The Real History Behind the Templars

by Sharan Newman

  In other areas the pope’s orders were simply ignored. Otto, the Templar commander of Brunswick, had no intention of stepping down. He eventually became commander of the Hospitaller house at Süpplingenburg, with a yearly pension of one hundred marks. Of course, he was the brother of the duke.31 But it appears that less important Templars in the German states fared almost as well. Few of them were ever imprisoned and none of them were killed.

  ARRESTS AND TRIALS IN CYPRUS

  Cyprus was now the seat of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in exile. Both the Templars and the Hospitallers were based there. The king of Cyprus, Amaury of Lusignan, had been supported by the Templars in his takeover of the government from his brother, Henry. At the Templar headquarters on the island of Cyprus, seventy Templars were interrogated. 32 None of them confessed to any of the charges. Outside witnesses were also questioned. Most of them actually defended the Templars.33

  Unlike the other Templar centers outside of Spain, the knights on Cyprus were the fighting force. The records of their trial finally give us an idea of the makeup of the Templar forces in the East. For the first time, there is a real sense that this was an international order. Brother Nicholas was English and had entered the order at Lidley in Shropshire in 1300.34 Brother John was also English but had become a Templar in Italy and, although a sergeant, had become the commander of a house.35Brother Francis came from Slavonia and had been received into the order by Jacques de Molay himself.36 Brother Bertrand came from Brindisi and Brother Pierre from Provence.37

  There were even Templars from Acre: Brother Guy, who had been received in Acre, and Brother Hubald, who came from Acre but had joined in 1299 on Cyprus.38

  These were the younger, fitter men who had been sent east as soon as possible to be ready to mount an expedition to regain the Holy Land. Most of them had fought and seen their friends die for the cause and they were even more indignant at the charges than the serving brothers in Europe, who may never have been to the East.39

  In the middle of the trials, King Amaury was murdered, not by a Templar, I hasten to add. His body was found “stuffed beneath the stairs in his house at Nicosia.”40 The most likely suspect was his brother, Henry, who now became king, but I don’t believe the matter was looked into very closely.

  Since the Templars had helped Amaury take the throne from Henry a few years before when the trial was reopened and new witnesses brought in, they had good reason to expect the worst.

  It didn’t happen. The new witnesses, important men of the kingdom, told the inquisitors that the Templars were the most valiant fighting men they knew and all seemed devout. They regularly went to Mass and received the Host. One of the Templars’ guards had started out certain that the men were guilty. After two years with them, he not only had changed his mind, he felt that God had performed a miracle in order to prove it to him.41

  Pope Clement wasn’t satisfied with these results and, in 1311, sent a papal legate to Cyprus to reopen the trial and this time to use torture. I’m not sure if he wanted to torture the Templars or the witnesses or both, but there is no record of anything more happening.

  ARRESTS AND TRIALS IN ITALY

  Italy, of course, is a modern nation. In the fourteenth century, the Italian peninsula was made up of several territories, such as Lombardy and Tuscany, or city-states, such as Venice, Pisa, and Genoa. Scattered among them were the various Papal States (see below). There was also the Kingdom of Naples, ruled by Charles II, uncle of Philip the Fair.42

  Naples was one place where the Templars were seriously prosecuted. During the course of the trials, Charles died and was succeeded by his son, Robert, who wished to press his claim to the thrones of Jerusalem and Sicily. In the summer of 1309, Robert made a trip to Anjou to see Pope Clement and receive official confirmation of his rights.43

  Few records remain of the trial in Naples but it appears that the six Templars arrested there were tortured in order to make them confess. The trial was held in April 1310 and the highlight of it was the testimony of one Galcerand de Teus, who regaled the inquisitors with the story of how he had been received in Catalonia and not only told to deny Christ but assured that Jesus, while on the cross, had confessed that he was not divine and had been forgiven. He insisted that all the Catalonian Templars knew this. However, it later came out that Galcerand had become a Templar in Italy and may not have ever been to Catalonia.44

  In Tuscany only thirteen Templars were taken. Six of them confessed under torture. The other seven didn’t.45As was usual in other countries outside of France, more attention was paid to occupying and taking inventory of Templar property than in capturing the men themselves.46

  Again the main thrust of the questioning involved the secret reception of new members of the order. The deposition of Brother Giacomo di Phighazzano sums up the frustration and exasperation the rest of the Templars must have felt:

  “The reception of the brothers to the community was done as the Rule commanded,” he insisted. “No brother was received who was not received according to the rules handed down by the blessed Bernard and by which father James had received him.[Giacomo]”47

  ARRESTS AND TRIALS IN THE PAPAL STATES

  The Papal States were areas of Italy that came under the legal jurisdiction of the popes. They consisted of several towns and regions scattered up and down what is now the country of Italy. The total wasn’t a huge area, but it is rather surprising that in all of it, when there were at least thirty commanderies, only seven Templars were arrested. There were six serving brothers, Ceccus Nicolai di Langano, Andreas Armanni de Monte Oderisio, Gerard de Placentia, Petrus Valentini, Vivolus de villa Sancti Iustini, and Gualterius Johannis de Napoli, all Italian. The seventh was a Templar priest, Guillelmo de Verduno.48None of them had ever been overseas; they had never even left Italy.49

  The seven Templars all confessed that they had spit and stamped on the cross, except the priest, who had been allowed to stamp on two pieces of straw. Four of them said they had been asked to worship an idol. Each one described a different idol. Ceccus saw a young boy made of metal; Andreas saw one with three heads; Gerard’s idol was made of wood and had one face; Vivolus saw a white head with the face of a man.

