The Templars

by Dan Jones

  Lyon was a patchwork of jurisdictions, long caught between allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor and the king of France. By 1305 it was drifting decisively towards Frenchness. Certainly on the chilly morning of 15 November there was little doubt which of the city’s masters had the greatest cause to celebrate: a pope born and raised in Gascony had come to be crowned in front of the gilded elite of the French nobility, under the approving eye of their king. This was quite a coup, and a firm indication of the expected Gallic flavour of Bertrand’s papacy. The days when popes had scurried about in fear of the Hohenstaufen, or bowed to the interests of influential Italian aristocratic dynasties, were to be a memory; now God smiled most fondly on the realm of the fleur-de-lys and the Oriflamme.

  In November 1305 Bertrand was around forty years old: quite young to have reached such lofty office, and somewhat inexperienced, as he was not a cardinal. He was certainly an adept and malleable politician, having negotiated a successful career in Bordeaux without major upset. This was no small feat. Gascony was ruled by the English, but under a treaty of 1259 it was considered to be ultimately subject to the authority of the French king. This relationship was the cause of dispute, tension and occasional warfare between the two realms. As archbishop, Bertrand was accustomed to balancing the competing wishes of great powers, while remaining on good terms with all. It helped that he was basically an amenable man. Gascons suffered from a terrible reputation outside their native country and were generally thought greedy and nepotistic, but Bertrand put the lie to this easy stereotype. Although troubled by a painful bowel complaint which frequently laid him low and sapped his strength, he remained by nature a pleasant character who lavished praise on great men without seeming sycophantic, and who had a notably good sense of humour.1

  Nevertheless, the jump from archbishop to the throne of St Peter was significant, and it had taken a poisonously deadlocked college of cardinals a full eleven months to settle on Bertrand. Part of the reason for the delay was the widespread perception that French cardinals were trying to force the election of a pope who would be pliant to the demands of their own king, as indeed they were. A long time after the election, one of the senior pro-French cardinals present in the conclave admitted that he had seen in Bertrand a man who could be moulded into a bagman for King Philip IV.2 Certainly Bertrand’s choice of papal name left little doubt as to his allegiance. In choosing to be known as Clement V he was taking his lead from Clement IV, a close friend and ally of Philip’s grandfather, Louis IX. Even the choice of venue for the coronation had been approved by the French court.3 And as it turned out, Bertrand would spend his entire papacy north of the Alps. Daunted by the murderous factional politics of Rome, he calculated that his chances of launching a new crusade were best served by close attention to the French king. Unsurprisingly, his name in Italy was mud. The Florentine banker and chronicler Giovanni Villani characterized the relationship between Philip and Clement as it was seen by Italians: ‘you command and I will obey, and it will always be settled this way’.4

  The coronation ceremony in Lyon was suitably magnificent. Tapers and censers smoked and Latin chants filled the church, where proceedings were overseen by the esteemed cardinal Napoleone Orsini, who presented the new pope with the Ring of the Fisherman (a signet ring bearing an image of St Peter fishing) and crowned him with the great silver tiara studded with emeralds and sapphires, a mark of his status as Christ’s representative on earth. After the formalities were complete, the parade of great men left the church and made their way through Lyon’s streets, to show off Clement to the faithful.

  In pride of place as the procession emerged was King Philip, tall, blond and straight-backed, with a naturally regal bearing and ruddy cheeks he owed to the many hours he spent hunting – a conventional hobby for kings which bordered in him on an obsession. Philip’s good looks had earned him the nickname le Bel (‘the Fair’). The Templar of Tyre claimed he was a clear hand taller than most other men, his hips so wide and legs so long that his feet seemed to trail the ground when he sat in his saddle. Philip’s personal physician called him ‘handsome and pious’.5 Cold and distant, Philip shimmered with an unapproachable majesty deliberately cultivated to remind his subjects of the sacred aspect of his kingship.

