The Tragedy of the Templars

by Michael Haag

  But there was more to the mission than that. Among the emissaries sent by Baldwin to the West was Hugh of Payns. Certainly the Master of the Temple was involved in the arrangements that brought Fulk to Jerusalem, but he was also sent to raise funds and as many knights as possible for Baldwin’s long-cherished ambition of conquering Damascus. Despite a treaty with Jerusalem, Damascus remained a constant threat, as shown by the attack against Nablus in 1113. Also, as Outremer was hardly more than a long, thin strip along the Mediterranean coast from the Amanus mountains in the north to the Gulf of Aqaba to the south, capturing Damascus would give the crusader lands strategic depth.

  Yet at the same time there was disaffection among the Templars, a crisis of confidence or an apparent loss of faith in the direction they were taking. A letter written in about 1128 reveals the turmoil within the order. The author signed himself Hugh Peccator – that is Hugh the Sinner, who is thought to have been Hugh of Payns. Whoever wrote the letter, it was addressed directly to the Templars.

  We have heard that certain of your number have been troubled by some people of no wisdom, as though your profession, by which you have dedicated your life to carrying arms against the enemies of the faith and peace in defence of Christians, as though, I say, that profession were illicit or harmful, that is either a sin or an obstacle to greater advancement.

  It goes on to say that this is the tempting of the devil who

  under the pretence of piety tries to lead you into the pitfall of error. [. . .] He tells the knights of Christ to lay down their arms, not to wage war, to flee tumults, to seek out the wilderness, so that when he shows the appearance of humility he takes away true humility. What is pride if not to disobey what God has imposed on one?

  Clearly there were voices who argued against the notion of an order of monks that used the sword, and agreement with those voices was heard within the Templars themselves. The Templars had at first been asked to play a defensive role, to act as a protective militia for pilgrims travelling from one holy place to another along the roads. But Baldwin’s plan to attack Damascus meant that the Templars were being asked not to recover or protect but to take the offensive against the enemy in order to secure strategic goals necessary for the survival of Outremer. ‘In time of peace by abstinence and fasting you fight against your own flesh [. . .] but in war you fight with arms against the enemies of peace who harm or wish to harm.’14 Templars, warned Hugh Peccator, must not surrender to the argument of bogus piety or humility; they must accept that what they do is no sin, that they act in accordance with the will of God. The letter was written at a decisive moment for the future direction of the order and was meant to silence doubts and to stiffen resolve while Hugh of Payns was on his mission to the West to secure resources and support.

  According to The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Hugh of Payns’ recruiting drive was fantastically successful: ‘He summoned people out to Jerusalem, and then there went with him and after him so large a number of people as never had done since the first expedition in the days of Pope Urban.’15 Whatever the reality, Baldwin acquired the wherewithal to mount his assault against Damascus in late 1129.

  As Baldwin marched his army towards Damascus he sent out detachments, mostly men recently arrived from the West, to gather food and supplies; but they lacked discipline and wandered widely, distracted by opportunities for grabbing booty for themselves, and were caught off-guard by the Turkish cavalry and were overwhelmed; only forty-six escaped. Nevertheless Baldwin with the main force of his army, which included numbers of Templars, pressed forward to attack; but then the skies opened, rain fell in torrents, the ground turned to mud, the way became impassable, and Baldwin could do nothing but retreat in good order to Jerusalem. The records do not say whether the foragers cut down by the Turkish cavalry were men specifically recruited for the Templars by Hugh of Payns; we know only that some Templars were with the main army. And that is almost the last that is heard of the Templars until the arrival of the Second Crusade in 1148.

  The silence about the Templars is all the more surprising because it was precisely at this time that they burst into the historical record in the West. Baldwin II had sent Hugh of Payns sailing westwards not only in the service of the kingdom of Jerusalem but also with the intention of gaining support and recognition for the Templars from the highest ranks of the Church and states in Europe. The king had prepared the ground for Hugh by writing to Bernard, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux, explaining that the Templars were seeking approval of their order from the pope, who they hoped would also initiate a subsidy that would help fund the battle against the enemies of the faith who were threatening the very existence of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Baldwin knew his man: Bernard had already written to the pope objecting to a proposal put forward by a fellow abbot to lead a mission of Cistercians to the East, saying that what the Holy Land really needed was ‘fighting knights not singing and wailing monks’.16

  Bernard of Clairvaux, who was made a saint within twenty years of his death, was one of the most influential and charismatic figures of the medieval Church. A volatile and passionate young man of an aristocratic family, he was devoted to the Virgin Mary; once in the later years of his life, as he stood before a statue of the Virgin imploring that she might be a mother to him, the statue came to life and offered him her breasts to suck. Bernard deliberately sought out the Cistercian order, a stricter form of the Benedictines and known for its austerity, and in 1113 joined its monastery at Cîteaux. Three years later, at the age of twenty-six, he founded a new Cistercian house and became its abbot, calling the monastery Clairvaux, meaning the ‘Valley of Light’. By the time Pope Honorius II was elected in 1124, Bernard was already regarded as one of the most outstanding churchmen of France; he attended important ecclesiastical assemblies, and his opinion was regularly sought by papal legates.

