Off the Road

by Hitt, Jack

  The new marriage of monkish piety and holy war brutality developing among the twelfth-century crusaders might have made sense in the bloody sands of Jerusalem. Back home, though, such arguments violated fundamental precepts. The words Thou shalt not kill don’t suggest many loopholes unless you’re Bernard de Clairvaux. His mother knew she would bear a great orator when she dreamed she bore a barking dog. As a young man, Bernard had founded the Cistercian order, dedicated to fierce poverty in a desolate sinkhole of French earth, the Vale of Absinth.

  Bernard began his defense of the Knights Templar at a conference in Troyes on January 13, 1128. The opponent to this new idea was Jean, bishop of Orléans. He was a notorious sycophant of the king, but there were other rumors. One scribe called him a “public dancer,” and another cast aside euphemism, condemning him as a “succubus and a sodomite.” His nickname among the clergy was “Flora.” His presence at the proceedings may, in fact, have helped.

  Bernard de Clairvaux refined his arguments, eventually putting them in a letter entitled “In Praise of the New Knighthood.” By killing infidels, he argued, the Knights Templar were doing nothing wrong because “either dealing out death or dying, then for Christ’s sake, contains nothing criminal but rather merits glorious reward.” In this way, the Templar “serves his own interests in dying, and Christ’s in killing!” Which is not murder because “when he kills a malefactor this is not homicide but malicide, and he is accounted Christ’s legal executioner against evildoers.”

  Bernard’s words carried the day. The intoxicating combination of monkish righteousness and military ferocity made the knights extremely popular. They assumed the uniform of monks, dressed in white to display their chastity. The code of conduct, or Rule, of the Templars was tough and manly (a feature that would later haunt them). It prohibited the company of women because it is “a perilous thing, for through them the ancient demon denied us the right to live in Paradise.” The Rule stated that “none of you should presume to kiss a woman, neither widow, nor maiden, nor mother, nor sister, nor aunt, nor any other woman; therefore the knights of Christ must always flee from women’s kisses.” Their weapons were painted basic black. Their hair would be cut short, but they grew thick, bushy beards. Violators of the code were punished brutally. An errant knight was forced to eat his meals directly off the floor, and he was forbidden to shoo off the competing dogs.

  The appeal of the Knights Templar made them an unparalleled source of fund-raising. A meeting was convened in Toulouse, France, in 1130 just to coordinate the promiscuous, often competitive donations of property and money to the popular order. Hundreds of estate owners throughout Europe willed their lands to the Templars. The most impressive donor was King Alonso I of Aragon. He ceded one-third of his kingdom in Spain.

  On March 29, 1139, the pope issued the most powerful decree ever given to an order of monks. The Omne Datum Optimum, or “Every Best Gift,” exempted the Knights Templar from local taxes, tithes, and nearly every other financial claim. Their only responsibility was to the pope. The church at last had an army, and now a well-funded one.

  The power and the privileges of the Knights Templar, though, soon caused resentment. In Europe the every-best-gift decree infuriated the local clergy. Their greatest weapon against the secular nobles was the edict, or the suspension of church activities—baptisms, marriages, services, etc. Since the Templars were exempt from such bans, they often carried out those offices, at considerable profit, in the teeth of priests’ complaints.

  Meanwhile, back in the Holy Land, the Knights Templar attacked Damascus in 1148 but were repelled, pursued, and slaughtered. Ibn al-Qalaisi wrote that the corpses of Templars and their horses were “stinking so powerfully that the birds almost fell out of the sky.” With resentment stirring at home, defeats such as these provided the local clergy with a rich source of rumor and innuendo. The knights didn’t help their case much. In 1154 the Templars captured a Moslem courtier named Nasr, who was fleeing Egypt after murdering the caliph of Cairo. Despite his conversion to Christianity, the Templars traded him to the caliph’s four widows for sixty thousand dinars. Before they reached the Nile, the women had ripped off Nasr’s limbs and mutilated the remains. Back in Europe, it didn’t sound good: a Christian handed over for certain execution in exchange for a purse of silver? This story had an unpleasant resonance.