  Lyon was not a large city at the time and it was not in the habit of hosting coronations. As the procession passed through the streets on its way to the bishop’s palace, there was a great crush to catch a glimpse of the new pope, the French king and the luminaries surrounding them. An old section of wall holding back spectators strained by the press of bodies gave way with a groan, collapsing forward on to the papal parade and taking down many onlookers.

  Clement was riding in full papal regalia, and when the wall came down he was thrown headlong from his horse. His tiara flew off, hitting the ground with such force that it lost a number of its jewels, including a massive ruby which rolled into the rubble and disappeared.6 The two princes holding the pope’s bridle, the king’s brother Charles of Valois and the sixty-six-year-old John, duke of Brittany, were knocked off their feet. Charles was seriously hurt, and the duke of Brittany, who was closest to the wall, died a few days later from his wounds. Also injured was one of Clement’s brothers. The king suffered superficial injuries and the papal party hurried to the bishop’s palace, much shaken. Nine days later there was a further disturbance when the pope’s Gascon supporters fought through the town against Italians who resented his appointment.

  These disturbances were seen by many as a bad omen. The new pope, who remained in Lyon with King Philip and Charles of Valois until Christmas, hoped to use the momentum of his election to push for a new crusade. Clement lobbied hard to make the most of a pause in hostilities between France and Philip and Charles’s long-standing enemies in Flanders and England to turn their attentions to the east. He found both men broadly receptive: their only point of disagreement was where to attack. Was it better to target Constantinople, where the Latin emperor had been deposed in 1261, or to help shore up the Christian kingdom of Lesser Armenia, which was menaced by Mamluk forces from the south? Without settling on a final answer, on 29 December 1305 Philip IV promised Clement that he would take the cross and lead a new crusade.

  One of his conditions was that he should decide where and when to make his formal crusading vows. Another was that his crusade should involve major reform of the military orders. The king later said he told the pope he had heard rumours of irregularities taking place in Templar houses. The old plans for reform would be revived: the Templars and Hospitallers would be united into a single army of God. At the head would be a prince of the royal house of France.7

  *

  In the late summer of 1306 letters from the pope arrived in Cyprus, addressed to Fulk of Villaret, master of the Hospitallers, and James of Molay.8 They had been sent from Bordeaux on 6 June, and their instructions must have filled both masters with a combination of excitement and apprehension. Plans were afoot, the pope said, for a new crusade to ‘exterminate the perfidious pagans’ and take back the Holy Land. To that end, both masters were summoned to appear in the papal court in Poitiers by the festival of All Saints (1 November) or a fortnight thereafter. They were also asked to prepare two reports: their best plans for taking back the Holy Land, and a response to the idea that their orders should be merged.

  James of Molay had not been idle on Cyprus. He had lost many men on the ill-starred foray to Tortosa and Ru’ad in 1300–2, but in the aftermath of that operation he had made more substantial changes to the Templar personnel under his direct command. Absorbing a regular influx of new recruits was a normal part of the job for a Templar master in the east, but turnover had been high. Of the 118 Templar knights and sergeants on Cyprus – French, English, German, Aragonese, Portuguese, Italian, Cypriot, Romanian and Armenian – most were young and almost all were new to the order. Almost 80 per cent had taken their vows since the fall of Acre in 1291.9

  The Templars had managed to save their treasure and thei
r valuable archive of documents when Acre and Château Pèlerin had fallen – and were cash-rich enough to pay a ransom of 40,000 bezants when the prominent baron Guy of Ibelin and his family were kidnapped by pirates in May 1302. But money was always needed, and when Templar preceptors from the west travelled to meet with the master they were nagged to remember their responsiones: the one-third share of their local incomes that they were obliged to send to the east.

