Rise After the
Franks in the
First Crusade captured
Jerusalem from the
Fatimid Caliphate in 1099, many
Christians made
pilgrimages to various sacred sites in the
Holy Land. Although the city of
Jerusalem was relatively secure under Christian control, the rest of
Outremer was not.
Bandits and marauding
highwaymen preyed upon these Christian pilgrims, who were routinely slaughtered, sometimes by the hundreds, as they attempted to make the journey from the coastline at
Jaffa through to the interior of the Holy Land. In 1119, the French
knight Hugues de Payens approached King
Baldwin II of Jerusalem and
Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and proposed creating a
monastic Catholic
religious order for the protection of these pilgrims. King Baldwin and Patriarch Warmund agreed to the request, probably at the
Council of Nablus in January 1120, and the king granted the Templars a headquarters in a wing of the royal palace on the
Temple Mount in the captured
Al-Aqsa Mosque. The order, with about nine
knights including
Godfrey de Saint-Omer and
André de Montbard, had few financial resources and relied on donations to survive. Their emblem was of two knights riding on a single horse, emphasizing the order's poverty. in Jerusalem. The Crusaders called it "the
Temple of Solomon" and from this location derived their name of Templar. The impoverished status of the Templars did not last long. They had a powerful advocate in Saint
Bernard of Clairvaux, a leading Church figure, the French
abbot primarily responsible for the founding of the
Cistercian Order of monks and a nephew of
André de Montbard, one of the founding knights. Bernard put his weight behind them and wrote persuasively on their behalf in the letter
In Praise of the New Knighthood, and in 1129, at the
Council of Troyes, he led a group of leading churchmen to officially approve and endorse the order on behalf of the church. With this formal blessing, the Templars became a favoured charity throughout
Christendom, receiving money, land, businesses, and noble-born sons from families who were eager to help with the fight in the
Holy Land. At the
Council of Pisa in 1135,
Pope Innocent II initiated the first papal monetary donation to the Order. Another major benefit came in 1139, when Innocent II's
papal bull exempted the order from obedience to local laws. This ruling meant that the Templars could pass freely through all borders, were not required to pay any
taxes and were exempt from all authority except that of the pope. However, in practice, they often had to respect the wishes of the European rulers in whose kingdoms they resided, especially in their handling of funds for the local noblility in their
banks. With its clear mission and ample resources, the order grew rapidly. Templars were often the advance
shock troops in key battles of the Crusades, as the heavily armoured knights on their
warhorses would
charge into the enemy lines ahead of the main army. One of their most famous victories was in 1177 during the
Battle of Montgisard, where some 500 Templar knights helped several thousand infantry to defeat
Saladin's army of more than 26,000 soldiers. Although the primary mission of the order was military, relatively few members were combatants. The majority acted in support positions to assist the knights and manage their financial infrastructure. Although individual members were sworn to poverty, the Templar Order controlled vast wealth even beyond direct donations. A nobleman participating in the Crusades might place all his assets under Templar management during his absence. Accumulating wealth in this manner throughout Christendom and the Outremer, in 1150 the order began to issue
letters of credit for pilgrims journeying to the Holy Land: pilgrims deposited their valuables with a local Templar preceptory before embarking, received a document indicating the value of their deposit, then showed that document upon arrival in the Holy Land to claim treasure of equal value to their funds. This innovative arrangement was an early form of
banking and may have been the first use of bank
cheques; it protected pilgrims from robbery, while augmenting Templar finances. Based on this mix of donations and business dealings, the Templars established financial networks across the whole of
Christendom. They acquired large tracts of land, both in Europe and the Middle East; they bought and managed farms and vineyards; they built massive stone cathedrals and castles; they were involved in manufacturing, import, and export; they owned fleets of ships; and at one point they even owned the entire island of
Cyprus. The order arguably qualifies as the world's first
multinational corporation. By the late 12th century the Templars were also politically powerful in the Holy Land. Secular nobles in the Kingdom of Jerusalem began granting them castles and surrounding lands as a defense against the growing threat of the
Zengids in
Syria. The Templars were even allowed to negotiate with Muslim rulers independently of the feudal lords. The Templar castles became
de facto independent lordships with their own markets, further growing their political authority. During the regency after the death of King
Baldwin IV in 1185, the royal castles were placed in the custody of the Templars and
Hospitallers: the grand masters of the two orders, along with the
patriarch of Jerusalem, each had a key to the crown jewels. From the mid-12th century, the Templars were recruited (jointly with the Hospitallers) to fight the Muslim kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula, in addition to their campaigns in the Latin East. In the kingdoms of Castile and León, they obtained some major strongholds (such as
Calatrava la Vieja or
Coria), but their vulnerability along the border was exposed during the
Almohad offensive. In Aragon, the Templars subsumed the
Order of Mountjoy in the late 12th century, becoming an important vanguard force on the border, while in Portugal they commanded some castles along the Tagus line. One of these was Tomar, which was
unsuccessfully besieged by the Almohad Caliphate in 1190. Due to the expense of sending a third of their revenues to the East, Templar and Hospitaller activities in the Iberian Peninsula were at a disadvantage to the Hispanic military orders which expended all their resources in the region.
