by Umberto Eco
Little wonder that in the tender melancholy of their faded, aging glory they lent an ear to the secret doctrines of Moslem mystics, hieratic guardians of hidden treasures. Perhaps that was how the legend of the Knights of the Temple was born, the legend with which some frustrated and yearning minds are still obsessed, the myth of a boundless power lying unused, unharnessed....
Even in Joinville's day, the saint-king Louis, at whose table Aquinas dined, persisted in his belief in the crusade, despite two centuries of dreams ruined by the victors' stupidity. Was it worth one more try? Yes, Louis said. And the Templars were ready and willing; they followed him into defeat, because that was their job. Without a crusade, how could they justify the Temple?
Louis attacks Damietta from the sea. The enemy shore glitters with pikes, halberds, oriflammes, shields, and scimitars. Fine-looking men, Joinville says chivalrously, who carry arms of gold struck by the sun. Louis could wait, but he decides to land at any cost. "My faithful followers, we will be invincible if we are inseparable in our charity. If we are defeated, we will be martyrs. If we triumph, the glory of God will be the greater." The Templars don't believe it, but they have been trained to be knights of the ideal, and this is the image of themselves they must confirm. They will follow the king in his mystical madness.
Incredibly, the landing is a success; equally incredibly, the Saracens abandon Damietta. But the king hesitates to enter the city, fearing treachery. But there is no treachery: the city is his for the taking, along with its treasures and its hundred mosques, which Louis immediately converts into churches of the Lord. Now he has a decision to make: Should he march on Alexandria or on Cairo? The wise choice would be Alexandria, thus depriving Egypt of a vital port. But the expedition has its evil genius, the king's brother, Robert d'Artois, a megalomaniac hungry for glory. A typical younger son. He advises Louis to head for Cairo, the heart of Egypt. The Templars, cautious at first, are now champing at the bit. The king issues orders to avoid isolated skirmishes, but the marshal of the Temple takes it upon himself to violate that prohibition. Seeing a squadron of the sultan's Mamelukes, he cries out: "Now have at them, in the name of God, for a shame like this I cannot bear!"
The Saracens dig in beyond the river near Mansura. The French try to build a dam and create a ford, protecting it with their mobile towers, but the Saracens have learned the art of Greek fire from the Byzantines. Greek fire is a barrel-like container with a kind of big spear as a tail. It is hurled like a lightning bolt, a flying dragon. It burns so brightly that in the Christian camp at night one can see as clearly as if it were day.
While the camp burns, a Bedouin traitor leads the king and his men to a ford in exchange for a payment of three hundred bezants. The king decides to attack. The crossing is not easy; many are drowned and swept away by the current, while three hundred mounted Saracens wait on the other side. When the main body of the attack force finally comes ashore, the Templars, as planned, are in the vanguard, followed by the Comte d'Artois. The Moslem horsemen flee, and the Templars wait for the rest of the Christian army. But Artois and his men dash off in pursuit of the enemy.
The Templars, anxious to avoid dishonor, then join in the assault, but catch up with Artois only after he has penetrated the enemy camp and begun a massacre. The Moslems fall back toward Mansura, which is just what Artois has been hoping for. He sets out after them. The Templars try to stop him; Brother Gilles, supreme commander of the Temple, tries flattery, telling Artois that he has performed a wondrous feat, perhaps the greatest ever achieved overseas. But Artois, eager for glory, accuses the Templars of treachery, claiming that the Templars and Hospitalers could have conquered this territory long ago if they had really wanted to. He has shown them what a man with blood in his veins can do. This is too much. The Templars must prove that they are second to none. They charge into the city and chase the enemy all the way to the wall on the opposite side. Then suddenly the Templars realize that they have repeated the mistake of Ascalon. While the Christians are busy sacking the sultan's palace, the infidels reassemble and fall upon the now unorganized group of jackals.
Have the Templars allowed themselves to be blinded once again by greed? Some say that before accompanying Artois into the city, Brother Gilles spoke to him with stoic lucidity: "My Lord, my brothers and I are not afraid. We follow you. But great is our doubt that any of us will return." And indeed, Artois was killed, and many good knights died with him, including two hundred and eighty Templars.
It was more than a defeat; it was a disgrace. Yet not even Joinville recorded it as such. It happened and that is the beauty of war.
Joinville's pen turns many of these battles and skirmishes into charming ballets. Heads roll here and there, implorations to the good Lord abound, and the king sheds tears over a loyal follower's death. But the whole thing is Technicolor, complete with crimson saddlecloths, gilded trappings, the flash of helmets and swords under the yellow desert sun, and an azure sea in the background. And who knows? Perhaps the Templars really lived their daily butchery that way.
