The Real History Behind the Templars

by Sharan Newman

  Many reasons were given for this slaughter. One was that they had killed them as a reprisal for their own prisoners killed before them by the Muslims. Another was that the King of England had decided to march on Ascalon and take it, and he did not want to leave behind him in the city a large number [of enemy soldiers]. God knows best.21

  Whatever his reasons, this act did not reflect well on Richard, among his own people or the Moslems. Even the king’s chronicler, the poet Ambroise, who thought Richard was practically perfect, seems to stutter over this event. “And Richard, the king of England, who had on earth killed so many Turks, did not wish to be bothered any longer, and so to lesson the pride of the Turks and to dishearten their beliefs and to avenge Christianity . . .” he had them killed.22

  It must have sounded pretty thin even to him.

  Richard soon realized that, even if he took Jerusalem, he couldn’t hold it. In 1191, he made a three-year truce with Saladin and set out for home.23 While he had some success in securing the coastal cities, the Holy City, the goal of the crusade, remained in Moslem control.

  On the way back he was forced by shipwreck to travel through the lands of Leopold of Austria. He and his companions went in disguise, as simple pilgrims returning from the Holy Land. However, they weren’t very good at disguise. The men were far richer than the usual pilgrims and always wanted to get the best accommodations. Richard was recognized and captured by Leopold’s men. He spent the next year and a half in the custody of the Germans, first Leopold and then the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI. The pope immediately excommunicated Leopold but this doesn’t seem to have made much difference to anyone.24

  Richard’s behavior during this time amazed both friend and foe. He passed his days writing poetry, playing jokes on his guards, and charming one and all.25

  Henry VI put Richard up for ransom. This was one of the things that was Not Done among Christian rulers, but if the pope couldn’t stop Henry, no one else could, either.

  Richard’s youngest brother, John, had no interest in seeing him come home so it fell to Eleanor to raise the money, one hundred thousand pounds. This was more than the annual income of the king and had to be found in a country that had just collected a huge amount to finance the crusade.

  No one should underestimate the power of a mother whose favorite son is being held captive. Eleanor tore off letters to Pope Clement III, reminding him that the king of England was also “the soldier of Christ, the anointed of the Lord, the pilgrim of the cross.”26She took charge of raising the cash. Taxes were assessed at 25 percent on all moveable goods. Churches were told to surrender all their gold and silver. The Cistercian and Gilbertine orders may have thought they would be spared for they didn’t believe in such extravagance, using plain ornaments in their churches. Eleanor told them they could hand over that year’s wool crop instead.

  She then took the treasure and the hostages that Henry VI had also demanded and set out for Germany, arriving at Richard’s prison in Speyer on January 17, 1194.27She was seventy-one years old. Richard was released a month later. She then returned to England with him, where he had a ceremonial wearing of the crown, just to remind everyone that he was back and in charge.28Oddly, his wife, Berengaria (remember her?) was not with him. She had stayed on the continent. Eleanor was at his side for Richard’s triumphant return.29

  The rest of Richard’s reign was spent in mopping up the mess caused by his baby brother, John, and Philip of France. They had done their best to carve out as much as they could from Richard’s property while he was away. John had even insisted at one point that Richard was dead and that he, John, should be king. Eleanor had put her foot down on that one but, even so, there were rebellions in Richard’s southern territories and he soon left England, never to return.

  The story of Richard’s death is also the stuff of legend. The bald facts are that he was shot in the shoulder while besieging the castle of Chalus-Chabrol in the Limousin area of southern France. Twelve days later he died of complications from the wound. It was April 6, 1199. He was forty-one years old.

  Almost before he was buried (at the convent of Fontevraud, where his mother, Eleanor, was spending her last years) the rumors were flying. It was said that Richard had been besieging the castle because he had heard there was a treasure there and wanted it for himself. This was made more reprehensible because it was Lent and the church had forbidden war during the Easter season.30

  The treasure might have been a group of golden statues left by the Romans or a hoard of coins or just a lot of gold and silver.31 No one could agree. The interesting thing is that none of the stories mention what happened to the “treasure” after Richard died trying to get it.

