The Knights Templars

Having some years ago, during a pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem, gained admission to the courts of the ancient Temple of the Knights Templars, which still exists on Mount Moriah in a perfect state of preservation as a Mussulman Mosque, and having visited many of the ruined fortresses and castles of the ancient order of the Temple, whose shattered walls are still to be seen at intervals in Palestine and in Syria, from Gaza to Antioch, and from the mountains of the Dead Sea to the shores of the Mediterranean, I naturally became greatly interested in the history of the order, and in the numerous remains and memorials of the Knights Templars still to be met with in various stages of decay and ruin in almost every part of Europe. The recent restoration of the Temple Church at London, the most beautiful and the best preserved of all the ancient ecclesiastical edifices of the western provinces of the Temple, first suggested to me the idea of writing a short historical account of the varied fortunes of that great religious and military fraternity of knights and monks by whom it was erected, and of their dark and terrible end.

Born during the first fervour of the Crusaders, the Templars were flattered and aggrandized as long as their great military power and religious fanaticism could be made available for the support of the Eastern church and the retention of the Holy Land; but when the crescent had ultimately triumphed over the cross, and the religious and military enthusiasm of Christendom had died away, they encountered the basest ingratitude in return for the services they had rendered to the Christian faith, and were plundered, persecuted, and condemned to a cruel death by those who ought in justice to have been their defenders and supporters.

The memory of these holy warriors is embalmed in all our recollections of the wars of the cross; they were the bulwarks of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem during the short period of its existence, and were the last band of Europe’s host that contended for the possession of Palestine. To the vows of the monk and the austere life of the convent, they added the discipline of the camp, and the stern duties of the military life, joining “the fine vocation of the sword and lance” with the holy zeal and body-bending toil of a poor brotherhood. The vulgar notion that they were as wicked as they were fearless and brave, has not yet been entirely exploded; but it is hoped that the copious account of the proceedings against the order in this country given in the ensuing volume, will dispel many unfounded prejudices still entertained against the fraternity, and excite emotions of admiration for their constancy and courage, and of pity for their unmerited and cruel fate.

The accounts, even of the best of the ancient historians concerning the Templars ought not to be implicitly relied upon. William of Tyre, for instance, tells us that Nassr-ed-deen, son of sultan Abbas, was taken prisoner by the Templars, and whilst in their hands became a convert to Christianity; that he had learned the rudiments of the Latin language, and earnestly sought to be baptized, but that the Templars were bribed with sixty thousand pieces of gold to surrender him to his enemies in Egypt, where certain death awaited him; and that they stood by to see him bound hand and foot with chains, and placed in an iron cage, to be conducted across the desert to Cairo. The Arabian historians, on the other hand, tell us that Nassr-ed-deen and his father murdered the caliph, threw his body into a well, and then fled into Palestine; that the sister of the murdered caliph wrote immediately to the commander of the garrison of the Knights Templars at Gaza, offering a handsome reward for the capture of the fugitives; that they were accordingly intercepted, and Nassr-ed-deen was sent to Cairo, where the female relations of the caliph caused his body to be cut into small pieces in the seraglio! The above act has constantly been made a matter of grave accusation against the Templars; but what a different complexion does the case assume on the testimony of the Arabian authorities! It must be remembered that William, archbishop of Tyre, was hostile to the order on account of its vast powers and privileges, and carried his complaints to a general council of the Church at Rome. He is abandoned, in everything that he says to the prejudice of the fraternity, by James of Vitry, bishop of Acre, a learned and most talented prelate, who wrote in Palestine subsequently to William of Tyre, and has copied largely from the history of the latter. The bishop of Acre speaks of the Templars in the highest terms, and declares that they were universally loved by all men for their piety and humility.

The celebrated orientalist Von Hammer has recently brought forward various extraordinary and unfounded charges, destitute of all authority, against the Templars; and Wilcke, who has written a German history of the order, seems to have imbibed all the vulgar prejudices against the fraternity. I might have added to the interest of the ensuing work, by making the Templars horrible and atrocious villains; but I have endeavoured to write a fair and impartial account of the order, not slavishly adopting everything I find detailed in ancient writers, but such matters only as I believe, after a careful examination of the best authorities, to be true.

