by Dan Jones
Today many people are still members of masonic societies, while others belong to legitimate orders of nobility including the various incarnations of the Hospitallers, including the Knights of Malta, whose indirect relation to the historical Templars has already been described. Others claim to be members of the revived Order of the Temple itself. These range from peaceful networks of Christian-minded human rights activists connected on social media to much less pleasant organizations who equate the historical Templars’ mission in the Holy Land with a modern clash between Christianity and Islam in Europe and America. The Norwegian fascist and terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered 77 people and injured more than 300 in a bombing and shooting attack in Oslo and Utøya in 2011, claimed to be part of a revived international Templar cell founded by nine men in London but with a growing worldwide membership of several dozen ‘knights’ and many more lay followers.
The fellowship that Breivik claimed with the Templars shows that their legacy today is not always benign. On 2 April 2014 the New York Times reported the death of a Mexican drug lord, Enrique Plancart, who had been hiding out in a rented house in the state of Quertaro.2 Plancart was shot dead by marines as he walked down the street. His death was announced in Mexico and the United States with some satisfaction, for Plancart was one of the highest-ranking members of a notorious cartel called Los Caballeros Templarios: The Knights Templar.
Los Caballeros Templarios was founded in Minchoacán in western Mexico in March 2011. Its members have been held responsible for a range of violent crime associated with the drug business, including murder, trafficking and extortion, but they have attempted to attach a higher purpose to their activities, blending a stern Christian zealotry with populist left-wing politics: a strategy successfully modelled in the 1980s by Pablo Escobar’s infamous Medellín Cartel. In this case, Los Caballeros Templarios modelled themselves on the original Templars. Shortly after their founding the cartel produced a twenty-two-page booklet called the Code of the Knights Templar, inspired by the medieval Rule. ‘[Our] principal mission is to protect the inhabitants and the sacred territory... of Michoacán,’ it begins. The code mandates an admission process overseen by committee, a sworn oath of obedience enforceable by death, and an obligation on every member to struggle against evils including materialism, injustice, tyranny, ‘the disintegration of moral values and the destructive elements that prevail today in human society’.
‘The Templar should be a model of gentlemanliness,’ it reads, exhorting its followers to avoid ‘brutality, drunkenness in an offensive manner, immorality, cowardice, lying and having malicious intentions’, as well as ‘kidnapping for money’ and using drugs ‘or any mind-altering substance’. The only hints that the code might not be establishing a genuine revival of some rigorous twelfth-century monastic order are instructions that ‘to use lethal force, authorization is required’, and frequent reminders that errors and disrespect towards the organization and fellow members will invite summary execution.
One day Los Caballeros Templarios may be dissolved by the strong arm of an unsympathetic state, and perhaps their members will also die cursing. It would be a fitting historical parallel, if nothing else. But whatever their fate, they will not be the last people to pay tribute to the organization begun in Jerusalem in 1119 by Hugh of Payns. The legend of the Templars will live on for some time yet, inspiring, entertaining and intriguing generations to come.
That, perhaps, is their real legacy.
* The Holy Grail, although often assumed to have been a real physical object dating to the Last Supper, is in fact the invention of late medieval Arthurian romances following Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval, The Story of the Grail, which was written in the 1180s.
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Plate Section
Appendix I: Cast of Major Characters
Appendix II: Popes, 1099–1334
Appendix III: Kings and Queens of Jerusalem
Appendix IV: Masters of the Order of the Temple
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About Dan Jones
Also by Dan Jones
An Invitation from the Publisher
Plate Section
1. Jerusalem was the centre of the world for Christian pilgrims, who risked their lives to pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built over Christ’s tomb. This map, dating from c. 1200, shows the Temple of Solomon – the Templars’ headquarters – in the top right-hand section of the walled city.
1. Map of Jerusalem, c. 1200; Alamy.
2. Pilgrimage to the Holy Land was considered an act of high Christian devotion, which could aid one’s soul in the afterlife. Here two angels appear dressed in distinctive pilgrims’ garb, equipped with a staff and scrip (or purse). Unarmed human pilgrims were vulnerable: the order of the Temple was founded to help protect them as they travelled around the kingdom of Jerusalem.
2. Angels in pilgrims’ garb; British Library.
3. A shrine in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre covers the cave in which Christ’s body lay before the Resurrection. The structure we see today dates from the eighteenth century, but some medieval rituals are still observed.
3. Christ’s tomb, Church of the Holy Sepulchre; Getty Images.
4. The Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) was known as the Temple of Solomon by the Christians who ruled Jerusalem after the First Crusade. It was granted to the Templars by King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and was the worldwide headquarters of the Order from 1119 until 1187.
4. Al-Aqsa Mosque; Andrew Shiva / Wikipedia commons.
5. The Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux was a tireless writer, friend of popes and kings, and passionate supporter of the Templars. He helped write their first Rule and championed their cause in Rome.
5. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux; Jastrow / Wikimedia commons.
6. This fresco, from a chapel built by the Templars at Cressac-sur-Charente, shows a crusader charging into battle. His battle standard is not black and white so it is not certain that this is a Templar knight: it may be a representation of a warrior saint like St George.
