by Robyn Young
I have, for instance, simplified the war between France and Flanders, although events such as the Matins of Bruges, the French defeat at Courtrai and the alliance between Edward I and Guy de Dampierre are all based in fact. The uprising in Gascony against French royal forces occurred in 1303, not 1302, and Bertrand de Got was in Rome at the time. Philippe IV did expel the Jews from France, but not until 1306, and his grandfather, Louis IX, was canonized a little later than portrayed. Boniface’s bull, Clericis laicos, was issued in February 1296 and Unam Sanctam in November 1302. Guillaume de Nogaret died around 1313, rather than 1308, and although Philippe did take the Cross it occurred a year earlier than portrayed. The king himself died in a riding accident in November 1314.
So as to keep a level of consistency in the hierarchy of the Temple I have avoided the introduction of certain officials who would, in reality, have been important figures in the order, such as the master of France. Sometimes there were long gaps between a post being filled after one man’s death and it wasn’t uncommon for an official to hold two positions at once. Hugues de Pairaud was visitor and master of France for a time.
Incredibly, the attack on Pope Boniface VIII in Anagni, led by Guillaume de Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna, did happen and in much the way I have described (there are even reports that suggest they arrived to find Templars guarding the pope), but again I have condensed the sequence of events so as to keep the pace. It has been speculated that Boniface’s convoy, fleeing the town, may have been attacked by Colonna’s men, but this isn’t known. What is known is that the pope died in Rome several weeks later. Some say he went mad, others that his heart gave out over the shock of the assault. It is not clear how his successor, Benedict XI, met his death, although one report states he died after eating poisoned figs and it has been theorized that Philippe and his lawyers may indeed have had a hand in this.
With regard to King Edward’s first Scottish campaign, John Balliol didn’t renounce the French treaty until July and Edward received word of this in Perth, not Edinburgh. Balliol then appeared before the king at Montrose to be stripped of his royal tabard and Edward’s famously contemptuous remark about a man doing good business when he rids himself of shit was apparently uttered as he crossed the border into England in the autumn of 1296. Likewise, on the Scottish side for the campaign of 1297, details have been tweaked. William Wallace was attempting to relieve Dundee in August and it was from here, rather than Selkirk Forest, that he advanced on Stirling. He had, however, spent much of the previous month in the forest, gathering his army and training his men, and he often used it as a base.
The proceedings against the Templars were an incredibly protracted and complicated affair, which, although fascinating and indeed what drew me to this story, doesn’t lend itself to a fast-paced narrative. For anyone wanting to read the whole story, I would seriously recommend Barber’s The Trial of the Templars. Much of what I have chosen to portray in the narrative, however, is based in fact, or at least conjecture.
One chronicler states that Philippe IV secretly met with Bertrand de Got before he became pope and persuaded him to fulfill certain obligations. Modern scholars, in the main, dismiss this, but whether fact or fiction it is clear the king went to a great deal of trouble to have a hand in the election, ordering Nogaret to pressure the Sacred College to elect someone sympathetic to French royal policy. I invented Bertrand’s son, although the archbishop was accused of having an affair with a local noblewoman. Esquin de Floyran, a rather obscure character, was a Templar who had been imprisoned and who first accused the knights of heresy, writing to both King Philippe and King James of Aragon supposedly with evidence to support his claims, but his nephew, Martin, is fictitious. The establishment of the papal commission and the knights’ defense occurred later in the trial, as did the systematic burning of knights outside Paris. What happened to the Templars’ famed treasure isn’t known, although it is thought that around twenty knights escaped the initial arrests in Paris and may have had some warning. Where these men went and whether or not they took the treasury with them has been the subject of fervent speculation throughout the centuries.
The Order of the Temple was never found guilty of the 127 charges against it, Clement only dissolving the organization because its reputation had been so severely damaged during the trial. It was a different story for the officials. Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney were burned at the stake in March 1314 as relapsed heretics. De Molay’s famous judgment against king and pope has echoed down the years to us and although we have no way of knowing if the account is purely apocryphal, Philippe and Clement were both dead within that year. The Capetian dynasty, of which Philippe had been so proud, ended in scandal and disaster, his three sons dying in rapid succession.