  Significantly Clairvaux was built on land given to Bernard by Hugh, the count of Champagne, whose vassal was Hugh of Payns, the future founding Grand Master of the Templars. By the time Hugh of Payns sailed westwards in 1127 or 1128, Bernard was already well informed about the East and what was needed there; his mother’s brother was André of Montbard, one of the original nine Templars, and Bernard’s early patron the count of Champagne had three times gone on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and on the last occasion, in 1125, he too renounced his worldly possessions and joined the Templars.

  Grants of land as well as silver, horses and armour were made to the Templars almost as soon as Hugh of Payns landed in France in the autumn of 1127. The following summer the Grand Master was in England, where he was received with great honour by King Henry I, who donated gold and silver to the order. Hugh established the first Templar house in London, at the north end of Chancery Lane, and he was given several other sites round the country. More donations followed when Hugh travelled north to Scotland. In September, Hugh of Payns had returned across the Channel, where he was met by Godfrey of Saint-Omer, and together they received further grants and treasures, all these given for the defence of the Holy Land and for the salvation of their donors’ souls.

  The climax of Hugh of Payns’ tour came in January 1129 at Troyes, the capital of the counts of Champagne, where Theobold, Hugh of Champagne’s successor, hosted a convocation of Church leaders, among them seven abbots, ten bishops and two archbishops. They were presided over by a cardinal who was the papal legate, but dominating the assembly was one of the seven abbots, Bernard of Clairvaux. Clearly the Council of Troyes had been convened on the prior understanding that the Templars were to be accepted as a religious order. Hugh addressed the council and described the founding of the Templars and presented their Rule, adapted from the precepts followed by the canons of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This stipulated attendance at services together with the canons, communal meals, plain clothing, simple appearance and no contact with women. Because their duties carried them away from the church, they could replace attendance with the recitation of paternosters, and they were
also allowed a horse and a small number of servants, and while the order was under the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Jerusalem they owed their individual obedience to the Grand Master. These regulations formed the raw material from which, after considerable discussion and scrutiny by the gathered churchmen, Bernard drew up the Latin Rule of seventy-one clauses.

  Bernard’s Latin Rule enjoined the Templars to renounce their wills, to hold worldly matters cheap and not be afraid to fight but always to be prepared for death and for the crown of salvation and eternal life. But Bernard was more than codifying existing practice and custom among the Templars; he was creating new conditions, imposing an ethos that had not entirely been in place before.

  The evidence is in the Rule itself, which makes it clear that the Templars had at first been following a somewhat different life. For example, there was the rule on how married brothers were to be treated, making it clear that chastity was not originally required, but ‘we consider it unfair that this sort of brother should live in one and the same house with brothers who promise chastity to God’. Also in the early days there had been female members of the order, but Bernard put an end to this. ‘It is dangerous to add more sisters to the order because the ancient enemy has expelled many men from the straight path of Paradise on account of their consorting with women. Therefore, dearest brothers, in order that the flower of chastity should always be evident among you, it shall not be permissible henceforth to continue this custom.’

  But chastity in relations with women might encourage homosexual activity, and this too was suppressed, through a series of oblique prohibitions. Pointed shoes and laces were ‘an abomination’, as were ‘excess hair or immoderately long clothes’ – that is, anything that might smack of femininity. The hair on their heads was to be cut short, but all Templar knights wore beards as they were not permitted to shave.

  The knights were to dress in white, symbolising that they had put the dark life behind them and had entered a state of perpetual chastity. Foul language and displays of anger were forbidden, as were reminiscences about past sexual conquests. Property, casual discussion with outsiders, and letters and gifts given or received were subject to the approval of the master. Discipline was enforced by a system of penances, with expulsion the punishment in extreme cases.

  In all this the Templars were regulated like monks, but when it came to guidance in military matters Bernard offered few practical injunctions, although he did understand that in creating ‘a new type of Order in the holy places’, one that combined knighthood with religion, the Templars needed to possess land, buildings, serfs and tithes, and were entitled to legal protection against what the Latin Rule called ‘the innumerable persecutors of the holy Church’.17

  The endorsement of the Templars by the Council of Troyes was subsequently confirmed by Pope Honorius II. These successes had come largely through the efforts of Bernard of Clairvaux, who was now urged by Hugh of Payns to write a robust defence of the Templars for general distribution.

  De Laude Novae Militae was the name of Bernard’s panegyric, In Praise of the New Knighthood, in which he announced the Templars as the champions of a higher struggle in which homicide, which was evil in Christian eyes, was really malicide – that is, the killing of evil itself – which was good. The Holy Land, wrote Bernard, bore the impress of Jesus’ life – Bethlehem, Nazareth, the River Jordan, the Temple Mount, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which encompassed the places of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection. The Templars were the protectors of these holy sites and even acted as pilgrim guides, but by their proximity and daily familiarity with these footsteps in the life of Jesus, the Templars also had the advantage and the duty to search for the deeper truth, the inner spiritual meaning of the holy places. The implication of Bernard’s De Laude was that by understanding the full meaning of their role the Templars would be fortified in their mission, which had gone beyond policing the pilgrimage routes and now embraced the defence of the Holy Land itself.