  There was plenty of other business besides warfare. The Templars imported goods and materiel from the west, including horses and pack animals, cloth to make robes, cured meats and cheeses. They owned ships such as the Faucon, a galley used to evacuate Acre in 1291, which they used to transport goods, patrol the waters around Cyprus and effect a blockade of ships hoping to trade with Mamluk Egypt. Boats were also loaned out to Italian trading companies, who used them to transport cotton, spices and sugar to ports such as Marseilles and Barcelona.10 Finally, there was the oldest task of all: pilgrim duty. Despite the obvious dangers of travel and a papal ban imposed on travel to the east to stop the Mamluks from taxing pilgrim routes, there was still an appetite for travel to the holy sites, and pilgrims appeared steadily on Cyprus. They needed to be greeted, guarded and sent on their way. Some had come to visit the tomb of the apostle Barnabas, on Cyprus itself, but many brave souls had to be discouraged from attempting a crossing to Jerusalem.

  Despite all this activity, James of Molay must have felt a certain thrill at receiving the pope’s letter. Renting boats and greeting new recruits was all well and good, but this was not the Templars’ purpose. Clement’s summons made it plain that the political will had at last been mustered to launch another crusade. His request for a written plan suggested that the floor was open for an ambitious expedition.

  Of course, Clement’s invitation had come with a barb. If there was to be a crusade, the price might be the long-threatened merger of the orders. So, as he prepared to make his second journey west as master, James of Molay began to compose two letters: a plan for saving the Holy Land and a plan for saving the Templars.

  ‘In the name of the Lord, amen,’ began his first letter. ‘This is the advice of the Master of the Temple concerning the matter of the Holy Land. Holy Father, you have asked me what is the best course of action, a large or small expedition.’11 He went on to make one very blunt point: the only way to do any serious damage to the Saracens was to deploy a massive army he called a ‘general passage’: ‘a large, all-embracing expedition to destroy the infidels and restore the blood-spattered land of Christ’, with an army consisting of ‘twelve to fifteen thousand armed horsemen and five thousand footsoldiers... note that two thousand of the said armed horsemen should be crossbowmen’. These were to be transported and backed by a fleet of transporter ships. The whole army should decamp at Cyprus, recover and recuperate and then proceed to a location he declined to name ‘since this will give advance warning to the Saracens’.

  Overwhelming force was the key, argued James:

  If you are willing to accept some advice on the numbers of people, I repeat what [Baybars], more famous, powerful and wiser in military matters than anyone of his sect has ever been, said on many occasions, that he would confront thirty thousand of the Tartars with his army, but that he would leave them in the field if their numbers were larger.

  Similarly he said that if fifteen thousand Frankish knights came to his land he would meet and join battle with them, but if a larger number arrived he would retreat and leave them the field.

  Elsewhere the master affected modesty. ‘I offer no opinion about where the expedition should gather, since this is in the purview of the lord kings.’ Plainly James knew he was preparing a document that needed to appeal to Philip IV as well as to Clement, and he carefully hinted at the extent of his knowledge. ‘If it pleases you and the lord king of France, I will give you in secret so much useful information that I am sure you will follow my advice, because I will indicate so clearly which are the good and the bad places for [a point of invasion].’ Indeed, he urged Clement not to wait until his arrival in Poitiers to start preparing for the work ahead, and asked for a fleet of ten galleys to be fitted out for the winter, under the captaincy of Rogeron of Lauria, son of a famous Italian admiral Roger of Lauria, a hero of the Sicilian wars. These would enforce the trade embargo on Egypt, which would be strengthened by a papal ban on Genoese and Venetians trading arms with Muslims. James concluded the letter politely and hopefully. ‘I ask almighty God to grant you grace in deciding what will be best in these matters, and the ability to recover in your lifetime the holy places in which our Lord Jesus Christ deigned to be born and die for the salvation of the human race.’