The Templars in France and elsewhere admitted most of the charges leveled at them, but their confessions were extracted during horrific tortures and many of the knights recanted these confessions once they had recovered, including de Molay and de Charney, who went to their pyre protesting their innocence. The charges against the order bear striking similarities to those the Cathars were accused of, as well as other groups that became targets of the Church’s war on heresy. If you wanted public opinion on your side in the Middle Ages, stirring up people’s fear of sorcery and devil worship was an effective way to get it and Philippe and his ministers proved more than once that they were incredibly adept at this sort of propaganda. There is one charge, however, that does crop up again and again in the trial and almost always around the figure of Hugues de Pairaud: the charge of knights spitting on the cross. One theory for this is that it was a practice adopted by some in the order as a form of obedience test. The truth behind the trial and the motivations of those involved will probably never be known for certain, but whatever really happened it does say something for the character of the Templars that these warrior monks in their sinless white mantles continue to live on so vividly in our consciousness almost seven hundred years after their exit from this world.
Robyn Young
Brighton, July 2008
Character List
(* denotes real figures from history)
*ADAM: cousin of William Wallace
ALBERT: Knight Templar
ALICE: daughter of Ysenda, Will’s niece
*ANDREW DE MORAY: Scottish noble and leader of the Scottish rebellion
*ANTHONY BEK: bishop of Durham
*BENEDICT XI: pope (1303-4)
*BERNARD SAISSET: bishop of Pamiers, accused of heresy by Philippe IV
*BERTRAND DE GOT (1264-1314): archbishop of Bordeaux, then accedes papal throne as Clement V in 1305
BLANCHE: handmaiden to Jeanne de Navarre
*BONIFACE VIII (1234-1303): pope (1294-1303)
*BRIAN LE JAY: master of the English Temple
*CELESTINE V (1215-96): pope (1294)
*CHARLES DE VALOIS: brother of Philippe IV
CHRISTIAN: sister-in-law of Gray
COLIN: son of Ede, Will’s nephew
DAVID: son of Ysenda, Will’s nephew
*DAVID GRAHAM: Scottish noble, son of Patrick Graham
DUNCAN: first husband of Ysenda
EDE: sister of Will
*EDWARD I (1239-1307): king of England (1272-1307)
*EDWARD II (1284-1327): king of England (1307-27)
*ELEANOR OF CASTILE: first wife of Edward I, queen of England
ELIAS: rabbi
ELWEN: wife of Will, died in Acre in 1291
*ESQUIN DE FLOYRAN: Templar master of Montfaucon
EVERARD DE TROYES: Templar priest and former head of the Anima Templi, died in Acre in 1277
GAILLARD: squire of Bertrand de Got
GARIN DE LYONS: former Knight Templar in the service of Edward I, killed by Will in Acre in 1291
GAUTIER: French royal soldier
*GEOFFROI DE CHARNEY: master of the Temple in Normandy
*GEOFFROI DE GONNEVILLE: master of the Temple in Aquitaine
GÉRARD: Templar sergea
nt
GILLES: French royal soldier
*GODFREY BUSSA: captain of the papal guard
*GRAY: companion of William Wallace
GUI: Knight Templar
*GUILLAUME DE NOGARET (?-1313): lawyer and royal advisor to Philippe IV, keeper of the seals from 1302
*GUILLAUME DE PARIS: Dominican and confessor of Philippe IV
*GUILLAUME DE PLAISANS: lawyer and royal advisor to Philippe IV
*GUY DE DAMPIERRE: count of Flanders
HASAN: former comrade of Everard de Troyes, died in Paris in 1266
HELOISE: lover of Bertrand de Got
HENRI: master falconer to Philippe IV
*HENRY PERCY: English noble
*HUGH CRESSINGHAM: English royal official, treasurer of Scotland under Edward I
*HUGUES DE PAIRAUD: visitor of the Temple
ISAAC: Jewish merchant
*ISABELLA: daughter of Philippe IV and Jeanne, marries Edward II of England in 1308
*JACQUES DE MOLAY: grand master of the Temple (1293-1314)
JAMES CAMPBELL: Knight Templar and father of Will, executed in the Holy Land in 1266
