In 1173, Bela III became king of Hungary and Croatia. Instead of allying himself totally with the Byzantine Empire, as earlier kings had done, Bela looked to the West. He was a strong supporter of the Third Crusade (1189-1192) and took an oath to go on crusade himself, although he never did.20In 1185, Bela sent ambassadors to Philip II, the king of France, asking for the hand of the king’s sister, Margaret. Bela had been “lured by the honor of an alliance with the ancient house of the kings of France and by the good reputation for religion and wisdom of this princess.”21 Margaret was the widow of Henry Plantagenet, “the Young King” whose death had made Richard the Lionheart heir to the throne of England. She and Philip agreed to the marriage and she returned with the ambassadors to Hungary.
Bela III died in 1192 and was succeeded by Emeric, his son from a previous marriage.22 Margaret, widowed again, with no children of her own, sold her dower. Then “she took the cross and, bringing a fine company of knights, came with the Germans to Syria and arrived at Tyre.”23 She died shortly after, presumably not in battle. The chronicler doesn’t mention any Templars in her company but it would have been strange if there hadn’t been any.
The highest responsibility ever accorded to a Templar was in Croatia when, in 1217, King Andrew II went on crusade and, instead of taking the Templars with him, left them in charge of the kingdom. Pontius de Cruce, Grand Master of Hungary and Croatia, governed the countries from the commandery in Vrana.24
It is intriguing that, while there must have been native Templars and Hospitallers, most of the commanders in Croatia were French or Italian.25 Croatian Templars also served in other countries, bringing to mind the lines from the ceremony of reception into the order warning that Templars went where they were posted.26
THE BRITISH ISLES
While King Henry I is reported to have given gifts to the Templars, it was his successor, Stephen, who donated the first land in England. Stephen was Henry’s nephew and the son of Stephen-Henry, the count of Champagne who had died while on his second crusade.27 Stephen’s wife, Matilda, was the niece of the heroes of the First Crusade, Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin I. The king and queen were already predisposed to give what they could to aid in the defense of the Holy Land. Matilda gave the first donation in 1135, in honor of her father, Eustace, count of Boulogne, who had almost become king of Jerusalem when his brother Baldwin had died.28Stephen confirmed the donations of his vassals and then gave property himself.
Although the Templars were in existence in England from at least 1135 and certainly before, the first master of the Templars in England we know of is Hugh of Argenten in 1140.29
In 1185, the Templars took a census of their properties in England. This document has survived and shows that the Templars’ property was much like that of other religious houses. They had fields and flocks of sheep, tithes from churches and rents from land and houses. They were as much a part of the community as the monks and nuns of traditional monastic orders. In the town of Bristol, the weavers’ guild even had their chapel in the Templar church.30
In Ireland the Templars held most of their property in the east after the land was conquered by King Henry II of England. Henry gave the first gift of land in 1185. The Anglo-Norman settlers in Ireland followed his lead and by 1308 “the Irish lands were the third most valuable of all the Templar holdings and worth over L400 a year.”31
The master of the Templars in Ireland was one of the financial overseers of the Irish exchequer. Although the native Irish probably saw the Templars as part of the English invasion, the master seems to have acted as a mediator between the Irish and the English from time to time.32
Apart from collecting the usual tithes and rents in Ireland, the Templars also used their land to breed and raise horses for the knights.33
At the time of the first Templar foundations, Scotland was an independent nation, although the royal family was tied to that of England through intermarriage. King David I (1124-1153) gave the Temple the tithes of the church in Renfrewshire.34 He must have given them other property but most of the charters have been lost. There doesn’t seem to have been a master for Scotland at the beginning, all administration coming from England.
The most important commandery in Scotland was Balantrodoch, just south of Edinburgh. It was not a wealthy community; most of the income was from sheep and a water mill the Templars operated. In the partial list of preceptors of the commandery, all the names are Norman. 35
Evelyn Lord comments that “We know less about the Templars in Scotland than elsewhere in the British Isles. . . . Perhaps because of this a panoply of myth has developed around them that has obscured reality and cloaked them in mystery.”36
We shall look at the myths and mysteries later in this book.
