Secrets of the Knights Templar

by S. J. Hodge

  A Renaissance relief by Nanni di Bando showing stonemasons, architects and carpenters, c.1414/17.

  Freemasonry

  After the Order’s downfall, it is believed that many ex-Templars joined other orders and groups, not simply those in Spain and Portugal that were reformed after their demise. But with no consistent records, the issue became confused when some associations such as the Freemasons adopted Templar symbols and traditions.

  Many Freemasons have alleged that they descend directly from the Knights Templar, often relaying the legend that after their suppression, some Templars fled to Scotland and found refuge with a lodge of Scottish stonemasons. In the story, the ex-Templars taught the stonemasons the virtues of chivalry and obedience, using the builders’ tools as metaphors, and eventually they began rebuilding a new version of the original order, including members from the stonemasons they had been teaching. This order allegedly existed in secret from around 1550 until the formation of the United Grand Lodge of England in 1717.

  Another story that relates to Freemasonry begins in the late medieval period, when there were two kinds of masons: stonemasons who built walls and foundations of buildings with rough, hard stone, and masons who created fine carved façades on softer stone. These latter masons were known as freestone masons, which became abbreviated to freemasons. As freelance workers, the freemasons travelled around Europe and stayed in lodges when working away from home. It is said that, as both Christians and masons, they were particularly interested in the Old Testament’s Second Book of Chronicles that gave details about King Solomon, his worker Hiram and the building of the Temple, particularly its detailed proportions and the huge bronze pillars known as Jachin and Boaz and the ‘sea of bronze’ (see Chapter 2). Information in the Bible about Hiram is sparse, but it is made clear that he was extremely skilled and, as such, he fascinated the freemasons. Gradually over many years, legends formed around Hiram Abiff as the freemasons called him. From these legends, freemasons acquired certain rituals and traditions, and individual groups began forming to support each other, rather like guilds. Aware that they needed to raise their standing in society to gain greater respect, the freemasons began inviting influential people to serve as their patrons, and by the turn of the 18th century, these prestigious patrons known as ‘speculative masons’ outnumbered the ‘operative masons’ or freemasons themselves.

  An early Freemasonry ceremony in the 18th century, at the start of the organization. The Freemasons created their own ceremonial rituals, many of which have become confused with authentic history about the Knights Templar.

  In 1717, four London ‘Lodges’ – the name the freemasons gave their individual groups – merged to create the United Grand Lodge of England, with a gentleman – not a mason – elected to serve as their Grand Master. The idea spread across Europe and within 15 years, Masonic Lodges had been established in the Netherlands, France and Germany. A culture of secrecy developed around them, giving rise to many stories and mysteries about them. One of the first stories came in 1760 from a Freemason in Germany called George Frederick Johnson, who was possibly French, but who claimed to be Scottish. Declaring that he knew the secrets of the Knights Templar, Johnson insisted that in the 12th century while living on Temple Mount, the Templars had acquired treasure that had belonged to the Jewish Essenes. This treasure was handed down to each Templar Grand Master until Jacques de Molay, who in Johnson’s story is called Hiram. On the night before he was burned at the stake, Jacques de Molay (or Hiram) ordered a group of Templars to enter the Paris Temple to take the Templar treasure and escape with it. According to Johnson, this was the point at which 18 Templar galleys were filled with their treasure and sailed from La Rochelle to Scotland, where the Templars renamed themselves Freemasons.

  Several facts make this story improbable. On the evening before his death, neither Jacques de Molay nor the authorities knew that he was going to be burned at the stake the following day. At that time in 1314, it was possible but not likely that there were some free Templars in France, but by then the Order had been dissolved for two years, and most French ex-Templars were probably either still lingering in prisons or had escaped abroad. It was too dangerous to remain in France. There may have been a few who were waiting to help Jacques de Molay to escape, however. The main difficulty would have been that from the moment of the arrests in 1307, the Paris Temple was heavily guarded by the king’s men, and so it would have been virtually impossible to enter.

  With no record of any groups called Freemasons until the 18th century and the notion of the Templars changing from a holy order of knights to a non-religious organization, Johnson’s story seems improbable, but he initiated an idea that Freemasonry descended directly from the Knights Templar. Freemasonry was never a religious order and, contrary to the Knights Templar, it originally had an anti-Catholic bias, prompting Pope Clement XII to condemn it in a papal bull of 1738. With its many rituals, secret passwords and signs, however, it was always going to be the subject of a wide variety of criticism and conspiracy theories. As well as connections with the Templars, Freemasonry has been linked to Jack the Ripper, Zionism, witchcraft and Devil worship, but there is no evidence about any of it. Most Masonic legends were openly made up as allegories. Robert L. D. Cooper, Freemason and curator at the Grand Lodge of Scotland Museum and Library in Edinburgh, wrote in 2006:

  None of the traditional histories of any of the branches of Freemasonry are, or were, intended to be taken literally. Our forebears in all the Masonic Orders manufactured suitable ‘pasts’ for allegorical purposes. They did so with romantic notions at heart but understood that these histories manufactured by, and for, themselves were not literal truths.