The favourable reception given to the first edition of the ensuing work, and the interest that was taken in the extraordinary and romantic career of the Knights Templars, induced me to publish a second edition greatly enlarged, and to introduce various collateral matters of an antiquarian and local character, interesting only to a comparatively small number of readers. This enlarged edition having been exhausted, it occurred to me, in preparing a third edition for the press, that the work might be materially shortened and reduced in price without in anywise detracting from its value and interest as a record of the chief events of one of the most remarkable and interesting periods of history, and of the extraordinary and romantic achievements of the first and most ancient of the great religio-military orders of knights and monks established during the crusades.

The dry matters of detail, of local and partial interest, which interfered with the continuity of the main narrative, have been struck out of the body of the work, and the more striking incidents of the history have been thus brought into greater prominence. The long Latin and French extracts from the old chronicles have also been discarded from the notes, but the historical references have been preserved to enable the reader, if he thinks fit, to study the quaint and curious language of the originals. By these means, and by enlarging the size of the page, the work has been compressed into a smaller compass, and the price reduced nearly one half.

It is hoped that these alterations will be found to be improvements.

Inner Temple, December 8, 1851.

INTRODUCTION

“Go forth to battle and employ your substance and your persons for the advancement of God’s religion. Verily, God loveth those who fight for his religion in battle array.” – Koran, chapter 56, entitled Battle Array.

“O Prophet, stir up the faithful to war! If twenty of you persevere with constancy they shall overcome two hundred, and if there be one hundred of you they shall overcome one thousand of those who believe not.” —Chapter 8, entitled The Spoils.

“Verily, if God pleased, he could take vengeance on the unbelievers without your assistance, but he commandeth you to fight his battles that he may prove the one of you by the other; and as to those who fight in defence of God’s true religion, God will not suffer their works to perish.” – Koran, chapter 47, entitled War.

To be propagated by the sword was a vital principle of Mahommedanism. War against infidels for the establishment and extension of the faith was commanded by the Prophet, and the solemn injunction became hallowed and perpetuated by success.

A century after the death of Mahomet, the Moslems had extended their religion and their arms from India to the Atlantic Ocean; they had subdued and converted, by the power of the sword, Persia and Egypt, and all the north of Africa, from the mouth of the Nile to the extreme western boundary of that vast continent; they overran Spain, invaded France, and turning their footsteps towards Italy they entered the kingdoms of Naples and Genoa, threatened Rome, and subjected the island of Sicily to the laws and the religion of their Prophet. But at the very period when they were about to plant the Koran in the very heart of Europe, and were advancing with rapid strides to universal dominion, intestine dissensions broke out amongst them which undermined their power, and Europe was released from the dread and danger of Saracen dominion.

In the tenth century of the Christian era, however, the ferocious and barbarous Turcomans appeared as the patrons of Mahommedanism, and the propagators of the Koran. These were wild pastoral tribes of shepherds and hunters, who descended from the frozen plains to the north of the Caspian, conquered Persia, embraced the religion and the law of Mahomet, and became united under the standard of the Prophet into one great and powerful nation. They overran the greater part of the Asiatic continent, destroyed the churches of the Christians and the temples of the Pagans, and appeared (A. D. 1084) in warlike array on the Asiatic shore of the Hellespont in front of Constantinople. The terrified emperor Alexius sent urgent letters to the Pope and the christian princes of Europe, exhorting them to assist him and their common Christianity in the perilous crisis. The preachings of Peter the hermit, and the exhortations of the Pope, forthwith aroused Christendom; Europe was armed and precipitated upon Asia; the Turkish power was broken; the Christian provinces of the Greek empire of Constantinople were recovered from the grasp of the infidels; and the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was reared upon the ruins of the Turkish empire of sultan Soliman. The monastic and military order of the Temple was then called into existence for the purpose of checking the power of the infidels, and fighting the battles of Christendom in the plains of Asia. “Suggested by fanaticism,” as Gibbon observes, but guided by an intelligent and far reaching policy, it became the firmest bulwark of Christianity in the East, and mainly contributed to preserve Europe from Turkish desolation, and probably from Turkish conquest.

