Secrets of the Knights Templar

by S. J. Hodge

  Templar relics

  It was said that Jacques de Molay and Geoffrey de Charney were so calm when they went to their deaths that they ‘brought from all who saw them much admiration and surprise for the constancy of their death and final denial’. Later, under cover of darkness, friars of the Augustinian monastery nearby and other people collected the charred bones of the dead Templars as relics of saints.

  Illuminated manuscript of c.1410, representing the execution of Jacques de Molay. The king is looking down from above, but this was artistic licence as it is doubtful whether he was present when Jacques de Molay and Geoffrey de Charney were burned at the stake.

  Suppression

  The Chinon Parchment was never made public. By May 1310, nearly 600 accused Templars decided to try to save themselves and denied their earlier confessions. The king immediately put his lawyers to work and 54 Templars were suddenly found guilty of being relapsed heretics. ‘Relapsed heretics’ were those who had been previously accused of unorthodox opinions or actions who returned to their previous beliefs after recanting. According to Inquisition rules, relapsed heretics might return to their previous unorthodox ideas and corrupt others, so they were to be burnt at the stake. Philip’s lawyers argued that by confessing and then denying those confessions, the Templars were relapsed heretics. Yet even after the 54 men had been put to their deaths, the Templars who remained in French prisons continued to proclaim their innocence. By that time, with the Pope’s absolution still not made public, general opinion of the Templars had plummeted. Many church officials, nobles, lawyers and other members of the public believed that there must be some truth in the accusations or they would have been released by now, so it was time the Pope used his powers and either saved them or abolished the Order entirely.

  Still the Pope did not speak out. Then, bowing to pressure from the king, in October 1311, he called the 15th Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church in Vienne, chiefly to discuss the withdrawal of papal support for the Knights Templar. The majority of the 300 members of the commission, which included cardinals, bishops and archbishops, were opposed to the abolition of the Order, believing that there was insufficient evidence to condemn them under the order of heresy, but the king was pressing. On the second day of the Council, he appeared in person and finally imposed his will on Clement. In the presence of Philip and his three sons, the Pope’s bull, Vox in Excelso, dated 22 March 1312, was read. It said that, although he had no sufficient reasons for a formal condemnation of the Order, because of the King of France’s hatred of them, the scandalous nature of their trial, and the probable dilapidation of their property in every Christian land, he suppressed it by virtue of his sovereign power, but not by any definitive sentence. In another bull of 2 May 1312, he granted all the Templars’ property to the Hospitallers. However, Philip managed to become the chief legatee of its great wealth in France. Straight after the Council meeting, he wrote to the Pope stating that he reserved the rights of the monarch to share in the Templars’ property, and he made the Hospitallers pay him so much, in theory to cover his costs in bringing the Templars to trial, that they were left worse off than before.

  An illumination of the burial of Philip ‘Le Bel’ who died suddenly after falling from his horse, just months after Jacques de Molay purportedly declared his curse.

  Nearly two years later, on 18 March 1314, the most important Templars in custody, Jacques de Molay, Hugh de Pairaud, Geoffrey de Gonneville and Geoffrey de Charney, were served their sentences. (Raimbaud de Caron had died earlier in prison.) As self-confessed heretics they were to be condemned to imprisonment for the rest of their lives. Hugh de Pairaud and Geoffrey de Gonneville did not speak, but after all the torture, trials and tribulations they had suffered, Jacques de Molay and Geoffrey de Charney loudly protested. They proclaimed the falsity of the accusations and confessions, the honesty and piety of every man in the Order and the wrongs that had been heaped upon them. When he heard of this, the king was furious. That same evening, the two old men were taken to a small island on the River Seine, the Île de la Cité (then called Île des Javiaux or Île aux Juifs), where they were tied to a stake and burned to death in front of Notre Dame.