  ROBERT L. D. COOPER, THE ROSSLYN HOAX?

  Switzerland

  That some Templars escaped to Switzerland is another theory that has been purported by a number of scholars. In their book of 1998, The Warriors and Bankers, a History of the Knights Templar, 1307 to the Present, Alan Butler and Stephen Dafoe conclude that the Templars helped to form Switzerland at the beginning of the 14th century, when they were first being persecuted in France. This theory discounts the ships sailing away to Scotland or Canada and America, but explains that contrary to that notion, the Templars put on ordinary clothes, shaved off their beards and separated their treasure into small, manageable amounts, then escaped overland to the mountains of Switzerland. Not widely accepted by academics, the theory is nonetheless worthy of consideration.

  Many have commented on the similarity between the Templar flag of the splayed red cross on a white background and the Swiss national flag of a plain white cross on a red ground. They have common roots, but it is unlikely that the Swiss flag developed from the Templars’. The design of a white cross on a red field is believed to have originated in the war banners of Emperor Constantine after 312 CE when he converted to Christianity. It was used to symbolize the Emperor’s role as protector of Christianity. In the 14th century, a loose confederation of the small cantons or states was formed, and in 1339, in the Battle of Laupen the confederacy fought against the Austrian Habsburgs. To contrast with the red St George’s cross of the Habsburgs, every Swiss fighter wore a white linen cross stitched on to his chest, sleeve and thigh. Meanwhile, in Portugal, the Order of Christ, which derived from the Templars, began using a splayed white cross on a red background as their banner as soon as they formed in 1319. The white cross on red was not introduced as an actual flag in Switzerland until the Napoleonic period at the turn of the 19th century and not introduced as an official national flag until 1889.

  The hypothesis that many Templars escaped to Switzerland arose mainly because the Swiss, like the Templars, became renowned for their astute banking practices, their prowess on the battlefield and their religious tolerance. As Switzerland is adjacent to France, it would have been relatively easy for fleeing Templars to reach from various regions across France. Additionally, the mountains had many potential hiding places for individuals or small groups of men.
The theory that the Templars were forewarned of their arrests in France in 1307 makes sense of the conjecture that they sent several of their brethren over the mountains with their treasure in advance, rather than to ports and ships where they would have been seen and reported or caught by officials. No such reports or arrests were made. Although early Swiss history is extremely indistinct, the founding of the first largely independent and democratic Swiss states – or cantons – at the end of the 13th and beginning of the 14th centuries, roughly corresponds with the beginnings of the Templars’ persecution in France. Some unsubstantiated tales of knights dressed in white appearing and helping the locals to gain their independence against foreign domination are legendary, but none of it was officially documented. During the medieval period, Switzerland as a region belonged to the Holy Roman Empire. As the Habsburg dynasty became stronger and sought to gain even greater power, the disparate mountain communities tried to defend their independence. Until then these communities had been free from any authority other than the Emperor. Battles ensued and the earliest cantons of the 14th century were joined by forces from the city-states of Lucerne, Zürich and Berne, as well as allegedly by the mysterious knights who helped them to defeat the Habsburg armies and retain their autonomy.

  A woodcut from 1550 of the town of Sion in Switzerland, showing its many buildings, city walls and castles that resemble Templar buildings and were erected fairly rapidly, soon after the Templars’ suppression.

  Before the cantons were formed, the area was made up of several separate fiefdoms, but once established, each canton became an independent sovereign state with its own borders, army and currency. The individual cantons eventually allied into the country we know as Switzerland. As conflicts with the Habsburgs ended, banking and farming became the predominant industries in Switzerland, and while these industries were developing, several towns were built. One, named Sion after the French word Zion for Holy Land, was built high in the Alps. Alongside the domestic buildings were two large castles that closely resemble Templar fortresses in Outremer. Concurrently, Swiss banking began, with many of the methods invented by the Templars, such as international transfers, current accounts, safe-deposit boxes, pensions and strict confidentiality. These similarities have led some to believe that many Templars lived in and built towns like Sion, and that banking in Switzerland was started by the Templars. Yet with the strict Swiss laws of preserving secrecy and little reliable documentation from the period, the link with the Order is another theory that remains difficult to prove either way.

  Skulls and bones

  A Masonic legend tells of three Templars searching the site of Jacques de Molay’s death on the night of his execution in March 1314 and finding only his skull and femurs. The three Templars purportedly took the bones and created the first flag bearing the skull and crossbones symbol. This is usually accepted by many historians to be purposely fabricated to form a Masonic legend and was never meant to be taken literally. Most significantly, it is highly unlikely that there were any free Templars in Paris on the night of the deaths of Jacques de Molay and Geoffrey de Charney.