6. Templar fresco from Cressac; Getty Images.
7. The battle flags of the Hospitallers, Templars, and kings of France. Every Templar swore to defend their black and white flag to the death.
7. Battle flags of the Hospitallers, Templars, and kings of France; Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
8. The Castle of Monzón, in Aragon, served as a formidable base for the order as they fought Muslim armies in the wars of the Reconquista. The Spanish Templars raised the child-king James I at Monzón before he took command of his kingdom.
8. Monzón Castle, Aragon; ecelan / Wikimedia commons.
9. A thirteenth-century fresco depicting a Syrian horseman in battle. His light armour reflects the fact that Syrian cavalry were quick and agile experts at lightning raids. The Templars recruited Syrian mercenaries, known as turcopoles, to fight alongside them.
9. Syrian horsemen in battle, fresco at Pernes-les-Fontaines, Vaucluse; Véronique Pagnier / Wikimedia commons.
10. Louis VII set out from Paris in 1147 on the Second Crusade, joined by a large number of Templar knights. When his forces were attacked in Asia Minor, the Templars helped restore discipline; and when he ran out of money, they made him a huge loan, which nearly bankrupted the order.
10. Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine; Getty Images.
11. Sultan of Egypt and Syria and founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, Saladin evicted the Christian kings from Jerusalem and turned the Templars’ home back into the al-Aqsa mosque. This later portrait of Saladin is a fanciful depiction but reflects the legendary reputation he left in both Christian and Islamic histories.
11. Saladin, as portayed by the sixteenth-century Italian painter Cristofano dell’Altissimo; Wikimedia commons.
12. The battle of Hattin was a crushing military defeat for the armies of the Christian Holy Land and a blow felt right across the west. Saladin captured Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, and confiscated the Franks’ most treasured relic — a fragment of the True Cross. The battle was followed by an organized massacre of more than 200 Templars and Hospitallers in front of Saladin himself.
12. Battle of Hattin; British Library.
13. Richard the Lionheart, pictured here in his tomb effigy at Fontevraud Abbey in Anjou, revived the fortunes of the Templars when he led the Third Crusade to recover Acre and much of the rest of the Holy Land from Saladin.
13. Tomb of Richard I in Fontevraud Abbey, Anjou; Wikimedia commons.
14. The siege of Acre in 1191 was the first major triumph of the Third Crusade, the Templars recovering their fortress and supply depot near the city’s docks. Richard the Lionheart and Philip II ‘Augustus’ of France led military operations and are seen here receiving the keys to the city.
14. Richard the Lionheart and Philip Augustus at Acre, 1191; Getty Images.
15. The Templars funded their operations in the crusades by means of a vast network of estates stretching across Europe. Some of their possessions still stand today, including the magnificent barns at Cressing Temple in Essex, built on lands originally granted to the order by Queen Matilda of England in 1137.
15. Cressing Temple, Essex; Robert Edwards / Wikimedia commons.
16. During the Fifth Crusade the Templars were pitched against Sultan al-Kamil, seen in this fresco with St Francis of Assisi. A poor preacher, Francis attempted unsuccessfully to convert al-Kamil to Christianity.
16. Giotto di Bondone, St Francis before the Sultan, Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi; Wikimedia commons.
17. Although he was reviled by the Templars, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen used his sympathetic relationship with the Ayyubid sultan al-Kamil to reopen Jerusalem to Christian pilgrims from 1229.
17. Frederick II Hohenstaufen and the Ayyubid sultan al-Kamil; Alamy.
18. Underneath the docks of Acre the Templars built huge tunnels linking their fortress with the city’s main port and customs house. The tunnels were rediscovered in 1994 and can still be visited today.
18. Templar tunnels beneath Acre; Shutterstock.
19. Reynald of Vichiers, a leading French Templar and future master of the order, helped finance a fleet of ships to transport King Louis IX to Egypt, where he invaded Damietta in 1249. When Louis was captured, the Templars raised an emergency loan to pay his ransom.
19. Louis IX sets off for Damietta, illumination from the Vie et miracles de Saint Louis; Wikimedia commons.
20. From the 1260s on, the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem was under relentless assault by Mamluk armies from Egypt and by the Mongols. The Christians tried to forge an alliance with Hülagü Khan, who ruled the Ilkhanate of Persia. But the Mongols were unreliable allies, as the Templars discovered during a failed invasion of Tortosa in 1300.
20. Hülagü Khan; Getty Images.
21. Although the Christians briefly won back control of Jerusalem in 1229, they were driven out again in 1244 by a marauding army of Khwarizmian Turks, shown here in the margins of Matthew Paris’s chronicle. The Templars were powerless to save the city.
21. Army of Khwarizmian Turks; Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
22. This detail from a brass basin made in Egypt or Syria during the fourteenth century shows a high-status Mamluk warrior (centre) who has sometimes been identified with the great sultan Baybars. While crushing the Latin states of the Holy Land, Baybars took the Templar fortress at Safad and beheaded all of its defenders.