*JEANNE DE NAVARRE: wife of Philippe IV, queen of France and Navarre
*JOHN BALLIOL: king of Scotland (1292-6)
*JOHN BLAIR: chaplain of William Wallace
JOHN CAMPBELL: Scottish knight, second husband of Ysenda
*JOHN DE WARENNE: earl of Surrey
*KALAWUN: sultan of Egypt and Syria (1280-90)
LAURENT: Knight Templar
*LOUIS IX: king of France (1226-70), canonized by Boniface VIII in 1297
MARGARET: daughter of Ysenda, Will’s niece
MARGUERITE: handmaiden to Jeanne de Navarre
MARIE: servant of Bertrand de Got
MARTIN DE FLOYRAN: Knight Templar, nephew of Esquin
*NICCOLO: Italian noble
OWEIN AP GWYN: Knight Templar, former master of Will, killed in Honfleur in 1260
*PATRICK GRAHAM: Scottish noble
*PHILIPPE IV (1268-1314): king of France (1285-1314)
PIERRE DE BOURG: French noble
*PIERRE DUBOIS: lawyer to Philippe IV
*PIERRE FLOTE: lawyer and royal advisor to Philippe IV, keeper of the seals until 1302
PONSARD: French royal soldier
*RAINALD: captain of Ferentino
RAINIER: Knight Templar
RAOUL: Bertrand de Got’s son
*ROBERT BRUCE: earl of Carrick, king of Scotland (1306-29)
ROBERT DE PARIS: Knight Templar and member of the Anima Templi
ROSE: daughter of Will and Elwen
SAMUEL: Jewish moneylender
*SCIARRA COLONNA: Italian noble
SIMON TANNER: Templar sergeant
STEPHEN: Irish warrior
THOMAS: Knight Templar and member of the Anima Templi based in London
WILL CAMPBELL: Templar commander and head of the Anima Templi
WILLIAM: son of Rose
*WILLIAM WALLACE (c. 1270-1305): Scottish knight and leader of the Scottish rebellion
YOLANDE: servant of Bertrand de Got
YSENDA: youngest sister of Will, mother of David, Margaret and Alice
Glossary
ACRE: a city on the coast of Palestine, conquered by the Arabs in 640. It was captured by the Crusaders in the early twelfth century and became the principal port of the new Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Acre was ruled by a king, but by the mid-thirteenth century royal authority was disputed by the local Frankish nobles and from this time the city, with its twenty-seven separate quarters, was largely governed oligarchically.
ANIMA TEMPLI: Latin for “Soul of the Temple.” A fictional group within the Knights Templar founded by Grand Master Robert de Sablé in 1191, in the aftermath of the Battle of Hattin. It is formed of twelve Brethren, drawn from the order’s ranks, with a guardian to mediate during disputes, and is dedicated to achieving reconciliation among the Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths.
BERNARD DE CLAIRVAUX, ST.: (1090-1153) abbot and founder of the Cistercian monastery at Clairvaux in France. An early supporter of the Templars, Bernard aided the order in the creation of their Rule.
BLACK STONE: in Arabic al-Hajar al-Aswad, a sacred relic set in the eastern corner of the Ka‘ba in Mecca, held in place by a silver band and kissed or touched by Muslims during the rites of pilgrimage. In 929, the Karmatians (Ismaili Shias) took possession of the Black Stone and carried it out of Mecca, effectively holding it to ransom until its restoration twenty-two years later.
CRUSADES: a European movement of the medieval period, spurred by economic, religious and political ideals. The First Crusade was preached in 1095 by Pope Urban II at Clermont in France. The call to Crusade came initially as a response to appeals from the Greek emperor in Byzantium, whose domains were being invaded by the Seljuk Turks, who had captured Jerusalem in 1071. The Roman and Greek Orthodox Churches had been divided since 1054 and Urban saw in this plea the chance to reunite the two Churches and, in so doing, gain Catholicism a firmer hold over the Eastern world. Urban’s goal was achieved only briefly and imperfectly in the wake of the Fourth Crusade of 1204. Over two centuries, more than eleven Crusades to the Holy Land were launched from Europe’s shores.