Many grave and improbable charges have been brought against the Templars by monks and priests who wrote in Europe concerning events in the Holy Land, and who regarded the vast privileges of the order with indignation and aversion. Matthew Paris tells us that they were leagued with the infidels, and fought pitched battles with the rival order of Saint John; but as contemporary historians of Palestine, who describe the exploits of the Templars, and were eye-witnesses of their career, make no mention of such occurrences, and as no allusion is made to them in the letters of the Pope addressed to the Grand Master of the order of Saint John shortly after the date of these pretended battles, I have omitted all mention of them, feeling convinced, after a careful examination of the best authorities, that they never did take place.

At this distant day, when the times and scenes in which the Templars acted are changed, and the deep religious fervour and warm fresh feelings of bygone ages have given way to a cold and calculating philosophy, we may doubt the sincerity of the military friars, exclaim against their credulity, and deride their zeal; but when we call to mind the hardships and fatigues, the dangers, sufferings, and death, to which they voluntarily devoted themselves in a far distant land, the sacrifice of personal comforts, of the ties of kindred, and of all the endearments of domestic life, which they made without any prospect of worldly gain or temporal advantage, for objects which they believed to be just, and noble, and righteous, we must ever rank the generous impulses by which they were actuated among the sublime emotions which can influence the human character in those periods when men feel rather than calculate, before knowledge has chilled the sensibility, or selfish indifference hardened the heart.

CHAPTER I

The pilgrimages to Jerusalem – Origin of the Templars – Their location in the Temple – Hugh de Payens chosen Master of the Temple – His introduction to the Pope – The assembling of the Council of Troyes – The formation of a rule for the government of the Templars – The most curious parts of the rule displayed – Visit of Hugh de Payens to England – The foundation of the Order in this country – Lands and money granted to the Templars – St. Bernard displays their valour and piety.

The natural desire of visiting those holy spots which have been sanctified by the presence, and rendered memorable by the sufferings, of the Son of God, drew, during the early ages of Christianity, crowds of devout worshippers and pilgrims to Jerusalem. Among the most illustrious and enthusiastic of the many wanderers to the Holy City was the empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, who, with the warm feelings of a recent conversion, visited in person every place and every object in Palestine associated with the memory of him who died for mankind on the blessed cross. With a holy zeal and a lively enthusiasm, she attempted to fix by unquestionable tradition the scene of each memorable event in the gospel narrative; and Christendom is indebted to her for the real or pretended discovery (about two hundred and ninety-eight years after the death of Christ) of the Holy Sepulchre. Over this sacred monument the empress and her son Constantine caused to be erected the magnificent church of the Resurrection, or, as it is now called, the church of the Holy Sepulchre; and they adorned all those places in the Holy Land which remind us most forcibly of the earthly existence and death of Jesus Christ, with magnificent churches and religious houses.

The example of this pious princess, and the pretended discoveries made by her of holy relics, caused a great increase in the pilgrimages to Jerusalem. The conquest of Palestine by the Arabians, (A. D. 637,) stimulated rather than suppressed them; it added to the merit by increasing the danger and difficulty of the undertaking, whilst the enthusiasm which prompted the long and perilous journey was increased by the natural feelings of sorrow and indignation at the loss of the holy places, and the possession of them by the conquering infidels. Year after year, and century after century, hundreds and thousands of both sexes, of all ranks and every age, the monarch and the peasant, the noble and the beggar, flocked to the shrines and the altars of Palestine. They visited, with pious affection, Bethlehem, where the Saviour first saw the light; they bathed in the waters of the river Jordan, wherein he was baptized, and wept and prayed upon Mount Calvary, where he was crucified.