22. Detail of a fourteenth-century brass basin known as the Baptistère de Saint Louis, made by Mohammed ibn al-Zain; Wikimedia commons.
23. Philip the Fair and his children, as depicted in a fourteenth-century French manuscript. Philip IV had a pronounced sense of his own royal magnificence and Christian supremacy, and a constant need for cash. Destroying the French Templars allowed him to present himself as a pious religious reformer and to confiscate much of the order’s wealth.
23. Philip IV of France and his children; Alamy.
24. Bertrand of Got, archbishop of Bordeaux, became Pope Clement V in 1305. He never took up residence in Rome and was scorned as a puppet of the French king. He could not protect the Templars in 1307 and allowed a French witch-hunt to develop into the total dissolution of the order at the Council of Vienne in 1311.
24. Pope Clement V; Getty Images.
25. The Templars’ house in Paris was an urban fortress whose distinctive turrets soared over the city’s skyline. It survived the order’s fall and was used as a prison for the royal family during the French Revolution. This painting, from around that time, shows the tower in a state of advanced decay. It was demolished in 1808.
25. The Paris Temple, c. 1795; Wikimedia commons.
26. St Bernard of Clairvaux thought Templar knights would be so devoted to their cause that they would avoid trivial pursuits such as hunting, dice, and chess. The rule was more lenient, allowing brothers to gamble with wooden pegs. Here two Spanish Templars are seen playing chess. (Black appears to be in checkmate.)
26. Templars playing chess, from the Libro de los Juegos, (‘Book of games’), commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile; Wikimedia commons.
27. The Templars of France were rounded up at dawn on Friday 13 October 1307 in a raid carefully orchestrated, justified and planned by the government of Philip IV. It was the beginning of the end for the order.
27. Arrest of the Templars, depicted in a fourteenth-century miniature, in Les grandes chroniques de France; British Library.
28. The burning of the Templars in Paris in 1314 is shown here as leading directly to Philip IV’s death while hunting the same year. It was said that the last Templar master, James of Molay, called down God’s curse on the men responsible for his death.
28. The burning of the Templars and the death of Philip IV; British Library.
Appendices
Appendix I: Cast of Major Characters
Al-Adid: Last Fatimid caliph of Egypt, who agreed to a peace deal with the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, brokered by the Templars. Died in 1171, after which Egypt under Saladin switched allegiance to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad.
Al-Adil: Saladin’s brother and eventual successor, who ruled Egypt and Syria from 1200 to 1218. Sometimes known as Saphadin.
Al-Afdal: Son and general of Saladin. Commanded troops at the Springs of Cresson and briefly ruled Damascus after his father’s death.
Al-Ashraf Khalil: Mamluk sultan who completed the destruction of the crusader states, successfully besieging Acre in 1291.
Al-Kamil: Sultan of Egypt and son of Al-Adil. Ruled from 1218 to 1238, overseeing the defeat of the Fifth Crusade, but subsequently ceding Jerusalem to Christian rule in a treaty of 1229 with Frederick II Hohenstaufen.
Al-Salih: Ayyubid sultan who ruled from 1240 to 1249 and died during the course of Louis IX’s crusade to Damietta. Responsible for building up the strength of the Bahriyya Mamluks, who eventually produced Baybars.
Alfonso I, king of Aragon: Also known as ‘the Battler’, the Christian hero of the Reconquista – the wars against the Muslims in Spain – died in 1134, leaving a third of his kingdom to the Templars.
Amalric I, king of Jerusalem: Brother of Baldwin III, he ruled from 1163 to 1174, attempted to secure Christian interests south of Jerusalem by invading Egypt, and had a frosty relationship with the Templars, who undermined his policies.
Baldwin II, king of Jerusalem: Crusader king of Jerusalem who ruled from 1118 until 1131. Granted the Templars their home at the al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount.
Baldwin III, king of Jerusalem: King of Jerusalem from 1143 until 1163. Aided in his struggle against Imad al-Din Zengi and Nur al-Din by the arrival of the Second Crusade.
Baldwin IV, king of Jerusalem: Boy king who suffered from leprosy, his rule
between 1174 and 1185 saw a series of setbacks as the Latin states were attacked by Saladin.
Baybars: Ruthless and brilliant Mamluk sultan who destroyed many crusader possessions between 1260 and 1277 and massacred the Templars of Safad castle in 1263.
Bernard, patriarch of Antioch: First Latin patriarch of Antioch, installed in 1100 after the First Crusade. A warrior churchman, who organized the military defence of the city against Il-ghazi in 1119.
Bernard of Clairvaux (St Bernard): Influential abbot, writer and church reformer who founded a Cistercian abbey at Clairvaux and greatly influenced the first Latin Rule of the Templars. He died in 1153.
Bernard of Tremelay: Fourth master of the Templars, killed leading a suicidal charge into Ascalon in 1153.
Bertrand of Blancfort: Sixth master of the Templars, who led the order between 1156 and 1169. A veteran of wars against Nur al-Din, he spent two years as a prisoner of war and clashed with Amalric I over Egyptian policy in 1168.