  None of the Templars appeared to have been tortured. They were all absolved.

  There is no record of what happened to the rest of the Templars in the Papal States.

  OUTSIDE of France very few Templars confessed, or were judged guilty, of anything. Many never came to trial at all. In spite of Pope Clement’s attempts to get the regional church authorities to prosecute the Templars rigorously, using torture if necessary, it doesn’t seem to have often happened.

  The result of the trials was to put a lot of Templars out of work. The Hospitallers eventually got most of the Templar property but they were saddled with the job of paying pensions to the ex-Templars and their dependents.

  The real losers in the whole affair were Clement V and the popes who came after him. Clement was shown to be a weak man and his office as one with very little real power. He could order the arrest of the Templars because they were under his direct authority. But he couldn’t make local bishops hunt the Templars down. He had the power to suppress the order but not enough to see that its property was delivered where he wanted it.

  And now the whole world knew it.

  1In Barcelona at the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, if you want to check them. Or see Alan Forey, The Fall of the Templars in the Crown of Aragon (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2001); he has searched the archives extensively for you and me. I am extremely grateful.

  2This is my summary of Forey, pp. 1-6.

  3Forey, p. 215.

  4Ibid., p. 75.

  5Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge, 2006) p. 236.

  6Barber, p. 237.

  7Thomas W. Parker, The Knights Templars in England (University of Arizona Press, 1963) p. 17.

  8Evelyn Lord, The Knights Templar in Britain (London: Longmand, 2002) pp. 44-137.

  9Barber
, p. 218.

  10Anne Gilmour-Bryson, “The London Templar Trial Testimony,” in A World Explored: Essays in Honour of Laurie Gardiner, ed. Anne Gilmour-Bryson (Melbourne, 1993).

  11 Barber, p. 219.

  12 Roger Sève and Anne-Marie Chagny-Sève, Le Procès des Templier d’Auvergne 1309-1311, p. 253. “dixit quod osculantur se in ore, et omnia alia et singula in predictus articulis contenta sunt fallsa et mala, nec facta fuerunt.”

  13Gilmour-Bryson, p. 48.

  14Parker, p. 95.

  15Ibid., p. 96.

  16Gilmour-Bryson, p. 52.

  17Ibid. This was before the Internet, of course, but just imagine what a great science fiction story this would make. Remember, I had it first.

  18Lord, p. 198. It’s possible that John couldn’t read, but his wife could.

  19Ibid.

  20Parker, p. 97. All of these come from the records of the testimony.

  21Lord, p. 199

  22Ibid., 200.

  23Karl Borchardt, “The Templars in Central Europe,” in The Crusades and the Military Orders: Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity, ed. Zsolt Hunyadi and Josef Laszlovszky (Budapest: Central Hungarian University, 2001) p. 233.

  24Please see chapter 39, Other Regional Military Orders, for more on the Teutonic knights.

  25Barber, p. 251.

  26Ibid.

  27Ibid.

  28Ibid.

  29Ibid.

  30Ibid., p. 252.

  31Borchardt, p. 239.

  32Peter Edbury, “The Military Orders in Cyprus,” in Hunyadi and Laszlovszky, p. 102.

  33Ibid.

  34K. Schottmüller, Der Untergang des Templer Ordens (Berlin, 1887) Vol. II, p. 168. Prof. Anne Gilmour-Bryson has translated the records of the trial into English. Unfortunately, I was not able to obtain a copy of her book.

  35Ibid., p. 185.

  36Ibid., p. 191.

  37Ibid., pp. 207-9.

  38Ibid., pp. 188-89 and 217.

  39 Barber, pp. 255-56.

  40p. 256.

  41Schottmüller, pp. 157-58.

  42Barber, p. 213.

  43Fulvio Bramato, Storia dell’Ordine dei Templari in Italia, Vol. II Le Inquisizioni, Li Fonti (Rome: Atanor, 1994) p. 29.

  44Ibid., pp. 30-31.

  45Barber, p. 215.

  46Bramato, pp. 47-49.

  47Quoted in Bramato, “receptions frutrum cominter predictis modis in ordine sic fiebant, tamen aliqui non sic recipiebantur, sed recipiebantur secumdum regulam eis traditam a beato Benardo secundum quam ipse fr. Jacobus asseruitse receptum.”

  48Gilmour-Bryson, pp. 34-35.

  49Ibid., p. 38. The following paragraphs are a summary of Gilmour-Bryson’s excellent edition of the transcripts of the trials.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The Secret Rite of Initiation

  The most serious charges brought against the Templars by King Philip—and the ones that still seem to fascinate people today—all revolved around the secret ceremony of initiation into the order. All of the Templars who were arrested were asked about what they did at their entry. The answers fell into two categories. The first was the normal rite that was spelled out in the Rule.