  Following the death of Hugh of Payns in 1136, his successor Robert of Craon, the second Grand Master, consolidated the gains made at Troyes by securing for the Templars a string of papal bulls (from bullum, the Latin for ‘seal’, and so meaning an official decree). In 1139 Pope Innocent II issued Omne Datum Optimum, which had the effect of establishing the Templars as an independent and permanent order within the Catholic Church answerable to no one but the pope and sanctioned their role as defenders of the Church and attackers of the enemies of Christ. The Grand Master was to be chosen from among the ranks of the Templar knights free from outside interference. The Templars were also given their own priesthood answerable to the Grand Master even though he was not ordained, which made the order independent of the diocesan bishops in Outremer and the West, and they were allowed their own oratories and cemeteries. The Templars were exempted from all tithes, but they were free to collect tithes on their own properties; all spoils of battle against the infidel were theirs by right; and donations made to the Templars were put under the protection of the Holy See.

  These privileges were confirmed and extended by two further bulls: Milites Templi, issued by Pope Celestine II in 1144, and Militia Dei issued by Pope Eugenius III in 1145, which taken together with Omne Datum Optimum put the Templars beyond reproach and formed the foundation for their future wealth and success. It was also under Eugenius III that the Templars were granted the right to wear their famous habit of a red cross over a white tunic, symbolising their readiness to suffer martyrdom in the defence of the Holy Land.

  The Knights Templar would in time become one of the wealthiest and most powerful financial and military organisations in the medieval world, yet there are holes in the historical record about their origins, and there are contradictions too. When were they founded? How many were there? Why do we hear so little about them during the first three decades of their existence? What accounts for their meteoric rise? Part of the problem in finding the answers to these questions lies in the nature of the sources themselves.

  The earliest chronicler of Templar history was William, archbishop of Tyre. Born into a French or Italian family at Jerusalem in about 1130, he studied Latin, Greek and Arabic there before continuing his education at Paris and Bologna from about 1146 to 1165. After returning to Outremer he wrote, among other works, a twenty-three-volume history of the Middle East from the conquest of Jerusalem by Umar, based on Arabic sources. This Historia Rerum in Partibus Transmarinis Gestarum, or History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, was begun around 1175 and remained unfinished at the time of William of Tyre’s death in about 1186. Most of it concentrated on the First Crusade and subsequent political events within the kingdom of Jerusalem – events from which William was not entirely detached, for he was involved in the highest affairs of both the kingdom and the Church, and as archbishop and contender for the office of Patriarch of Jerusalem he was naturally jealous of any diminution of ecclesiastical authority – and therefore resentful of the Templars’ independence and their rise to wealth and power.

  Two other early chroniclers were Michael the Syrian, Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, who died in 1199, and Walter Map, archdeacon of Oxford, who died in about 1209. But Michael was weak on matters outside his own experience and times, while Walter preferred a good story to sound historical inquiry, and moreover his prejudice against the Templars was fundamental, for he objected to the entire concept of an order of fighting monks. Despite his own bias against the Templars, William of Tyre is considered the most reliable of the three; he diligently sifted through sources to glean the facts about events that occurred before his time, and he made a point of interviewing surviving first-hand witnesses.

  All the same, William of Tyre did not even begin writing his history until the mid-1170s – that is, fifty-five years after the founding of the Templars – and there is no earlier source. The chroniclers of the First Crusade – men such as Fulcher of Chartres, Baldric of Dol, Robert the Monk and Guibert de Nogent – had all completed their
works within a decade of the reconquest of Jerusalem in 1099 and long before the foundation of the Templars in 1119 – or was it 1118? According to William of Tyre, it was the latter, but he was notoriously poor on dates even if careful in other things, and the balance of scholarly opinion has the Templars established in 1119. In whatever year it was, it does not seem to have occurred to anyone to write a first-hand account of the founding ceremony of the Templars in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Christmas Day – at the time it did not register as a significant event.

  We do not even know how many founding members there really were. William of Tyre says that there were nine and names the two most prominent as Hugh of Payns and Godfrey of Saint-Omer. Other sources also name Archambaud of Saint-Aignan, Payen of Montdidier, André of Montbard, Geoffrey Bissot, a knight called Rossal or possibly Roland, another called Gondemar, and two more whose names have not survived. Moreover, William of Tyre maintains that even as late as the Council of Troyes in 1129 there were still only nine Knights Templar. But why would only nine men command such attention from the Council and the pope, and why would Bernard of Clairvaux devote so much effort to praising their worth and propagating their fame? Indeed in this case Michael the Syrian seems to be more reliable, for he says there were thirty founding Templar knights, and most likely there were very many more a decade later.

  Nevertheless the notion that the Templars began with nine members and continued at that strength for a decade may have less to do with factual accuracy than with medieval number symbolism. Nine was considered an incorruptible number because no matter how many times it is multiplied it continues to reproduce itself in the sum of its digits. This symbolism would have enshrined nine in the founding myth of the Templars, a myth that was repeated by later generations from whom William of Tyre collected his information.