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
Many of the earliest and largest donations to the Templars came from the Iberian Peninsula. This is not surprising. The rulers of Aragon, Navarre, Castile, and what would soon be Portugal had been slowly retaking territory from the Moslems for over four hundred years. The crusading fervor focused on Jerusalem had increased interest in the struggle nearer to home. One of the earliest Iberian gifts to the Templars is from Queen Teresa of Portugal, daughter of Alfonso of Castile. She gave them the castle of Saur with all the surrounding lands.37 Presumably, she intended them to maintain it personally and supply warriors in her battles against the Moors.
In 1122, when few, if any, had heard of the Order of the Temple, Alfonso I, king of Aragon, had founded a military confraternity at Belchite.38It wasn’t as structured as the Templars and other military orders would be and it was under the control of the king, not a bishop. Members could join for a limited time and could participate in the spiritual benefits without fighting.
“The cofradía of Belchite is clearly a military religious institution, composed of brothers who defended Christendom against its Muslim enemies. Anyone rendering this meritorious service or any other assistance in the form of pilgrimages, donations of alms, bequests of horses and weapons, and bequests to houses of captives, received indulgences. In addition, the members of the confraternity could retain any lands they had captured from the Muslims.”39
It’s unlikely that Alfonso had heard about the Templars when he founded the order. This is an indication that the crusading ideal of fighting for God was leading to the formation of military orders not just in Jerusalem. The Templars might have become so popular and so widely imitated because they filled a long felt need.
Unlike the gifts from other parts of Europe, which were intended to produce funds and supplies for the support of the Templars in the Latin kingdoms, the donations in Spain and Portugal were often fortified castles. Often these were either on the borders of Moslem Moorish territory or even inside it. The Iberian rulers expected the Templars to fight the Saracens on their own doorstep, not on the other side of the sea.
In 1130, the count of Barcelona gave the Templars the castle of Grañena. This was “in my frontier opposite the Saracens.”40It’s clear that the count expected the Templars to defend the castle and participate in the reconquest of Spain. This was many years before the Templars were assigned the defense of border castles in the Latin kingdoms.41
The Templars don’t seem to have been eager to take on a war on two fronts. They were pulled into the defense of Spain eventually, partly through the will of King Alfonso of Aragon, who left his entire kingdom to the Hospitallers, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and the Templars, to share. All three of the heirs eventually settled for large donations rather than control of Aragon.
The Templars were the last to do so. As part of the settlement with the new ruler, Raymond Berengar, count of Barcelona and “lord of Aragon,” they acquired several castles in Spain, a tenth of all the royal income from taxes and judicial fees, and a thousand solidos a year. Count Raymond also promised them one-fifth of all land conquered from the Moors, if they took part in the expeditions. Raymond Berengar encouraged the Templars to build new castles and promised not to
make a treaty with the Moors without their approval.42
The Order of the Temple was now firmly committed to the Spanish cause.
1The best study of this is Stephen D. White, Custom, Kinship and Gifts to Saints (University of North Carolina Press, 1988). For a more specific study, Barbara H. Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor of St. Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny’s Property, 909-1049 (Cornell University Press, 1989).
2Marquis d’Albon, Cartulaire Général de l’Ordre du Temple 1119?-1150 (Paris, 1913) p. 12, no. 18.
3Ibid., p. 14, “camisiam et bracas et, ad obitum suum meliorem mantellum.”
4I am grateful to Professor Malcolm Barber for pointing this out to me. Private correspondence, July 18, 2006.
5“Fratris societatis Templi Salomonis,” Albon, p. 25, no. 33.
6Ibid., p. 45, no. 62. “Procurator” is actually a cross between a lawyer and a business manager.