  Although it is not understood exactly when the symbol first came into use, the skull and crossbones has been found on medieval tombs in various European countries, used as a sign of death, such as during one of the epidemics of the Black Death in 1348. It was also used later by pirates as a warning to others. The Templars did use the skull as a symbol on several of their later gravestones, including some in Scotland, but this was long before their persecution and the burning of Jacques de Molay so the story of the Templars finding his bones in his funeral pyre does not fit. Skulls and bones were long used as symbols in Europe as the ultimate ‘memento mori’ or ‘vanitas’: reminders of death and mortality, that life is transient and that death puts an end to all worldly achievements, contrasting with the everlasting nature of faith. The symbol also links with Christianity, as the place of Christ’s crucifixion was called ‘Golgotha’, which translates as ‘the Place of the Skull’. The ‘green man’, an architectural decoration often found in churches and other buildings, which also appears in the Rosslyn Chapel and at Temple Church, has sometimes been described as representing a skull, with the crossed vegetation behind his head as the bones, but it is more often seen as a symbol of rebirth, representing fertility, growth and the abundance of nature.

  Cat worship

  When the Templars were imprisoned from 1307, the notion of skulls was mixed up with the accusation that they worshipped a head (see Chapter 7). Occasionally said to be a skull or a demon, the head was also sometimes said to be the head of a cat. Without any definitive evidence, several legends and tales have become intertwined and confused. The idea that the head was not human was another aspect of confusion around this issue. A cat was the most common creature mentioned in relation to the Templars. During the medieval period, many were suspicious of cats and people who owned them. Many innocent women were accused of witchcraft because their pet cats were perceived to be their ‘familiars’: demons or spirits from European folklore needed to assist witches in performing spells and curses. Familiars were believed to appear in various forms, often as animals, such as toads, owls or mice for instance, but most frequently as cats. Disparately, in ancient Egyptian mythology, Sekhmet was a warrior-goddess, depicted as a cat or lioness, and Bast was another Egyptian goddess bearing the head of a cat. If it could be proved that the Templars worshipped a cat, whether this was perceived as a familiar or a pagan idol, the Pope would have instantly excommunicated the entire Order. So ultimately, it was almost irrelevant whether the cat head was a familiar or an ancient Egyptian goddess. Either way, if the confession that they worshipped a cat could be extracted from them, there would subsequently be a straightforward charge of heresy. However, this never happened. Although they may have owned cats to inhibit the numbers of mice and rats in their farms, preceptories, mills and castles, there was not a shred of evidence of any form of cat worship. It was an elusive accusation that the Inquisitors failed to make much of. At the time, as it was not uncommon for any religious house to own relics and the Templars may have possessed the supposed bones or teeth of saints, but pagan or Satanic worship was never established at the Templar trials.

  One thing that the Templars never worshipped was the goat-headed, winged demon that is featured on Tarot cards. This strange image was drawn in the 19th century by Eliphas Lévi (1810–75), a French magician and author on the occult, who originally studied to enter the Roman Catholic priesthood but fell in love and so was never ordained. His first treatise on magic appeared in 1855, called Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (Dogma and Ritual of High Magic). In the work, he depicted the goat-headed demon that he called Baphomet: an imaginary pagan deity that he revived from the 11th or 12th century as a figure of occultism and Satanism. As discussed on page 187, Baphomet had first appeared, probably as a corruption of the word ‘Mahomet’ or ‘Muhammad,’ and was mentioned in the Templar charges, but not pursued as a serious accusation. Even though Lévi implied that the image had Templar origins, the goat image was his own invention.

  One of the carved ‘green men’ on the walls of Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. These faces are thought to represent fertility, growth and nature – although some believe they are associated with the skull and crossbones.

  A cat’s head may have entered the mix of accusations against the Templars because many of their churches featured carved heads as decoration. Often appearing in the spandrels, between the arches or by the doors, the heads were created by freestone masons, sometimes for their symbolic connotations, sometimes as a signature (the heads were occasionally portraits of the masons who made them) and sometimes purely for decorative purposes. Some of these heads are grotesque, with fearsome, ugly faces (presumably a warning to those praying below of what to expect in Hell and not the masons’ portraits); some represent monarchs; some are ordinary or even grimacing faces; and others represent lions or other feline-type creatures – probably there for protect
ion as a residuary of pagan superstitions. There was nothing unusual about having heads like these in Gothic churches across Europe and Outremer, but King Philip had an ulterior motive, and anything remotely suspicious was focused upon and used against the Templars.

  Bornholm Island, Denmark

  One place where the Templars were not documented as being was Scandinavia. Yet there is an island in Denmark that is often discussed in conjunction with them and their possible hidden treasure. Situated approximately 40 kilometres (25 miles) southeast of the southern tip of Sweden, the Danish island of Bornholm forms an area of approximately 600 square kilometres (230 square miles). In medieval times, it was known as Burgunderland or Burgunderholm, as it is believed to have been home to the Burgundinians, who came from a previously Germanic tribe called the Burgundes that inhabited Scandinavia. After migrating south, they settled predominantly on the island of Bornholm and, between 1050 and 1150, they converted to Christianity.

  One of the four round churches on Bornholm Island, Denmark, this is the St. Olaf Church of Ølsker. Although the construction of each church is complex and based on advanced architectural knowledge, there is no evidence to link them with the Templars.