  A comparison between James of Molay’s letter and Fulk of Villaret’s reveals one major disagreement. Whereas the Templar master advocated a single, massive seaborne landing along the model of the Damietta crusades, putting his faith in overwhelming force, the Hospitaller suggested a two-step invasion: a ‘special passage’ in which an elite force carried in galleys would spend a year softening up the coast with lightning raids, backed by a naval blockade, followed by a subsequent ‘general passage’, or mass invasion.12 This represented the broad split in crusade thinking among the leaders of the day. Both plans had their merits. James of Molay’s was less complicated but required a great deal more commitment and expense up front. The differences between the two plans would mean nothing, though, if his second missive did not have its desired effect.

  The Templar master approached the defence of his order with relish. He sought first to write off the idea as a scheme that had been examined many times in the past and dismissed so many times that it was not worth exhuming. Three popes had contemplated uniting the orders, he said, and all had seen their error, with Pope Boniface declaring the matter ‘closed completely’.13

  This was true, but James knew it was not clinching. Five years earlier Ramon Lull had visited Cyprus, and the famous preacher and reform theorist was now even more set on union than before, as was the inflammatory French pamphleteer Peter Dubois, who had close links to the French court and had followed Lull in writing a tract called ‘The Recovery of the Holy Land’. Dubois insisted that this unification of the military orders was overdue, writing that:

  In times of most urgent need these orders have been divided amongst themselves... if they are to be of any benefit to the Holy Land it is desirable and advisable to combine them into one order as regards appearance, rank, habit and property.14

  It was not enough to write the merger down as yesterday’s scheme and trust that Clement would let it go. So the master ran through, point by point, the arguments for and against the idea.

  For a start, he said, things were fine as they were. The separation of the military orders had produced ‘positive results’, and to meddle with the formula would simply be bad in itself, ‘as innovation seldom or never fails to produce grave dangers’. This was a rather bold line of reasoning to pursue: the loss of the entire Holy Land was hard to spin as a positive development. Nevertheless, James of Molay ploughed on. It would be dishonourable, he said, to ask men who had sworn to obey the Rule of one order suddenly to switch and adopt a new identity. Then he warmed to his main theme. The Templars and Hospitallers were successful because they were rivals. Throwing them together would cause disputes, perhaps even violence, as ‘at the devil’s prompting quarrels might arise between them, such as “we were worthier than you and did more good”. [...] If rumours of that sort spread among them they could easily be the cause of serious scandal.’ Furthermore, any attempt to throw together parallel hierarchies and networks of property would be confusing for the men involved; it would also be hard to combine the orders’ separate charitable functions, with the likely result that there would be a fall in assistance for the poor and needy.

  The rivalry between Templars and Hospitallers, wrote James, was not just a reason to avoid placing their members under the same banner; it was a reason for the orders’ success. Competition pushed
both to excel:

  If the Templars transported to Outremer a large number of brothers, horses and other animals, the Hospitallers did not rest until they had done as much or more... If one religious order had good knights, reputed for their fighting and other good actions, the other order always strove with all its might to have better ones... If the two Orders had already been united, I do not believe they would have made such great efforts.

  Finally, grasping at straws, James argued that the Templars and Hospitallers had always formed the vanguard and rearguard of royal armies on the crusades, and this would no longer be possible if there were only one order, while the standard of hospitality offered to ‘pilgrims of the Lord, of high or low estate’ could not be guaranteed.

  This last point was vague and tendentious, but it led James of Molay on to the last section of his memo, in which he admitted, as faintly as he could, some advantages to union. People no longer respected monasticism very much, he wrote; perhaps a single order might change that. There was a clear financial case for slimming down the number of houses and castles maintained by the two orders: ‘the savings would be enormous’. Beyond that, his letter contained only respectful pleading for the idea to be junked as it had in the past and the promise that he could tell the pope much more in person. To that end, in October 1306 the master readied himself for the long journey west. He left behind as his deputy Aimo of Oiselay, a veteran of thirty years’ experience who had served as marshal since 1300. Then James of Molay left Cyprus for the court of Clement V and the kingdom of Philip IV, hoping to return with the future of his order secure and some clarity on the direction of the next crusade.