Joinville's perspective shifts vertically, depending on whether he has fallen from his horse or just remounted. Isolated scenes are sharply focused, but the larger picture eludes him. We see individual duels, whose outcome is often random. Joinville sets off to help the lord of Wanon. A Turk strikes him with his lance, Joinville's horse sinks to its knees, Joinville falls over the animal's head, he stands up, sword in hand, and Chevalier Erard de Siverey ("may God grant him grace") points to a ruined house where they can take refuge. They are trampled by Turks on horseback. Chevalier Frédéric de Loupey is struck from behind, "which made so large a wound that the blood poured from his body as if from the bunghole of a barrel." Siverey receives a slashing blow in the face, so that "his nose was left dangling over his lips." And so on, until help arrives. They leave the house and move to another part of the battlefield, where there are more deaths and last-minute rescues, and loud prayers to Saint James. In the meantime, the good Comte de Soissons, wielding his sword, cries, "Seneschal, let these dogs howl as they will. By God's bonnet, we shall talk of this day yet, you and I, sitting at home with our ladies!" The king asks for news of his brother, the wretched Comte d'Artois, and Brother Henri de Ronnay, provost of the Hospitalers, answers that he "has good news, for certainly the count is now in Paradise." "God be praised for everything He gives," says the king, big tears falling from his eyes.
But it isn't always a ballet, angelic and bloodstained. Grand Master Guillaume de Sonnac dies, burned alive by Greek fire. With the great stink of corpses and the shortage of provisions, the Christian army is stricken with scurvy. Saint Louis's men are finally routed. The king is so badly racked by dysentery that he cuts out the seat of his pants to save time in battle. Damietta is lost, and the queen has to negotiate with the Saracens, paying five hundred thousand livres tournois to ransom the king.
The crusades were carried out in virtuous bad faith. On his return to Saint-Jean-d'Acre, Louis is hailed as a victor; the whole city comes out in procession to greet him, including the clergy, ladies, and children. The Templars, seeing which way the wind is blowing, try to open negotiations with Damascus. Louis finds out and, furious at being bypassed, repudiates the new grand master in the presence of the Moslem ambassadors. The grand master has to retract the promises he made to the enemy, has to kneel before the king and beg his pardon. No one can say the knights haven't fought well—and selflessly—but the king of France still humiliates them, to reassert his power. And, half a century later, Louis's successor, Philip, to reassert his power, will send the knights to the stake.
In 1291 Saint-Jean-d'Acre is conquered by the Moors, and all its inhabitants are put to the sword. The Christian kingdom of Jerusalem is gone for good. The Templars are richer, more numerous, more powerful than ever, but they were born to fight in the Holy Land, and in the Holy Land there are none left.
They live in splendor, isolated in their commanderies throughout Europe and in the Temple in Paris, but
they dream still of the plateau of the Temple in Jerusalem in their days of glory, dream of the handsome church of Saint Mary Lateran spangled with votive chapels, dream of their bouquets of trophies, and all the rest: the forges, the saddlery, the granaries, the stables of two thousand horses, the cantering troops of squires, aides, and turcopoles, the red crosses on white cloaks, the dark surplices of the attendants, the sultan's envoys with their great turbans and gilded helmets, the pilgrims, a crossroads filled with dapper patrols and outriders, and the delights of rich coffers, the port from which instructions and cargoes were dispatched for the castles on the mainland, or on the islands, or on the shores of Asia Minor....
All gone now, my poor Templars.
That evening, at Pilade's, by then on my fifth whiskey, for which Belbo was paying, insisted on paying, I realized that I had been dreaming aloud and—the shame of it—with feeling. But I must have told a beautiful story, full of compassion, because Dolores's eyes were glistening, and Diotallevi, having taken the mad plunge and ordered a second tonic water, was seraphically gazing toward heaven—or, rather, toward the bar's decidedly noncabalistic ceiling. "Perhaps," he murmured, "they were all those things: lost souls and saints, horsemen and grooms, bankers and heroes...."
"They were remarkable, no doubt about it" was Belbo's summation. "But tell me, Casaubon, do you love them?"
"I'm doing my thesis on them. If you do your thesis on syphilis, you end up loving even the Spirochaeta pallida."
"It was lovely," Dolores said. "Like a movie. But I have to go now. I have to mimeograph the leaflets for tomorrow morning. There's picketing at the Marelli factory."
"Lucky you. You can afford it," Belbo said. He raised a weary hand and stroked her hair. Then he ordered what he said was his last whiskey. "It's almost midnight. I say that not for normal people, I say it for Diotallevi's benefit. But let's go on. I want to hear about the trial. Who, what, when, and why."
"Cur, quomodo, quando," Diotallevi agreed. "Yes, yes."
14
He declares that he saw, the day before, five hundred and four brothers of the order led to the stake because they would not confess the above-mentioned errors, and he heard it said that they were burned. But he fears that he himself would not resist if he were to be burned, that he would confess in the presence of the lord magistrates and anyone else, if questioned, and say that all the errors with which the order has been charged are true; that he, if asked, would also confess to killing Our Lord.
