Truth About the Knights Templar

Truth About the Knights Templar

BY MICHAEL HOWARD

So many books, articles and academic treatises have been written about the Order of Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem – usually shortened to the Knights Templar – that it is difficult to separate fact from fiction, or fantasy.

Founded in CE 1118 by a French nobleman to protect the pilgrim routes from southern Europe to the Holy Land or Palestine, it was originally a company of only nine knights. It increased in size in the next ten years until it had 15,000 warrior monks and 40,000 lay members and was the richest religious community in Christendom. Its eventual downfall and destruction was just as dramatic as the chaste Christian knights were accused of practising ‘unnatural sin’, blasphemy, heresy, and devil worship.

The sudden rise of the Templars, their considerable wealth obtained by loading their empty ships with spices, silk and other luxury goods on the journey back to Europe, and their special status within the Roman Catholic Church, brought criticism and created powerful enemies.

Even the Vatican became critical of the Order, and in 1207 Pope Innocent III denounced the knights for their excesses and for “employing doctrines worthy of demons.” A year later he issued a papal bull because the knights had refused to accept his authority and replaced it with that of their own Grand Master. In 1238 Pope Gregory IX even accused the Templars of practising heresy but no charges were brought against them.

The term “pride of a Templar” became commonplace as a description for any arrogant person. In battle, despite their religious beliefs or perhaps because of them, the Templars were renowned for their courage and ruthlessness. When sacking cities and towns in Palestine the knights showed no mercy, killing men, women and children indiscriminately so that the streets literally ran with the blood of the massacred. This was despite the fact that the Order was rumoured to have made secret alliances and deals with the Saracens. It is possible these were of the same nature as the financial deals allegedly made between some NATO troops and Taliban forces in the modern Afghan war.

In France the Templars owned large tracts of land and many properties including whole villages that they ruled as feudal landlords. The Order owed no allegiance to the French crown and paid no taxes to the states on their income as merchants and farmers. Eventually this brought them into open conflict with the French king Philip IV, also known as Phillipe Le Bel or the Fair. When he came to the throne he found the kingdom he had inherited was bankrupt. Vast sums of money had been spent in funding the crusades to the Holy Land and in real terms the Templars were wealthier than the king. At first Philip turned on the Jews as a source of income, and then he began to consider the Templars and plotted how he could discredit them and seize their assets.

To move against the Order Philip first needed to get rid of the incumbent pontiff, his arch-enemy Pope Boniface VIII. The king publicly accused him of atheism, blasphemy and immorality and in 1305 managed to get him replaced by his own puppet pope, Clement V, who ruled the Church from Avignon in France instead of Rome.

Rumours about strange activities within the Order of the Temple and their heretical beliefs had been circulating for some years. It was said they had an inner circle who worshipped a golden calf, a human head or skull, or a cat or goat-headed idol with obscene rites. Their monastic rule of chastity was apparently a sham as the knights practised the ‘unnatural vice’ of homosexuality as part of their secret rituals of initiation into the Order.

When three knights were expelled from the Order for grave misconduct and offered to inform on their former comrades, King Philip saw his chance to act. He tricked the Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay, into leaving his headquarters in Cyprus and travel to Paris on the pretence that the king wanted to discuss launching a new crusade. De Molay duly arrived at the French court bearing 150,000 gold florins and ten horse-loads of silver ingots as a gift to the king. While De Molay and his personal bodyguard were staying at the Templar commanderie in Paris, King Philip closed his trap on the Order.

On 13 October 1307 the king ordered dawn raids on the Paris headquarters and De Molay and sixty of his knights were arrested. Orders had also been issued to provincial governors all over France and simultaneously all the Templar religious houses were raided, their members arrested and, most importantly for the king’s cunning plan, their physical assets were seized by the crown.

A month later Pope Clement V meekly issued a papal bull addressed to the monarchs of Europe informing them the Templar Order had been declared heretical and they should arrest all its members in their lands. Some obeyed the papal decree but in some countries the Templars were virtually unharmed and its members were assimilated into other chivalric orders.

In total eighty-eight charges were brought against the Templars in France with the support of the pope, who in fact got involved in the legal proceedings against them. Two early charges, of consorting with women and being inclined to Islam, were dropped. However, the other charges remained, and these were that the knights had denied Christ as the saviour and redeemer of humanity, spat and trampled on the cross at their initiations into the Order, adored an unspecified idol, perverted (desecrated) the sacrament, practised ritual murder, wore a cord “of heretical significance,” performed “ritual kisses” during naked initiation ceremonies, and were traitors to the other Christian forces in the Middle East.

Knights who had been inducted into the inner circle of the Order confessed that the Templar priests had forced them to deny and renounce Christ. They were told he was a false prophet and made to spit three times on a crucifix and trample it underfoot. Some candidates were reluctant or too scared to carry out this blasphemous act and were forced to do it at sword point. Others who still refused were punished by being flogged daily and put on a ration of bread and water until they agreed.

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