On the conquest of Jerusalem by the Arabians, the security of the christian population had been provided for in a solemn guarantee given under the hand and seal of the caliph Omar, to Sophronius the patriarch. One fourth of the entire city, with the church of the Resurrection, the Holy Sepulchre, and the great Latin convent, had been left in the hands of the Christians and the pilgrims were permitted, on payment of a trifling tribute, freely to visit the various objects of their regard. When the sceptre was transferred from the family of the Abassides to the Fatimites, and the caliphs of Egypt obtained possession of Palestine, the same mild and tolerant government was continued. In the eleventh century, the zeal of pilgrimage had reached its height, and the caravans of pilgrims had become so numerous as to be styled the armies of the Lord. The old and the young, women and children, flocked in crowds to Jerusalem, and in the year 1064 the Holy Sepulchre was visited by an enthusiastic band of seven thousand pilgrims. The year following, however, Jerusalem was conquered by the wild Turcomans, three thousand of the citizens were massacred, and the command over the holy city and territory was confided to the emir Ortok, the chief of a savage pastoral tribe.

Under the iron yoke of these fierce northern strangers, the Christians were fearfully oppressed; they were driven from their churches; divine worship was ridiculed and interrupted; and the patriarch of the Holy City was dragged by the hair of his head over the sacred pavement of the church of the Resurrection, and cast into a dungeon, to extort a ransom from the sympathy of his flock. The pilgrims who, through innumerable perils, had reached the gates of the Holy City, were plundered, imprisoned, and frequently massacred; a piece of gold, was exacted as the price of admission to the holy sepulchre, and many, unable to pay the tax, were driven by the swords of the Turcomans from the very threshold of the object of all their hopes, the bourne of their long pilgrimage, and were compelled to retrace their weary steps in sorrow and anguish to their distant homes. The intelligence of these cruelties aroused the religious chivalry of Christendom; “a nerve was touched of exquisite feeling, and the sensation vibrated to the heart of Europe.” Then arose the wild enthusiasm of the crusades, and men of all ranks, and even monks and priests, animated by the exhortations of the pope and the preachings of Peter the Hermit, flew to arms, and enthusiastically undertook “the pious and glorious enterprize” of rescuing the holy sepulchre of Christ from the foul abominations of the heathen.

When intelligence of the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders (A. D. 1099) had been conveyed to Europe, the zeal of pilgrimage blazed forth with increased fierceness: it had gathered intensity from the interval of its suppression by the wild Turcomans, and promiscuous crowds of both sexes, old men and children, virgins and matrons, thinking the road then open and the journey practicable, successively pressed forwards towards the Holy City. The infidels had indeed been driven out of Jerusalem, but not out of Palestine. The lofty mountains bordering the sea coast were infested by warlike bands of fugitive Mussulmen, who maintained themselves in various impregnable castles and strongholds, from whence they issued forth upon the high-roads, cut off the communication between Jerusalem and the sea-ports, and revenged themselves for the loss of their habitations and property by the indiscriminate pillage of all travellers. The Bedouin horsemen, moreover, making rapid incursions from beyond the Jordan, frequently kept up a desultory and irregular warfare in the plains; and the pilgrims, consequently, whether they approached the Holy City by land or by sea, were alike exposed to almost daily hostility, to plunder, and to death.

To alleviate the dangers and distresses to which they were exposed, to guard the honour of the saintly virgins and matrons, and to protect the gray hairs of the venerable palmer, nine noble knights, who had greatly distinguished themselves at the siege and capture of Jerusalem, formed a holy brotherhood in arms, and entered into a solemn compact to aid one another in clearing the highways, and in protecting the pilgrims through the passes and defiles of the mountains to the Holy City. Warmed with the religious and military fervour of the day, and animated by the sacredness of the cause to which they had devoted their swords, they called themselves the Poor Fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ. They renounced the world and its pleasures, and in the holy church of the Resurrection, in the presence of the patriarch of Jerusalem, they embraced vows of perpetual chastity, obedience, and poverty, after the manner of monks. Uniting in themselves the two most popular qualities of the age, devotion and valour, and exercising them in the most popular of all enterprises, they speedily acquired a famous reputation.

At first, we are told, they had no church, and no particular place of abode, but in the year of our Lord 1118, (nineteen years after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders,) they had rendered such good and acceptable service to the Christians, that Baldwin the Second, king of Jerusalem, granted them a place of habitation within the sacred inclosure of the Temple on Mount Moriah, amid those holy and magnificent structures, partly erected by the Christian Emperor Justinian, and partly built by the Caliph Omar, which were then exhibited by the monks and priests of Jerusalem, whose restless zeal led them to practise on the credulity of the pilgrims, and to multiply relics and all objects likely to be sacred in their eyes, as the Temple of Solomon, whence the Poor Fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ came thenceforth to be known by the name of “the Knighthood of the Temple of Solomon.”