  The Templar curse

  From the moment of their deaths, rumours of a Templar curse began to circulate. Although not verified, it was said that from his execution pyre, Jacques de Molay cursed King Philip IV of France and his descendants, declaring also that he would meet the king and Pope Clement in front of God before the year was out. A little over a month later, on 20 April 1314, Clement died of the long, painful, but unidentified illness he had suffered from for some time, and on 29 November that same year, King Philip died when he fell from a horse while hunting. The large sums of money he had taken from the Templars were swallowed up in the French exchequer, and within 14 years, the 300-year-old Capetian dynasty, the oldest European royal house, from which he had descended, died out.

  It is not known how much Templar treasure Philip took while the brothers were imprisoned, but that and the amount he took after their suppression resolved his bankruptcy problems. Beyond France across Christendom, opinion held that the King of France had simply been after the Order’s wealth and that they were not guilty. Philip was the instigator and driving force behind their downfall, but there had been additional factors. Many were jealous of the Templars’ power, success and solidarity. Others had much to gain from the Order’s termination. At least one person is documented as having deliberately spread malicious stories about them before they were arrested. In 1305, Esquin de Floyran had been expelled from the Order, and soon after he went to King James of Aragon to impart some shocking information about the Templars’ secret, heretical activities, which James dismissed as nonsense. So Floyran took his tales to King Philip in France, where he met with a far more receptive audience. Philip sent spies to watch the Templars and they reported back that Floyran’s stories were true. It is still not clear who these spies were and how they infiltrated such a close brotherhood. Most of the stories seem implausible and it appears that Floyran bore the Order a grudge, but some activities can be explained, such as the Templars’ alleged initiation rites. Nearly all the Templars denied practising sodomy or ever witnessing it. Hugh de Pairaud was the only Templar mentioned in the Chinon Parchment who said that he had seen the head of an idol and that during his initiation, he had been told ‘to abstain from partnership with women and, if he was unable to restrain his lust, to join himself with brothers of the Order’.

  From a 19th-century painting of Edward II (1284–1327), who was also called Edward of Caernarfon, and was King of England from 1307 until he was deposed by his wife Isabella (daughter of Philip IV of France) in January 1327.

  Beyond France

  While torture and suppression were occurring inside France, elsewhere the Templars were treated with far more respect. Initially, news of the arrests was received with disbelief, chiefly thought to be ill-founded rumours. Then rulers began receiving letters from Philip or his lawyers, telling of the accusations and asking that any Templars living in those countries be arrested at once. Still reluctant to act, however, when the Pope issued his bull in November 1307, Pastoralis praeeminentiae, avoidance of the issue was no longer possible. Monarchs across Europe ordered Templars living in their lands to be taken into custody. In many cases this simply meant that they were put under house arrest in their own preceptories, and as no Templar outside France was tortured, no confessions of heresy emerged. The King of France sent Inquisitors to some countries but they were largely ineffectual. In England, for instance, the Inquisitors asked the Archbishop of Canterbury if they could take the Templars to Ponthieu which was one of King Edward II’s French assets, but as it was essentially part of France, it was also a place where torture could be used. Edward II refused and subsequently no confessions of the worship of false idols or strange heads were forthcoming. Kissing was admitted to, but that was only at the initiation ceremony, which was customary with several order
s. When a new knight was accepted as a Templar, the Master placed the white mantle with its red cross over the shoulders of the candidate and, after reciting psalms and prayers, the Master and the Chaplain kissed the new entrant on the mouth. The Templars explained that the kissing was a sign of their total obedience to the Order and it was not the only order to do this.

  In all, the dissolution of the Knights Templar was achieved with little bloodshed outside of France. In some places there had been no arrests. In others, Templars’ lands were taken into royal custody. In Cyprus, owing to the Templars’ support of Amaury de Lusignan over King Henry II, the king destroyed their headquarters in 1310. As well as the 56 Templars who were burned at the stake, many died in prison. Many survivors joined other religious institutions, but even more were unaccounted for. Contemporary opinions of the Order varied; but whether the view was for or against them, feelings remained strong. Over the following centuries, opinions softened and stories, poems and operas romanticized their memory (see The French Revolution). Speculation as to where they went, what they did and whether or not any of the accusations were true have continued, escalating, changing or diminishing in the public’s consciousness. Some ideas have gained greater popularity than others, such as the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, the True Cross and the Shroud of Turin. Others that emerged later, experienced a surge of popularity, such as the 19th-century story about a mysterious event during the Battle of Bannockburn.