  Over time, the bureaucracy of the Templars grew, and the abundance of detailed amendments to the Rule suggests nasty, often bizarre infighting. One new regulation forbade a brother from leaving the dinner table except for a nosebleed. Another codicil excused from chapel “any brother who is washing his hair.” Could the mighty Templars be going soft?

  The mission of the Templars was getting cloudy as well. For example, after the Fourth Crusade of the early thirteenth century, the Templars were asked by the pope to help combat a potent heresy in the French region of Languedoc. The Templars .—now a century old, all descendents of Holy Land warriors, more Eastern than European in temperament—were pleased to slaughter the Cathar heretics in the French town of Béziers. They had only one question: How could one tell good Catholics from bad? The papal legate Arnaud Amalric responded notoriously, “Tuez-les tous! Dieu reconnaîtra les siens.” It is an answer that is still with us. I have seen it on the T-shirts of marines on leave from Parris Island in South Carolina: “Kill them all! Let God sort ’em out!”

  By the mid-thirteenth century the Templars weren’t performing well in the Holy Land, either. Out of the east had come a new breed of infidel. One witness raged: “Men? They are inhuman and bestial, better called monsters than men. Thirsting for and drinking blood, they butcher the bodies of dogs and humans, and eat them. They wear bulls’ horns, they are armed and squat, with compact bodies; they are invincible in war, and blood to them is a delicious drink.” These were the Khwaraz-mian Turks.

  Their attack on Jerusalem in 1244 was brutal. Only a few Templars survived a Holy City consumed in fire. It would be the Christians’ last look at Jerusalem for almost six centuries, until Napoleon entered.

  In 1291 the last bastion fell. Templars began drifting back to Europe, a land many of them had never seen. Despite total failure, the Templars returned to their European fortresses and vast wealth. The local clergy and the secular nobles had their long knives out for the Templars. A poem written by Rostan Berenguier of Marseilles at the time spoke of the knights “riding their gray horses and taking their ease in the shade and admiring their own fair locks.” The verses ended with the ominous proposal that Europe should “rid ourselves of them for good.” One writer said that the Templar defeats were not merely a military matter, but “a judgment of God against the order which he himself had approved and established.” Their return was not just a decampment; it was a sign from heaven. The Crusades had been wrong. The common folk plunged into a dark mood, troubled by self-doubt and wallowing in the self-pity that comes with defeat. Europe pouted, like a scolded child in search of a scapegoat. “It is no accident,” writes twentieth-century historian Peter Partner, “that representations of Christ at this time begin to place less emphasis on Christ in majesty and more on the man of sorrows, on the passive Christ.” Could the Templars have come in contact with something evil? Might they have wrongly possessed something? Had they done something perverse? There had to be a reason, didn’t there?

  At the end of any day, groups of pilgrims gather, coalesce, and then diverge with ease. For a while, the amateur historians of the road are myself; Louis, AKA the Frenchman Who Has Walked the Road Eleven Times; Javier, the Spanish Banker; Roderick and Jerri, the Young Married British Couple; and a few Germans. But there are other groups that form. Some are keen on the peculiar traditions of the road—a pilgrim is supposed to pause before a statue or throw a coin off a certain bridge. Others are taken by the physicality of the road. They gather and discuss the intricacies of the backpack. And yet others, like the Flemish, have a more carpe diem approach.

  All of us participate in these groupings in s
ome way or another. And in these maneuverings and jostlings, one can feel a kind of low-grade panic. We are trying to assert an approach to the road or an interpretation of it that is in some sense bigger than ourselves. The old vocabulary of the road—that language of suffering, penance, grace, mystery—are terms most of us find uncomfortable in our conversations. There are those who make a show of old-fashioned piety. They assume a public position at every church, praying a little loudly. Or they strike stances of studied pensiveness, make it known that they are writing in their journals, or alert other pilgrims to the beauty of a sunset. They are, in short, annoying: they walk the road with an untroubled confidence in what they are doing. The rest of us are anxious. Madame Debril’s words haunt everyone, even those who may not have encountered her. Are you a true pilgrim?

  This frantic effort to make the road into something else, either through history or tradition or endurance or mere enthusiasm, is tangible. It is a kind of competition. All our discussions are flavored with a subtext of “I know more than you.” At times this competitive edge manifests itself as knowledge—of history, of tradition, of what’s around the next bend. This spirit assumes its most primitive form the next morning in Rabanal.