  While Richard did indeed die while fighting during Lent and it may have been divine judgment, the treasure story seems to have come from the same sort of wishful thinking that led to the tales of a Templar treasure. Richard was putting down a rebellion of the viscount of Limoges and Chalus-Chabrol was one of several castles that Richard was besieging.32 There wasn’t anything special about it. Like many kings who led their own armies, Richard died in battle.

  He is remembered as a hero, a barbarian, a protector of the poor, a greedy and absent king, and a valiant knight. Like many people, my first introduction to Richard was at the end of Robin Hood when Good King Richard comes home to save his country from Bad Prince John. It’s hard to shake a glorious image like that.

  But it is just an image. Robin Hood is a legend and the Richard of the story is legend, too. Despite not being able to retake Jerusalem, the crusade was Richard’s finest hour. He must have been to some extent a charismatic person. He certainly inspired devotion and respect from his followers and even from some of his enemies.

  The burning question seems to be whether he was a homosexual. I don’t think there’s enough evidence to decide and actually, I don’t think it’s important. He apparently did have a bastard son in Aquitaine, named Philip.33 His name wasn’t linked to any man in particular, as was the case with Edward II. He and Berengaria spent very little time together and, although they were married eight years, they had no children. But there might have been other reasons for this than his distaste for women. She might have been unable to have children. Richard may have found her unattractive. The fact that he didn’t leave an heir was a serious problem for the stability of his kingdom. But even homosexual kings (and queens, I imagine) have done their duty and produced children.

  Does it really have anything to do with what Richard accomplished or failed to accomplish?

  The only person it might have mattered to was Berengaria. She is one of the lost children of history. After Richard’s death, she retired to Le Mans in Normandy, where she founded an abbey. She died there in about 1230.34

  Richard’s wife had as little part in his life as she does in his legend. Richard was definitely a “man’s man,” a strong warrior, a brilliant strategist, not afraid to get his hands dirty and yet still cultivated, a lover of music and poetry. His exploits on the Third Crusade, his nobility while in captivity, and the dramatic tragedy of his death are all the stuff of high adventure.

  As with the Templars, it’s hard not to prefer the fantasy of Richard’s life to the reality.

  1Richard of Aldgate, Itninerarium Peregrinorum et Gestis Regis Recardi, tr. A. F. Scott, in The Plantagenet Age (New York: Crowell, 1976) p. 4.

  2John Gillingham, Richard the Lionheart (New York: Times Books, 1978) p. 24.

  3There are numerous biographies of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Many of them are entertaining but I have found none that are historically satisfying.

  4Gabrielle M Spiegal, “Maternity and Monstrosity: Reproductive Biology in the Roman de Mélusine .” In Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox, Melusine of Lusignan: Founding Fiction in Late Medieval France (Georgia University Press, 1996) p. 101.

  5Giraud de Barri, De Principi Instructione, III 27, p. 301, quoted in Laurence Harf-Lancer, Les Fées au Moyen Age: Morgane et Mélusine, La naissance des fées (Paris,
1984) p. 399, “non esse mirandum, si de genere tali et filii parentis et sese ad invicem fratres infestare non cessent: de diabolo namque eos omnes venisse et ed diobolum . . . ituros esse.” Of course the same thing was supposed to have been said about them by Saint Bernard, in the form of a curse. The history of this legend doesn’t belong here but it’s lots of fun. By the end of the thirteenth century, Eleanor has been demonized as the Fairy Queen.

  6For the problems this caused, please see chapter 10, Melisande, Queen of Jerusalem, and chapter 14, The Second Crusade.

  7Gillingham, p. 32.

  8Ibid., p. 33.

  9Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005) p. 141.

  10Gillingham, pp. 129-34.

  11Roger of Howden.

  12Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood (Cambridge University Press, 1994) p. 278.