7Helen Nicholson, The Knights Hospitaller (Woodbridge, Eng.: Boydell and Brewer, 2001) p. 9.
8D’Albon, pp. 1-2, charter 1.
9Ibid., pp. 7-8, charters 10 and 11. See below, “Spain and Portugal.”
10Cartulaires des Templiers de Douzens ed. Pierre Gérard et Élisabeth Magnou (Paris, 1965) charters A 1, 21, 36, 38, 40, 115, 171, 185, 186, C 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.
11Douzens, charter A 171, p. 158.
12I think there is more to this story, but the charter is all we have.
13Douzens, charter A 1, p. 3
14Ibid., charter A 1, p. 5.
15I’m not sure if the William Sigari de Canet, who witnessed a charter in 1170, is a relative or just from the same place. Douzens, B 71, p. 246.
16Dominic Sellwood, Knights of the Cloister: Templars and Hospitallers in Central-Southern Occitania c. 1100-1300 (Woodbridge, Eng.: Boydell and Brewer, 1999) p. 67.
17Leija Dobronic, “The Military Orders in Croatia,” in Vladimir P. Goss, ed., The Meeting of Two Worlds: Cultural Exchange between East and West during the Period of the Crusades (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1986) p. 432.
18For Everard de Barres, please see chapter 15, Grand Masters 1136-1191.
19Dobronic, p. 433. (The bishop may have dropped by for dinner now and then, though.)
20Ibid., p. 432.
21Eudes Rigord, Vie de Philippe Auguste ed. and tr. M. Guizot (Paris, 1825).
22Some sources say his brother.
23The Continuator of William of Tyre, in The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade tr. Peter W. Edbury (Ashgate, Aldershot 1998) p. 143.
24Thomas of Spalato, ExThomae Historia Pontificum Salonitanorum et Spalatinorum, Monumenta Germania Historia Scriptores, ed. G. H. Pertz, Vol. 29, p. 578. “Sed accersito quodam Pocio, cui erat magister milicie domus Templi per regnum Hungarie, comsisit ad manus eius custodiam et tutelam ispius castri.”
25Dobronic, p. 435. I found no more information on this but would like to know if anyone has done more research.
26Ibid., p. 437.
27See chapter 4, Hugh, Count of Champagne.
28D’Albon, p. 86, charter no. 123.
29Evelyn Lord, The Knights Templar in Britain (London: Longman, 2002) p. 16.
30Lord, p. 119.
31Ibid., p. 138.
32Ibid., p. 140.
33Ibid., p.141.
34The Charters of David I, ed. G. W. S. Barrow (Woodbridge, Eng.: Boydell Press, 1999) p. 164.
35Lord, p. 145.
36Ibid., p. 143.
37Ibid., p. 7, no. 10.
38Alan Forey, The Templars in the Corona of Aragon (London, 1973) p. 15.
39Theresa M. Vann, “A New Look at the Foundation of the Order of Calatrava,” in Crusaders, Condottieri, and Cannon: Medieval Warfare in Societies around the Mediterranean, ed. Donald J. Kagay and L. J. Andrew Villalon (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2003) p. 110.
40Marquis d’Albon, p. 25, charter no. 33, “in mea marchia contra Sarracenos.”
41Forey, p. 16.
42D’Albon, pp. 204-5, document 314, November 27, 1143.
CHAPTER NINE
The Life of a Templar, According to the Rule
In the first days of the order, while their numbers were still few, the Templars seem to have lived by the same Rule as the canons at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where they first found shelter. But at the Council of Troyes, along with recognition as a quasi-monastic order, the Templars also received a list of seventy-nine rules detailing how they should conduct their lives. The collection of these rules is known as the Rule.