  As the cocks crow, I pop open my eyes to see the early birds such as Louis and Paolo packing in the auroral light for the walk to Ponferrada. Willem, of course, has left hours ago. The little noises of cinching a strap or stowing a tin cup has sent an electric message through the room. Eyes are opening all around, and the fever felt by the pilgrims is one of primal competition. Sleep too late and walk with the laggards! True pilgrims must rise now! Pack! Down a coffee and hit the road! Within minutes the entire room is buzzing with hectic pilgrims, packing furiously.

  This morning the claim to purity, to true pilgrim status, takes an old, old form. Today’s proof will have nothing of history or solemnity or detached silence. I can feel the group dynamics of the herd gather into a force. It is nothing less than a race.

  I can’t resist (partly out of being a guy, partly out of some vestigial sense of duty). I am stuffing my sleeping bag carelessly into its little sack, and within minutes I am seated with the hostel’s British proprietor in the kitchen, crunching toast and slurping coffee with the others. A stifled hysteria blazes on each face. Were we bulls, this would be a stampede. But we are human, sniffing in the air an ancient odor. Breakfast has all the dignity of “Last one out is a rotten egg.”

  The rain of the last few days has secreted in these mountains enough little pockets of water that the insects are overpowering. The cattle in the neighboring pastures swat the air with their metronomic tails. Throughout the morning’s odd blue light, we pilgrims pass each other and fall back. We look like a line of hasty cowards surrendering in battle, snapping the air before our faces with bandannas.

  The morning’s competition has put us in Ponferrada by early afternoon, giving us enough time to see the place. The famous Knights Templar castle, set in the center of town on the banks of a river, is the size of ten football fields. The city surrounds and is defined by this beautiful ruin.

  “The great mystery of the Knights Templar is buried there, you know,” Louis says. I honestly can’t tell whether he is serious or not.

  “Ask any local,” he says.

  So I do. At the gate to the fortress is a gypsy and her two children. The town employs her to sell postcards. Admission is free. I ask her if the Knights Templar had hidden anything here.

  “The Holy Grail,” she says matter-of-factly. “No one has ever found it.”

  The fortress is a child’s dream. Much of it has been destroyed over the years, but there are enough crenellated walls, oddly shaped turrets, storerooms, ammo depots, and the like to keep this tired Hardy Boy roaming for hours. Up a steep, narrow stone staircase, I clamber onto one of the corner turrets. It is a small space, no larger than a good-size room. A few minutes later two young men in dark blue suits emerge from the staircase, dragging a bag of books. We greet each other in Spanish as I notice name tags on their jackets that say “David” and “John.”

  “Excuse me,” I say in English, “are you two Mormons?”

  “Yes, how could you tell?”

  “Clairvoyance, I guess.”

  They are missionaries from Utah, sent here to proselytize. They try to give me a book of the words of their angel, Moroni, but I explain to them I am a pilgrim to Santiago. I am thinking: One religion at a time, please. Soon they want to know if I have any inside dope on the castle because they know plenty.

  The boys are amateur experts on the Templar castle, and I get the impression that these missionaries play hooky every afternoon and cruise the fortress. (Note to Utah: Not a good idea to send two young men to a Spanish city with a huge empty castle.)

  “Have you found the secret passage?” they ask.

  “Secret passage?”

  “Oh, yeah, follow us.”

  They escort me to the back end of the wall near the river. Outside the fortress a slender hump, like the top of an earthen pipeline, descends to the river. A caved-in hole in the ground opens into a subterranean staircase. I step inside and walk as far down as the light will let me. Here was the answer to at least one Templar secret. In case of war, the knights had hidden access to the freshwater river outside the fortress.

  “Isn’t this place neat?” they ask.

  “Extremely neat.”

  From atop another turret, they point to the remaining walls and corner establishments. Templars were said to be enamored with order, the boys explain. Many of the Templar establishments are built in octagonal shapes, suggesting some kind of cabalistic significance. But this fortress seems to quarrel with any attempt to impose order on it. The wall appears to be twelve-sided, each one of different length. And each turret is shaped differently, with unnatural protrusions of stone. The theory, they explain, is that the odd un-Templaresque shape of this fortress speaks some message to those who might understand it. So far, no one has broken the code.

