Fontenay.16

  Named after Al Cobaxa, the Arabic name describing the shape of the surrounding hills, the monastery of Alcobaça would be Afonso’s greatest gift of affection to his uncle, not to mention the late Count Dom Henrique, because in choosing the site beside the old hermitage of Saint Julian, Afonso honored the monk who once lived there and accompanied his father on his first voyage to Jerusalem.

  Alcobaça was founded on February 2, the pagan and Celtic feast day of Imbolc (the Christianized Candlemas), symbolizing light emerging from the dark of midwinter, when fertility is once more restored to the land. One of the first people to join the monastery was Afonso’s brother, Dom Pedro.17

  The architecture of the building mirrors the Cistercian Rule. It is stone stripped, shaped, and arranged to the bare essentials of balance, rhythm, light, and shade, creating an environment where God is sought and the ego denied. This small insistence was sufficient to restore stability to the life of a mortal individual. Bernard was not keen on opulent churches and championed the importance of focusing on divine things without distraction, as he once reminded the lavish Benedictines, “I say naught of the vast height of your churches, their immoderate length, their s
uperfluous width, the costly polishings, the curious carvings and paintings which attract the worshipper’s gaze and hinder his attention to God.”18

  Monastery of Alcobaça.

  Like the association between the Knights Templar and the founding of Portugal, the relationship between Portugal and the Cistercians runs even deeper, occurring as it does with the arrival of Count Dom Henrique, as one Cistercian chronicler clearly states:

  The beginning of the reign of Portugal and the Cistercian Order occurred at the same time. . . . [To the Cistercian Order] the reign of Portugal is greatly obligated because, besides being gifted with the holiness of its monks, as recorded in its beginning years . . . [the Order] reached out to it with spiritual and material assistance, such as the conquests of Santarém, Lisbon . . . and other successes, for which assistance was provided by the intervention of Bernard and his contacts: this is proof of the material assistance . . . [Bernard] placed within reach of Afonso Henriques in the instigation of his reign, for which the king placed his reign under the [Rules] of Clairvaux.19

  Thus, the Cistercian Order and the Portuguese shire were temporally and spiritually intertwined, born as they were simultaneously, as Bernard de Clairvaux himself declared. “And so we have here presented a mystery, for heaven ordered that the reign of Portugal and our Cistercian Order should be born at the same time. In 1098 Robert [de Molesme, one of the founders] instituted the sacred reformation of Cister, and in the same year . . . Count D. Henrique was given the state of Portugale as a dowry.”20 The connection becomes even clearer on account of the family relationship between Bernard de Clairvaux and Dom Henrique.21