DESTRIER: Old French for warhorse.
DOMINICANS: order, whose Rule was based on that of St. Augustine, founded in 1215 by Dominic de Guzman in France. Guzman, who promoted an austere, evangelical style of Catholicism, used the new order to aid the Church in eradicating the Cathar heretics. In England they were known as the Black Friars, in France the Jacobins. The Dominicans, who continued to grow rapidly after Guzman’s death, eschewed the luxuries enjoyed by many in the priesthood and were highly educated. In 1233 they were chosen by the pope to root out heretics, and official inquisitors were appointed. By 1252, inquisitors were permitted to use torture to obtain confessions and many Dominicans became active members of this newly established institution that would become known as the Inquisition.
ENCEINTE: an enclosure within or area of a castle, or other fortified place.
FALCHION: a short sword with a curved edge, primarily used by infantry.
FLANDERS: a county in the Low Countries, famous for its cloth industry. Throughout the medieval period the kings of France sought to impose their authority over the county, which was often an ally of England. The resulting unrest led to the rise of the merchant guilds and eventually to open revolt, which climaxed in the defeat of French royal forces at Courtrai in 1302. Flanders was eventually annexed by the duke of Burgundy in the fourteenth century.
FOSSE: a ditch or moat.
GAMBESON: a coat made of leather or quilted cloth.
GASCONY: a region in southwest France that became part of the duchy of Aquitaine in the eleventh century, then after the Treaty of Paris in 1258 came under the authority of the English kings who ruled the duchy of Guienne, which was then divided from Aquitaine.
GRAIL ROMANCE: a popular cycle of romances prevalent during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. From this time, the Grail, the concept of which is thought to be derived from pre-Christian mythology, was Christianized and adopted into the Arthurian legend, made famous by the twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes, whose work influenced later writers such as Malory and Tennyson. The following century saw many more takes on the Grail theme, including Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, which inspired Wagner’s opera. Romances were courtly stories, usually composed in verse in the vernacular, which combined historical, mythical and religious themes.
GRAND MASTER: head of a military order. The grand master of the Templars was elected for life by a council of Templar officials and until the end of the Crusades was based at the order’s headquarters in Palestine.
GUIENNE: a duchy in southwest France, with Bordeaux as its principal city. Guienne was ruled by the kings of England, as vassals of the French king, after the Treaty of Paris in 1258, but following the death of Louis IX, English authority in the duchy was dispute
d by the French.
HAUBERK: a shirt of mail or scale armor.
KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM: the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was founded in 1099, following the capture of Jerusalem by the First Crusade. Its first ruler was Godfrey de Bouillon, a Frankish count. Jerusalem itself became the new Crusader capital, but was lost and regained several times over the following two centuries until it was finally reclaimed by the Muslims in 1244, whereupon the city of Acre became the Crusaders’ capital. Acre fell in 1291, signaling the end of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and of Western power in the Middle East.
KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN: Order founded in the late eleventh century that takes its name from the hospital of St. John the Baptist in Jerusalem, where it had its first headquarters. Also known as the Hospitallers, their initial brief was the care of Christian pilgrims, but after the First Crusade their objectives changed dramatically. They retained their hospitals, but their primary preoccupations became the building and defense of their castles in the Holy Land, recruitment of knights and the acquisition of land and property. They enjoyed similar power and status as the Templars and the orders were often rivals. After the end of the Crusades, the Knights of St. John moved their headquarters to Rhodes, then later to Malta, where they became known as the Knights of Malta.
KNIGHTS TEMPLAR: Order of knights formed early in the twelfth century after the First Crusade. Established by Hugues de Payns, who traveled to Jerusalem with eight fellow French knights, the order was named after the Temple of Solomon, upon the site of which they had their first headquarters. The Templars, who were formally recognized in 1128 at the Council of Troyes, followed both a religious rule and a strict military code. Their initial raison d’être was to protect Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land; however, they far exceeded this early brief in their military and mercantile endeavors both in the Middle East and throughout Europe, where they rose to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful organizations of their day. There were three separate classes within the order: sergeants, priests and knights, but only knights, who took the three monastic vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, were permitted to wear the distinctive white mantles that bore a splayed red cross.