  13Gillingham, p. 130.

  14William of Newburgh, The History of English Affairs.

  15A. L. Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta 1087-1216 (Oxford, 1955; 2nd ed.) p. 353.

  16Gillingham, p. 139. It’s not clear if Richard saw her before the marriage or if he let his mother pick her out.

  17Barber, pp. 119-220.

  18Please see the reference to the Third Crusades elsewhere in this book.

  19Gillingham, p. 176.

  20Ambroise, Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, ed. Marianne Ailes and Malcolm Barber (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2003) p. 89, ll. 5508-36.

  21Baha’ al-Din, in Francesco Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades, tr. from Italian by E. J. Costello (Dorset, 1989) p. 224. I know this is a translation of a translation and am not happy about it, but we take what we can get.

  22Ambroise, ll. 5524-30. “E Richardz li reis de Engleterre, Qui tanz Turs ocist en la terre, Ne volt plus sa teste debatre, Mais por l ’orgoil des Turs abatre, Et por lor lei desaëngier, Et por cristïenté vengier.”

  23Hans Eberhard Mayer, The Crusades (Oxford University Press, 1988; 2nd ed.) p. 149.

  24Gillingham, pp. 223-28.

  25Ibid., pp. 217-40.

  26Quoted in Ralph V. Turner, “Eleanor of Aquitaine in the Governments of Her Sons Richard and John,” Eleanor of Aquitaine, Lord and Lady, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons (Palgrave NYC, 2003) p. 85.

  27Ibid.

  28Gillingham, p. 242.

  29Turner, p. 86.

  30Gillingham, p 11. This was smart of the church since it was traditional for the nobility to get out of its winter stupor by riding out to fight someone, and this delayed them at least until after Easter.

  31According to Eudes Rigord, Guillaume le Breton, and Roger of Howden, respectively, in Gillingham, pp. 11-13.

  32Gillingham, pp. 9-23. This is an excellent example of how historians study the sources in order to come up with the most probable facts.

  33Gillingham, p. 162. The child must have been born before Richard and Philip II broke up.

  34Anne Echols and Marty Williams, The Annotated Index of Medieval Women (New York: Markus Wiener, 1992) p. 79.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Assassins

  The word “assassin” is, unfortunately, so common now, that we rarely wonder where it comes from, why, and when. While the act of hired murder is as old as history and myth, the first people to be called assassins lived in the late eleventh century in what is now Iran.

  They did not call themselves Assassins. That name was only given to them by the Syrians when some of them settled in the mountains of Syria in the eleventh century.

  The Assassins were founded by Hasan-i Sabbah, a Shi’ite Moslem born around 1060 in the Persian city of Qumm who moved as a child to the city of Rayy, present-day Tehran.1 Hasan’s family were Twelver Shi’ites, not members of the dominant group but well integrated into the society there. In his autobiography, Hasan relates how he came to follow a more radical path:

  “From the days of my boyhood, from the age of seven, I felt a love for the various branches of learning, and wished to become a religious scholar; until the age of seventeen I was a seeker and searcher for knowledge, but kept to the Twelver faith of my fathers.”2

  This ended when Hasan met a man who taught him of the Isma’ili heresy, a form of Shi’ite Islam that followed the descendants of Isma’il, the son of the eighth-century imam Ja’far al-Sadiq. Over the centuries the Isma’ilis had developed a very different philosophy and worldview from the mainstream of Islam.3

  After much study and soul searching, Hasan was converted at last during a serious illness. “I thought: surely this is the true faith, and because of my great fear I did not acknowledge it. Now my appointed time has come, and I shall die without having attained the truth.”4

  Now, in order to understand the place of the Assassins in the Islamic world, both then and now, it helps to know the background of the divisions within the faith.5

  The two main branches of Islam are the Sunni and the Shi’ites. This split occurred almost immediately after the death of the prophet Mohammed. The first debate was over who should succeed him. Those who wanted to follow his uncle, Abu Bakr, became the Sunni. The Shi’ites followed Mohammed’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali, married to his daughter, Fatima. Within a fairly short time, a fundamental difference developed. It was not so much about belief as practice. The Shi’ites felt that it was necessary for individual Moslems to have a teacher (imam) rather than try to interpret the Koran for themselves. The Sunni believed that the head of the community could be chosen by the community and, as long as the main teachings of the Koran were obeyed, there was room for a certain amount of variety in behavior.