  After a while I tire of peering into empty stone bed chambers, ammo dumps, and meeting rooms. At the front gate I stop to buy a postcard from the gypsy mother and her kids.

  “Did you find the Holy Grail?” she asks. There is not a trace of irony in her voice.

  “Still looking,” I tell her.

  The king of France at the turn of the fourteenth century was known as an uncommonly handsome man. He was called Philip le Bel, the Beautiful, an ironic epithet for a king of Gothic pitilessness. Because of the French king’s constant financial problems, relations between Paris and Rome had degenerated into a ludicrous state. The Beautiful had exhausted all the usual medieval methods for balancing the books. He had stolen property, he had arrested all the Jews, he had devalued his currency. As a last resort, he tried to tax the church.

  Pope Boniface VIII was a fat and dissolute pontiff. One contemporary described him as “nothing but eyes and tongue in a wholly putrefying body... a devil.” The Beautiful himself openly referred to him as, “Your Fatuity.” But Boniface knew the rules of the game as well.

  In retaliation for France’s new fiscal arrangements, the pope issued a dictum forbidding the taxation of the clergy.

  So the Beautiful closed French borders to the exportation of gold bullion, cutting off Rome’s transalpine money supply. To rub it in, he arrested the bishop of Pamiers and charged him with blasphemy, sorcery, and fornication.

  So the pope issued a bull condemning the arrest and revoked some of the Beautiful’s papal privileges.

  The Beautiful burned his copy of the bull in public.

  The pope delivered a stinging sermon filled with ominous warnings that the church was a creature with one head, not a monster with two.

  The Beautiful issued charges, in absentia, against the pope himself, alleging blasphemy, sorcery, and sodomy.

  The pope excommunicated the Beautiful. He compared the French to dogs and hinted that they lacked souls. His nuncios leaked a rumor that the pontiff might well excommuni
cate the entire country.

  The peasants were stirred by such a threat, and the Beautiful quickly grasped that revolution was a better future to them than excommunication. So he acted fast, dispatching an army to Anagni, where the pope was staying. He placed the eighty-six-year-old pontiff under house arrest. The locals managed to save him, but a month later Boniface passed away. Some allege he succumbed to shock at the outrage; other sources say that he beat his head against a wall until he died.

  After a pliable pope assumed office, the Beautiful returned to his economic problems. His wife died in 1305, and since he no longer would have to kiss a woman’s lips, he applied for membership in the Knights Templar. The permanent knights of the Paris temple may have suspected that his intentions were less than pious and did something almost unspeakable: they blackballed the king.

  The following year, the grand master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, returned to Europe from the Mediterranean in a show of luxury. He was accompanied by sixty knights and a baggage train of mules laden with gold and jewels. Around that time the Beautiful was more desperate than ever to solve his messy state finances: he tripled the price of everything in France overnight. Open rebellion broke out in the streets. Rioters threatened to kill him. He fled to the Parisian temple and begged the knights for protection. It was all too humiliating.

  So in the fall of 1307, the Beautiful arranged a state action impressive even in these days of data highways and rapid deployment teams. On September 14 he mass-mailed a set of sealed orders to every bailiff, seneschal, deputy, and officer in his kingdom. The functionaries were forbidden under penalty of death to open the papers before Thursday night, October 12.

  The following Friday morning, alert to their secret instructions, armies of officials slipped out of their barracks. By sundown nearly all the Knights Templar throughout France were in jails. One estimate puts the arrests at two thousand, another as high as five thousand. Only twenty escaped. The initial charges were vague, but they didn’t sound good: “A bitter thing, a lamentable thing, a thing horrible to think of and terrible to hear, a detestable crime, an execrable evil, an abominable act, a repulsive disgrace, a thing almost inhuman, indeed alien to all humanity, has, thanks to the reports of several trustworthy persons, reached our ear, smiting us grievously and causing us to tremble with the utmost horror.” What followed was so foul, according to folklore, that Templar sympathizers cursed the day itself, condemning it as evil—Friday the thirteenth—whose reputation never recovered.