This first Rule was written in Latin, but most of the monks couldn’t read Latin. Actually, only a few of them could read at all. So, shortly after the council, the Rule was translated into French. Very soon after the first translation, new problems arose that weren’t covered in the original list and the Rule was expanded until, by the middle of the thirteenth century, the Templars had almost seven hundred separate directives covering every aspect of their lives!1
No one could keep track of all of these and the knights weren’t expected to. The commanders of each geographical region had a copy of the list. Most of the knights, sergeants, and servants only knew as much as they needed to in order to do their work and follow the regulations for daily living.2
Many parts of the Templar Rule were the same as those for all monks. They were to attend the reciting of the monastic hours—matins, prime, terce, nones, vespers, and compline—although it was understood that they needn’t learn the Latin; instead they were to recite a number of Our Fathers. They ate together in silence, listening to a devotional reading. They met once a week in Chapter, where assignments were given out and discipline administered. Monks were encouraged to confess their lapses, beg forgiveness, and take their punishment. If a monk was accused by others of infractions of the Rule and denied his guilt, then a mini trial would take place. The faults could range from tearing one’s habit on purpose or hitting another Templar to patronizing a brothel or converting to Islam. The penalties ranged from extra fasts to having to eat on the floor in the infirmary to outright expulsion from the order.
Templars were not allowed to own anything individually and to carry money only for immediate needs while traveling or doing business for the order. If a Templar died and was found to have a hidden cache of gold or silver, “he will not be placed in the cemetery, but thrown out for the dogs.”3 If his hoarding was discovered while he was alive, he was immediately thrown out of the order.
Every article of clothing and equipment for the monks was specified, including the material. Only the “true” knights, those who were of noble birth and also had signed on for life, were allowed to wear the white cloak.4 Sergeants, servants, and men who only signed up for a certain period wore either black or brown cloaks. Because of the heat in the eastern Mediterranean lands, Templars were permitted to wear linen shirts from Easter to All Saints’ Day (November 1). Unlike other monks, they were permitted meat three times a week but not on Friday, when they ate “Lenten meat”—that is, fish or eggs.
Particular attention was paid to the military equipment of the Templars. Each knight was to have three horses and one squire to take care of them. And if the squire was serving without pay for the sake of charity, the knight could not beat him, no matter what he did wrong.5 The knights were expected to oversee the care of their horses and equipment, checking on them at least twice a day.
Of course, all of this happened when the knights were residents in
Two Templars on one horse with the Beausant, the Templar standard.
(Matthew Paris © The British Library)
the Temple house, the commandery or preceptory. But it was understood that they would spend much of their time in the field. Among the crimes that would merit immediate expulsion from the order were running away from the battle or letting the standard fall. Here the rules were different for the sergeants and the knights. If a sergeant or servant lost his weapons, he was allowed to retreat without dishonor. A knight, however, “whether he is armed or not, must not let the sta
ndard fall, but stay by it no matter what, even if he is wounded, unless given leave.”6
The Templars lived up to this. They were the first into battle and the last to retreat. Of all the negative things said about them over the years, no one ever questioned their bravery. The number of Templar knights killed in battle was enormous.
This was probably the reason for two changes in the Rule. The Latin form of the Rule forbid men who had been excommunicated by the Church to become Templars. Often the reasons for excommunication were those that Bernard of Clairvaux had given in his exhortation to the Templars: murder, rape, and theft. This was modified in the French to state that if the crime had been minor so that the man had only been forbidden to hear Mass, one might make an exception, if the commander of the house allowed it.
Of course, becoming a Templar might well be part of one’s penance for murder. It was rather like a medieval Foreign Legion in that respect.
Another way in which the Templars differed from most monastic houses was that they had a very short probationary period for new recruits. The time between applying to become a Templar and acceptance into the order was originally left to the discretion of the commander or the Master and the other brothers.7But at some point any trial period seems to have vanished. This may be due to the desperate need for more fighting men in the East. There wasn’t time to test the men either for understanding or for ability to cope with the lifestyle.8
The Real History Behind the Templars Page 6