  THE MYTHS

  Altarpiece of the Dominicans: Noli Me Tangere, c.1470–80, tempera on panel, from the workshop of Martin Schongauer (c.1440–91), Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar, France. This illustrates the account in the Gospel of St John when Mary Magdalene encounters the risen Christ after his Crucifixion and he says to her: ‘Don’t touch me!’

  Beliefs that they were involved in everything from the Cathar heresy to Masonic conspiracies, mysteries connected with the Bible, including the Shroud of Christ and Mary Magdalene, and other notions including hidden treasure and arcane knowledge, have continued to evolve about the Knights Templar since their demise.

  Perhaps because they lasted for many more years, or perhaps because they did not have such a chivalrous reputation, the Hospitallers never acquired the same mysterious and romantic aura as the Knights Templar. Legends that began while they existed and continue to this day surrounded a number of astonishing beliefs and secret rituals that the Templars were supposed to have lived by, and various extraordinary objects that they were supposed to have owned. When they fought back against accusations in the early 14th-century, instead of the stories diminishing, they kept being added to and, in the end, the Order faced 127 allegations: accusations of heretical behaviour and strange possessions. These charges were almost identical to those that had been made previously by King Philip IV of France against Jews, Pope Boniface, and the Italian bankers known collectively as the Lombards.

  Mary Magdalene

  One of the tentative charges the Templars faced was that they worshipped Mary Magdalene. As this was a weak accusation, it did not last long and soon disappeared off their list of complaints. That they venerated Mary Magdalene was well known, and usual among devout Christians – particularly among religious confraternities. Mary Magdalene was a female follower of Jesus and one of his close friends; some say she was his wife, although the Church does not. She was present at Christ’s crucifixion, helped to prepare his body for burial and it was she who discovered his empty tomb two days after they had buried him. As with many biblical stories, parts of her story are ambiguous, or they are interpreted differently by different denominations. Nonetheless, she remains honoured as one of the most important Christian saints, and most Catholics, including the Templars, revered her as a sinner whom Jesus redeemed, as a fundamental aspect of Christianity. The Templar Rule stated that Mary Magdalene should be venerated as well as other saints, but particularly on her feast day. This was 22 July and the Templars openly and legitimately recognized that day in their calendar, as did many other Catholics by saying special prayers to her, while across Europe, fairs were held in her honour. The fact that many chapels, churches and colleges were named after her proves her significance across Christendom. The Second Crusade was deliberately launched from Vézelay, as the great abbey church there was believed to contain Mary Magdalene’s bones, which would supposedly bring good fortune to the Crusaders. The relics had been verified as belonging to Mary Magdalene in a papal document of 1058, but after some years, interest in them waned. How the bones reached France was explained in a myth contained in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend. According to the myth, after the death of Jesus, Mary Magdalene was exiled and sailed to Provence to preach and pray. She then lived out her life as a hermit, clothed only in her long hair and eating manna from heaven.

  Initially, when veneration of Mary Magdalene was brought up as a possible accusation against the Templars, it was probable that King Philip believed he could trick the Templars into admitting they worshipped goddesses. But, either when this was vehemently denied, or when more shocking charges were thought up, the notion of worshipping Mary Magdalene in the wrong way was abandoned. It was not until the 20th century that Mary Magdalene was brought up in connection with the Templars in a sensational story. It took two bestselling books to rekindle the interest in an area that had been forgotten about over 600 years before.

  A 14th-century illumination of Chrétien de Troyes’ story that first mentioned the ‘Grail’, which was a golden dish. This shows, left: Perceval receiving a sword from the king; right: The Procession of the Grail.