  The Shi’ites then divided among themselves on who was the most worthy imam. At first they were chosen from the descendants of Ali and Fatima. This group then split over the leadership of the grandsons of the Prophet, Hasan and Husain. Those who believed that Husain was the genuine imam looked to his descendants for leadership until the middle of the eighth century.

  The trouble started when the imam at that time, Ja’far, disinherited his elder son, Isma’il, perhaps because he was too fond of wine. The younger son, Musa, was accepted by most of the community, but a few felt that Isma’il should have been chosen.

  Isma’il died before his father and that should have ended the matter. However, the Isma’ili refused to rejoin those who followed Musa. Instead, they taught that, even though the “visible” imams no longer existed, there was a line of hidden imams who sent out agents to continue teaching the faithful. When the time was right, the hidden imam would appear to lead a world of justice.6

  In the meantime, the followers of Musa and his descendants adapted to life under Sunni rule. When the twelfth of their imams, Muhammad al-Mahdi, vanished around 874, his followers decided that he would return in the end times and they needed no one else. They settled in to wait for him and took little interest in earthly politics. They became the Twelvers and they considered the Isma’ili to be the darkest heretics, hardly Moslem at all.7

  So it was a big leap for the Twelver Hasan-i Sabbah to decide to join the Isma’ili. He left his home and spent several years traveling, learning and eventually preaching the Isma’ili faith.

  At this time the Seljuk Turks had taken over a great portion of the Islamic world. They were fiercely orthodox Sunni who did not have the traditional Moslem tolerance for Christians and Jews. They were also determined to force all the Shi’ites to return to the Sunni path. Not surprisingly, there was a great deal of resentment toward them among the Shi’ite communities.

  Hasan’s Isma’ili sect branched off again to become the Nizari, named after another man whom they felt should have been the true imam. In most of the Moslem documents, the Assassins are known as the Nizari. They eventually made their headquarters in Alamut, in northern Iran, in about 1090.8It was at this time that the legends of the sect began.

  At first the Nizari were concerned with destroying the power of the Seljuk invaders. They did this by infiltrating the courts of the Seljuk sultans until they could get
close enough to them to kill them. It was a point of honor that they face their victims, who were usually well guarded. For this reason, the assassinations were considered suicide missions.9

  The secrecy and suddenness of the attacks made the Nizari feared and hated throughout the Seljuk and Sunni people. “To kill them is more lawful than rainwater,” said one. “To shed the blood of a heretic is more meritorious than to kill seventy Greek infidels.”10Often the murder of an important dignitary would result in the massacre of local Isma’ili although they were not Nizari. The divisions among Sunni, Twelver Shi’ites, and Isma’ili grew wider.

  THE NIZARI BECOME ASSASSINS

  It wasn’t until the late twelfth century that the crusaders took much notice of the Nizari. At that point they were known by their Syrian name of Hashishiyya, or Assassins. William of Tyre writes of them in the 1180s, “in the province of Tyre . . . is a certain people who have ten castles and surrounding lands and we have often heard that there are sixty thousand of them or more. . . . Both we and the Saracens call them Assassins, but I don’t know where the name comes from.”11

  It wasn’t until the early nineteenth century that a French historian named Sylvester de Sacy determined that the word “assassin” came from the word “hashish.” This led to a number of fanciful stories. One explained that young Nizari men were drugged in order to believe that they had been to heaven and could only return there after achieving martyrdom. Another, repeated even by modern historians, is that they were given hashish to give them the courage to go out and kill.12