War presiding over a council with the Templars Accounts of the Order's early military activities in the Levant are vague, though it appears their first battles were defeats, because the Seljuk Turks and other Muslim powers used different tactics than those in Europe at that time. The Templars later adapted to this and became strategic advisors to the leaders of the Crusader states. The first recorded battle involving the Knights Templar was in the town of
Teqoa, south of Jerusalem, in 1138. A force of Templars led by their grand master,
Robert de Craon (who succeeded Hugues de Payens about a year earlier), was sent to retake the town after it was captured by Muslims. They were initially successful, but the Muslims regrouped outside the town and were able to take it back from the Templars. The Order's mission developed from protecting pilgrims to taking part in regular military campaigns early on, and this is shown by the fact that the first castle received by the Knights Templar was located four hundred miles north of the pilgrim road from
Jaffa to Jerusalem, on the northern frontier of the
Principality of Antioch: the castle of
Bagras in the
Amanus Mountains. It may have been as early as 1131, and by 1137 at the latest, that the Templars were given the mountainous region that formed the border of Antioch and
Cilician Armenia, which included the castles of Bagras,
Darbsak, and
Roche de Roissel. The Templars were there when
Byzantine emperor John II Komnenos tried to make the
Crusader states of Antioch,
Tripoli, and
Edessa his vassals between 1137 and 1142. Templar knights accompanied John II Komnenos with troops from those states during his campaign against Muslim powers in
Syria from 1137 to 1138, including at the
sieges of Aleppo and
Shaizar. In 1143, the Templars also began taking part in the
Reconquista in
Iberia at the request of the
count of Barcelona. In 1147 a force of French, Spanish, and English Templars left
France to join the
Second Crusade, led by
King Louis VII. At a meeting held in Paris on 27 April 1147 they were given permission by
Pope Eugenius III to wear the red cross on their uniforms. They were led by the Templar provincial master in France,
Everard des Barres, who was one of the ambassadors King Louis sent to negotiate the passage of the Crusader army through the
Byzantine Empire on its way to the Holy Land. During the dangerous journey of the Second Crusade through
Anatolia, the Templars provided security to the rest of the army from Turkish raids. After the Crusaders arrived in 1148, the kings Louis VII,
Conrad III of Germany, and
Baldwin III of Jerusalem made the decision to
capture Damascus, but their siege in the summer of that year failed and ended with the defeat of the Christian army. In the fall of 1148 some returning Templars took part in the successful
siege of Tortosa in
Spain, after which one-fifth of that city was given to the Order. Robert de Craon died in January 1149 and was succeeded as grand master by Everard des Barres, one of the few leaders at the siege of Damascus whose reputation was not damaged by the event. After the Second Crusade, Zengid forces under
Nur ad-Din Zengi of
Aleppo attacked the
Principality of Antioch, and in June 1149 his army defeated the Crusaders at the
Battle of Inab, where Prince
Raymond of Antioch was killed. King Baldwin III led reinforcements to the principality, which led Nur ad-Din to accept a truce with Antioch and not advance any further. The force with King Baldwin included 120 Templar knights and 1,000 sergeants and squires. In the winter of 1149 and 1150,
King Baldwin III oversaw the reconstruction of the fortress at
Gaza City, which had been left in ruins. It was part of the ring of castles that were built along the southern border of the Kingdom of Jerusalem to protect it from raids by the Egyptian
Fatimid Caliphate, and specifically from the Fatimid troops at the fortress of
Ascalon, which by then was the last coastal city in the Levant still under Muslim control. Gaza was given to the Knights Templar, becoming the first major Templar castle. In 1152 Everard stepped down as grand master for unknown reasons, and his successor was
Bernard de Tremelay. In January of the following year, Bernard led the Templars when King Baldwin III led a Crusader army to