  The idea of Mary Magdalene being the wife of Jesus was suggested from one main consideration. In traditional Jewish life, women’s freedom was severely limited, so it seems highly unlikely that Mary Magdalene could associate freely with Jesus and his male apostles without a chaperone, unless she was married to one of them. Most women were restricted to the home under their father or husband’s authority. They could not go out in public alone, nor could they speak to strangers or even to a man they knew without having a chaperone. Outside the home, all women had to be veiled. But Jesus is known to have questioned many of the old Jewish customs, and he overturned many of them. Openly refusing to follow conventions established by the three main Jewish religious groups of the day – the Essenes, the Pharisees and the Sadducees – he made a point of treating women and men as equals. There are many examples of his innovative approach in the New Testament, including his teaching of women, his discussions with them, his curing of one woman’s menstrual problems and his remedy for a Jewish woman with a ‘Satanic spirit’, whom he called ‘daughter of Abraham’, implying that she was equal to male Jews whom he called ‘sons of Abraham’. He accepted women in his closest circle of friends, including Mary Magdalene, ‘the other Mary’, Joanna, Susanna and ‘many others’, and more women than men were present at his crucifixion. He also had particular concerns for widows and he challenged the established Jewish laws of divorce, from being heavily in favour of men, to being more equal for all.

  Another reason it has been suggested that Jesus was married is because he was a rabbi and rabbis are expected to marry. But there were groups of celibate Jews and movements within the religion (including the Essenes) where marriage was not compulsory or even expected. However, as Jesus did not say anything about either celibacy or marriage, the notion remains open to speculation and cannot be proved. Even in the apocryphal gospel of Philip, where Jesus refers to Mary Magdalene as his ‘companion’, that may just be what he means. The word ‘koinonos’ is Coptic, and translates as friend or comrade, nothing more. Contrary to claims, it does not mean spouse (although there is no reason why a spouse cannot also be a companion). This is a topic that will continue to intrigue and fascinate until it can be substantiated one way or another.

  The True Cross and the Holy Grail

  The secrecy that surrounded the Knights Templar and the speed with which they were disbanded has given rise to many of the legends about them. The c
onjecture that they found something under Temple Mount lies at the centre of most of these legends and theories, even though – or perhaps especially because – there is no physical or documentary evidence. The piece of the True Cross that the Templars carried into every battle and lost at the Battle of Hattin was almost certainly a piece of wood discovered in the fourth century by Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine, later revered as St Helena. Across the world, numerous pieces of timber have been claimed to be further pieces of the True Cross, but nothing has been established and the piece that was lost by the Crusaders in 1187 was never recovered. With its assumed holy connections, it was believed to have mystical powers and, like no other relic, it raised the morale of the Crusaders. Its loss caused Christians across Europe the utmost grief.

  Other legends associated with the Templars include mysteries about the Holy Grail, which has also been linked with the legends of King Arthur. First appearing in Perceval, le Conte du Graal (Perceval, the Story of the Grail), a work of fiction written between 1181 and 1190 by the poet-composer Chrétien de Troyes (d. 1190), the ‘golden grail’ or golden serving dish was nothing to do with either Jesus or with the Templars. But as Chrétien’s story gained in popularity, the idea of the Grail captured the collective imagination and it soon became affiliated with such things as the chalice from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper and then later ‘Sangreal’ or a holy bloodline. Chrétien wrote the story for his patron, Philip the Count of Flanders, at the end of the 12th century. Believed by most to be unfinished, the story tells of the golden dish being carried by a beautiful damsel called Blanchefleur. Perceval, a young knight, watches the procession with the damsel and the shining dish enter a ghostly castle, owned by an injured king, but the next morning everyone, including the castle, has vanished. Perceval cannot believe it until he meets an old woman, who tells him that the castle is magic but suggests that if he had asked the meaning of the Grail and who it serves, he would have healed the king and his afflicted castle and it would not have disappeared. The old woman then sets King Arthur’s knights on a quest to find out what the Grail means. The story digresses to the adventures of Sir Gawain, another knight, before returning to Perceval, and there it breaks off, as Chrétien died before finishing it.