—Testimony of Aimcry de Villiers-le-Duc, May 13, 1310
A trial full of silences, contradictions, enigmas, and acts of stupidity. The acts of stupidity were the most obvious, and, because they were inexplicable, they generally coincided with the enigmas. In those halcyon days I believed that the source of enigma was stupidity. Then the other evening in the periscope I decided that the most terrible enigmas are those that mask themselves as madness. But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
With the collapse of the Christian kingdoms of the Holy Land, the Templars were left without a purpose. Or, rather, they soon turned their means into an end; they spent their time managing their immense wealth. Philip the Fair, a monarch intent on building a centralized state, naturally disliked them. They were a sovereign order, beyond any royal control. The grand master ranked as a prince of the blood; he commanded an army, administered vast landholdings, was elected like the emperor, and had absolute authority. The French treasury was located in the Temple in Paris, outside the king's control. The Templars were the trustees, proxies, and administrators of an account that was the king's only in name. They paid funds in and out and manipulated the interest; they acted like a great private bank but enjoyed all the privileges and exemptions of a state institution. The king's treasurer was a Templar. How could a ruler rule under such conditions?
If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. Philip asked to be made an honorary-Templar. Request denied. An insult no king could swallow. He suggested that the pope merge Templars and Hospitalers and place the new order under the control of one of his sons. Jacques de Molay, grand master of the Temple, arrived with great pomp from Cyprus, where he lived like a monarch in exile. He handed the pope a memorandum that supposedly assessed the advantages of the merger but actually emphasized its disadvantages. Molay brazenly argued that, among other things, the Templars were far wealthier than the Hospitalers, that the merger would enrich the latter at the expense of the former, thus putting the souls of his knights in jeopardy. Molay won this first round: the plan was shelved.
The only recourse left was slander, and here the king held good cards. Rumors about the Templars had been circulating for a long time. Imagine how these "colonials" must have looked to right-thinking Frenchmen, these people who collected tithes everywhere while giving nothing in return, not even—anymore—their own blood as guardians of the Holy Sepulcher. True, they were Frenchmen. But not completely. People saw them as pieds noirs; at the time, the term was poulains. The Templars flaunted their exotic ways; it was said that among themselves they even spoke the language of the Moors, with which they were familiar. Though they were monks, their savage nature was common knowledge: some years before, Pope Innocent III had issued a bull entitled De insolentia Templariorum. They had taken a vow of poverty, but they lived with the pomp of aristocrats, with the greed of the new merchant classes, and with the effrontery of a corps of musketeers.
The whispering campaign was not long in coming: the Templars were homosexuals, heretics, idolaters worshiping a bearded head of unknown provenance. Perhaps they shared the secrets of the Isma'ilis, for they had had dealings with the Assassins of the Old Man of the Mountain. Philip and his advisers put these rumors to good use.
Philip was assisted by his two evil geniuses, Marigny and Nogaret. It was Marigny who ultimately got control of the Templar treasury, administering it on the king's behalf until it was transferred to the Hospitalers. It is not clear who got the interest. Nogaret, the king's lord chancellor, in 1303 had been the strategist behind the incident in Anagni, when Sciarra Colonna slapped Boniface VIII and the pope died of humiliation less than a month later.
Then a man by the name of Esquin de Floyran appeared on the scene. Apparently, while imprisoned for unspecified crimes and on the verge of being executed, Floyran encountered a renegade Templar in his cell and from him heard a terrible confession. In exchange for his life and a tidy sum, Floyran told everything. Which turned out to be exactly what everybody was already rumoring. Now the rumors became formal depositions before a magistrate. The king transmitted Floyran's sensational revelations to the pope, Clement V, who later moved the papal seat to Avignon. Clement believed some of the charges, but knew it would not be easy to interfere in the Temple's affairs. In 1307, however, he agreed to open an official inquiry. Molay, the grand master, was informed, but declared that his conscience was clear. At the king's side, he continued to take part in official ceremonies, a prince among princes. Clement V seemed to be stalling, and the king began to suspect that the pope wanted to give the Templars time to disappear. But no, the Templars went on drinking and blaspheming in their commanderies, seemingly unaware of the danger. And this is the first enigma.
On September 14, 1307, the king sent sealed messages to all the bailiffs and seneschals of the realm, ordering the mass arrest of the Templars and the confiscation of their property. A month went by between the issuing of this order and the arrest on October 13. But the Templars suspected nothing. On that October morning they all fell into the trap and—another enigma—gave themselves up without a fight. In fact, in the days before the arrests, using the most feeble excuses, the king's men, wanting to make sure that nothing would escape confiscation, had conducted a kind of inventory of the Temple's possessions throughout the country. And still the Templars did nothing. Come right in, my dear bailiff, take a look around, make yourself at home.
> When he learned what had happened, the pope hazarded a protest, but it was too late. The royal investigators had already brought out their irons and ropes, and many knights had begun to confess under torture. When they confessed, they were handed over to inquisitors, who had methods of their own, even though they were not yet burning people at the stake. The knights confirmed their confessions.
This is the third mystery. Granted, there was torture, and it must have been vigorous, since thirty-six knights died in the course of it. But not a single one of these men of iron, seasoned by their battles with the cruel Turk, resisted arrest. In Paris only four knights out of a hundred and thirty-eight refused to confess. All the others did, including Jacques de Molay.
"What did they confess?" Belbo asked.