besiege Ascalon. Several months of fighting went by until the wall of the city was breached in August 1153, at which point Bernard led forty knights into Ascalon. But the rest of the army did not join them and all of the Templars were killed by the Muslim defenders. Ascalon was captured by the rest of the army several days later, and Bernard was eventually succeeded by
André de Montbard. After the fall of Ascalon, the Templars continued operating in that region from their castle at Gaza. In June 1154 they attacked
Abbas ibn Abi al-Futuh, the vizier of Egypt, when he tried to flee from Cairo to Damascus after losing a power struggle. Abbas was killed and the Templars captured his son, who they later sent back to the
Fatimids. In the late 1150s the Egyptians launched raids against the Crusaders in the areas of Gaza and Ascalon.
Decline in 1187, the turning point leading to the Third Crusade. From a copy of the , c. 1490 In the mid-12th century, the tide began to turn in the Crusades. The
Islamic world had become more united under effective leaders such as
Saladin, and the
reborn Sunni regime in Egypt. Dissension arose among Christian factions in and concerning the Holy Land. The Knights Templar were occasionally at odds with the two other Christian
military orders, the
Knights Hospitaller and the
Teutonic Knights, and decades of internecine feuds weakened Christian positions, both politically and militarily. After the Templars were involved in several unsuccessful campaigns, including the pivotal
Battle of Hattin, Jerusalem was
recaptured by Muslim forces under Saladin in 1187. The Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick II reclaimed the city for Christians in the
Sixth Crusade of 1229, without Templar aid, but only held it for a little more than a decade. In 1244, the
Ayyubid dynasty together with
Khwarezmi mercenaries recaptured Jerusalem, and the city did not return to Western control until 1917 when, during
World War I, the
British captured it from the
Ottoman Empire. The Templars were forced to relocate their headquarters to other cities in the north, such as the seaport of
Acre, which they held for the next century. It was lost in 1291, followed by their last mainland strongholds, Tortosa (
Tartus in present-day
Syria) and
Atlit (in present-day
Israel). Their headquarters then moved to
Limassol on the island of Cyprus, and they also attempted to maintain a garrison on tiny
Arwad Island, just off the coast from Tortosa. In 1300, there was some attempt to engage in
coordinated military efforts with the Mongols via a new invasion force at
Arwad. In 1302 or 1303, however, the Templars lost the island to the Egyptian
Mamluk Sultanate in the
siege of Arwad. With the island gone, the Crusaders lost their last foothold in the Holy Land. With the order's military mission now less important, support for the organization began to dwindle. The situation was complex, however, since during the two hundred years of their existence, the Templars had become a part of daily life throughout Christendom. The organization's Templar Houses, hundreds of which were dotted throughout Europe and the
Near East, gave them a widespread presence at the local level. At dawn on Friday, 13 October 1307, King Philip IV had de Molay and scores of other French Templars simultaneously arrested. The arrest warrant started with the words: ("God is not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom."). Claims were made that during Templar admissions ceremonies, recruits were forced to spit on the Cross, deny Christ, and engage in indecent kissing; brethren were also accused of
worshipping idols, and the order was said to have encouraged homosexual practices. Many of these allegations contain tropes that bear similarities to accusations made against other persecuted groups such as Jews, heretics, and accused witches. These allegations, though, were highly politicised without any real evidence. Still, the Templars were charged with numerous other offences such as financial corruption, fraud, and secrecy. Many of the accused confessed to these charges under torture, and their confessions, even though obtained
under duress, caused a scandal in Paris. The prisoners were coerced to confess that they had spat on the Cross. One said: ("I, Raymond de La Fère, 21 years old, admit that I have spat three times on the Cross, but only from my mouth and not from my heart"). The Templars were accused of
idolatry and were charged with worshipping either a figure known as