By the Mussulmen, the site of the great Jewish temple on Mount Moriah has always been regarded with peculiar veneration. Mahomet, in the first year of the publication of the Koran, directed his followers, when at prayer, to turn their faces towards it, and pilgrimages have constantly been made to the holy spot by devout Moslems. On the conquest of Jerusalem by the Arabians, it was the first care of the Caliph Omar to rebuild “the Temple of the Lord.” Assisted by the principal chieftains of his army, the Commander of the Faithful undertook the pious office of clearing the ground with his own hands, and of tracing out the foundations of the magnificent mosque which now crowns with its dark and swelling dome the elevated summit of Mount Moriah.

This great house of prayer, the most holy Mussulman Temple in the world after that of Mecca, is erected over the spot where “Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.” It remains to this day in a state of perfect preservation, and is one of the finest specimens of Saracenic architecture in existence. It is entered by four spacious doorways, each door facing one of the cardinal points; the Bab el D’Jannat, or gate of the garden, on the north; the Bab el Kebla, or gate of prayer, on the south; the Bab ib’n el Daoud, or the gate of the son of David, on the east; and the Bab el Garbi, on the west. By the Arabian geographers it is called Beit Allah, the house of God, also Beit Almokaddas, or Beit Almacdes, the holy house. From it Jerusalem derives its Arabic name, el Kods, the holy, el Schereef, the noble, and el Mobarek, the blessed.

The crescent had been torn down by the crusaders from the summit of this great Mussulman Temple, and replaced by an immense golden cross, and the edifice was consecrated to the services of the christian religion, but retained its simple appellation of “The Temple of the Lord.” William, Archbishop of Tyre and Chancellor of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, gives an interesting account of the building as it existed in his time during the Latin dominion. He speaks of the splendid mosaic work on the walls; of the Arabic characters setting forth the name of the founder, and the cost of the undertaking; and of the famous rock under the centre of the dome, which is to this day shown by the Moslems as the spot whereon the destroying angel stood, “with his drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem.”1 This rock, he informs us, was left exposed and uncovered for the space of fifteen years after the conquest of the holy city by the crusaders, but was, after that period, cased with a handsome altar of white marble, upon which the priests daily said mass.

To the south of this holy Mussulman temple, on the extreme edge of the summit of Mount Moriah, and resting against the modern walls of the town of Jerusalem, stands the venerable christian church of the Virgin, erected by the Emperor Justinian, whose stupendous foundations, remaining to this day, fully justify the astonishing description given of the building by Procopius. That writer informs us that in order to get a level surface for the erection of the edifice, it was necessary, on the east and south sides of the hill, to raise up a wall of masonry from the valley below, and to construct a vast foundation, partly composed of solid stone and partly of arches and pillars. The stones were of such magnitude, that each block required to be transported in a truck drawn by forty of the emperor’s strongest oxen; and to admit of the passage of these trucks it was necessary to widen the roads leading to Jerusalem. The forests of Lebanon yielded their choicest cedars for the timbers of the roof, and a quarry of variegated marble, in the adjoining mountains, furnished the edifice with superb marble columns.2 The interior of this interesting structure, which still remains at Jerusalem, after a lapse of more than thirteen centuries, in an excellent state of preservation, is adorned with six rows of columns, from whence spring arches supporting the cedar beams and timbers of the roof, and at the end of the building is a round tower, surmounted by a dome. The vast stones, the walls of masonry, and the subterranean colonnade raised to support the south-east angle of the platform whereon the church is erected, are truly wonderful, and may still be seen by penetrating through a small door, and descending several flights of steps at the south-east corner of the enclosure. Adjoining the sacred edifice, the emperor erected hospitals, or houses of refuge, for travellers, sick people, and mendicants of all nations, the foundations whereof, composed of handsome Roman masonry, are still visible on either side of the southern end of the building.