  The ceremony of reception is in the Old French version, so it was accessible to anyone who could read or have it read to him. It was a secret ceremony not in the sense that no one could find out what happened, but in that family and friends were not invited.

  Here are the main parts of the initiation:

  If a man wishes to become a Templar, he is first brought into a room near the chapter hall where the Templars gather for their weekly meetings. There he is asked several questions.

  The first questions are about his willingness to join the order: “Brother, do you ask to join the company of the house?”1

  If he does, then they are to tell him about all the difficulties of the job and the suffering he will endure and ask if he is prepared to be a serf and a slave of the house for always, all the days of his life.2 This is stressed several times. It is not an unusual request. Anyone joining a religious order is told that they must obey their superiors without question. This was true of the Benedictines, Cistercians, Franciscans, Dominicans, and all other orders.3 However, it was considered that men who had been trained as knights would have more trouble being subservient than most monks.

  If the applicant is not deterred by this information then he is asked questions that concern reasons why he may not become a Templar. Is he married? Is he a member of another order? Does he owe money that he can’t repay? Does he have a communicable disease?

  If the answers to these are satisfactory, then one of the brothers questioning him goes into the chapter hall and says to the master:

  “Lord, we have spoken with this worthy man who is outside and have told him of the hardships of the house as well as we could. And he says that he wishes to become a serf and slave of the house. . . .”4

  Then the applicant is brought in. He kneels before the master and joins his hands, saying:

  “Lord, I have come before God and before you and before the brothers and implore and ask you by God and by Our Lady, that you may welcome me into your company and the benefits of the house as one who desires to be a serf and a slave of the house for all my days.”5

  The master tries again to dissuade the man:

  “Good brother,” he says. “You ask a very great thing, for of our order you see only the outer appearance. For in appearance you see us having fine horses, and good equipment, and good food and drink, and fine robes, and thus it seems to you that you would be well at ease. But you do not know the harsh commandments which lie beneath: for it is a painful thing for you, who are your own master, to make yourself a serf to others. For it will be difficult for you to do as you wish; for if you wish to be in the land this side of the sea, you will be sent to the other side; or if you wish to be in Acre, you will be sent to the country of Tripoli or Antioch or Armenia. . . . And if you wish to sleep, you will be wakened; and if you sometimes wish to stay awake, you will be ordered to stay in your bed.”6

  If the applicant is not a nobleman, he is reminded that he will be made a sergeant. This means an even harder life, doing work that he may think beneath him. The master doesn’t mince words. He lists all the irksome jobs the man might be required to do. Honestly, I would have changed my mind when he got to the part about cleaning out the pigsty and sweeping up after the camels. But many men remained firm in their desire to join.

  The applicant is then sent outside to await the decision of the chapter. If they decide to accept him, he is called back in and asked once more if he’s willing to endure all that they have told him.

  When he agrees, the master rises and asks them all to stand and pray to “Our Lord and Lady Saint Mary that he may do well.”7 They then say the Lord’s Prayer and the chaplain gives another prayer to the Holy Spirit. After that the applicant is given the Gospels and, with his hands on them, is asked one final time if there is any reason why he should not become a Templar.

  Lastly, the man takes the oath, “Do you promise God and Our Lady that all the days of your life you will be obedient to the master of the Temple and whatever orders that will be [given] you? Again, do you promise to live chastely, without property, that you will live according to the customs of the house? Do you promise to God and Lady Saint Mary that, for all your life, you will aide in conquering the holy land of Jerusalem with the force and power that God has given you? And that you will help to protect and save any Christian who may need it? Do you promise never to leave the order without the permission of the master?”8

  To all of these, the man answers, “Yes, if it pleases God.”9

  Finally, the master says:

  “And we, by God and by Our Lady Saint Mary and by my lord Saint Peter of Rome and by our father the pope, and by all the brothers of the Temple, we welcome you to all the benefits of the house which have been done since the beginning and will be done until the end, and . . . you
also welcome us to all the good deeds that you have done and will do. And so we promise you the bread and the water and the poor clothing of the house and more than enough of pain and torment.”10

  At last the new Templar is given his cloak, white for a nobleman or black or brown for a sergeant. The chaplain reads Psalm 133, “Behold how good it is for brothers to live together in unity.” The brothers recite the Lord’s Prayer again and the master raises the new recruit up and kisses him on the mouth.11

  A kiss on the mouth was the normal way to seal an oath. This was done both in religious communities and in royal treaties, as well as official greetings. My impression is that it was ceremonial and not sexual. I’m fairly sure no tongues were involved.

  At least on paper, this is a sacred and completely orthodox reception. There is nothing in it that needed to be secret. The Templars simply preferred that the ceremony be private.

  This desire for privacy was to lead to their downfall. In the minds of some people, things that are secret are automatically suspect. If they weren’t doing something bad then why couldn’t anyone come and watch? Therefore, there must be something blasphemous about the reception or a second ceremony must also take place.