Baphomet or a mummified severed head they recovered, amongst other artefacts, at their original headquarters on the Temple Mount. Some have theorised that this head might have been believed to be that of
John the Baptist, among other things. Relenting to King Phillip's demands, Pope Clement then issued the papal bull on 22 November 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets. Clement called for papal hearings to determine the Templars' guilt or innocence, and once freed, many Templars recanted their confessions. Several Templars are listed as having come from
Gisors to defend the Order on 26 February 1310: Henri Zappellans or Chapelain, Anceau de Rocheria, Enard de Valdencia, Guillaume de Roy, Geoffroy de Cera or de La Fere-en-Champagne, Robert Harle or de Hermenonville, and Dreux de Chevru. Some had sufficient legal experience to defend themselves in
the trials, but in 1310, having appointed the
archbishop of Sens, Philippe de Marigny, to lead the investigation, Philip blocked this attempt, using the previously forced confessions to have dozens of Templars burned at the stake in Paris. With Philip threatening military action unless the pope complied with his wishes, Clement finally agreed to disband the order, citing the public scandal that had been generated by the confessions. At the
Council of Vienne in 1312, he issued a series of papal bulls, including , which officially dissolved the order, and , which turned over most Templar assets to the Hospitallers. As for the leaders of the order, the elderly Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who had confessed under torture, retracted his confession.
Geoffroi de Charney, Preceptor of
Normandy, also retracted his confession and insisted on his innocence. Both men, under pressure from the king, were declared guilty of being relapsed heretics and sentenced to burn alive at the stake in Paris on 18 March 1314. De Molay reportedly remained defiant to the end, asking to be tied in such a way that he could face the
Notre Dame Cathedral and hold his hands together in prayer. According to legend, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before
God. His actual words were recorded on the parchment as follows: ("God knows who is wrong and has sinned. Soon a calamity will occur to those who have condemned us to death"). The remaining Templars around Europe were either arrested and tried under the Papal investigation (with virtually none convicted), absorbed into other Catholic military orders, or pensioned off and allowed to live out their days peacefully. By papal decree, the property of the Templars was transferred to the Knights Hospitaller except in the Kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal. Portugal was the first country in Europe where they had settled, occurring only two or three years after the order's foundation in Jerusalem and even having a presence during Portugal's conception. The Portuguese king,
Denis I, refused to pursue and persecute the former knights, as had occurred in some other states under the influence of Philip & the crown. Under his protection, Templar organizations simply changed their name, from "Knights Templar" to the reconstituted
Order of Christ and also a parallel
Supreme Order of Christ of the
Holy See; both are considered successors to the Knights Templar.
Chinon Parchment In September 2001, a document known as the
Chinon Parchment dated 17–20 August 1308 was discovered in the
Vatican Archives by
Barbara Frale, apparently after having been filed in the wrong place in 1628. It is a record of the trial of the Templars and shows that Clement absolved the Templars of all heresies in 1308 before formally disbanding the order in 1312, as did another Chinon Parchment dated 20 August 1308 addressed to
Philip IV of France, also mentioning that all Templars that had confessed to
heresy were "restored to the Sacraments and to the unity of the Church". This other Chinon Parchment has been well known to historians, having been published by
Étienne Baluze in 1693 and by
Pierre Dupuy in 1751. The current position of the
Catholic Church is that the persecution of the Knights Templar was unjust, that nothing was inherently wrong with the order or its rule, and that
Pope Clement V was pressed into his actions by the magnitude of the public
scandal and by the dominating influence of King Philip IV. == Organization ==