Holy Blood, Holy Grail Page 8
During the two decades following the Council of Troyes the order expanded with extraordinary rapidity and on an extraordinary scale. When Hugues de Payen visited England in late 1128, he was received with "great worship" by King Henry I. Throughout Europe younger sons of noble families flocked to enroll in the order’s ranks, and vast donations—in money, goods, and land—were made from every quarter of Christendom. Hugues de Payen donated his own properties, and all new recruits were obliged to do likewise. On admission to the order a man was compelled to sign over all his possessions.
Given such policies, it is not surprising that Templar holdings proliferated. Within a mere twelve months of the Council of Troyes the order held substantial estates in France, England, Scotland, Flanders, Spain, and Portugal. Within another decade it also held territory in Italy, Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Holy Land, and points east. Although individual knights were bound to their vow of poverty, this did not prevent the order from amassing wealth, and on an unprecedented scale. All gifts were welcomed. At the same time the order was forbidden to dispose of anything—not even to ransom its leaders. The Temple received in abundance but, as a matter of strict policy, it never gave. Therefore, when Hugues de Payen returned to Palestine in 1130 with an entourage—quite considerable for the time—of some three hundred knights, he left behind, in the custody of other recruits, vast tracts of European territory.
In 1146 the Templars adopted the famous splayed red cross—the cross pattée. With this device emblazoned on their mantles the knights accompanied King Louis VII of France on the Second Crusade. Here they established their reputation for martial zeal coupled with an almost insane foolhardiness and a fierce arrogance as well. On the whole, however, they were magnificently disciplined— the most disciplined fighting force in the world at the time. The French king himself wrote that it was the Templars alone who prevented the Second Crusade—ill—conceived and mismanaged as it was—from degenerating into a total debacle.
During the next hundred years the Templars became a power with international influence. They were constantly engaged in high-level diplomacy among nobles and monarchs throughout the Western world and the Holy Land. In England, for example, the master of the Temple was regularly called to the king’s Parliament and was regarded as head of all religious orders, taking precedence over all priors and abbots in the land. Maintaining close ties with both Henry II and Thomas à Becket, the Templars were instrumental in trying to reconcile the sovereign and his estranged archbishop. Successive English kings, including King John, often resided in the Temple’s London preceptory, and the master of the order stood by the monarch’s side at the signing of the Magna Carta.7
Nor was the order’s political involvement confined to Christendom alone. Close links were forged with the Muslim world as well—the world so often opposed on the battlefield—and the Templars commanded a respect from Saracen leaders exceeding that accorded any other Europeans. Secret connections were also maintained with
4 The major castles and towns of the Holy Land in the mid-twelfth century
the Hashishim, or Assassins, the famous sect of militant and often fanatical adepts who were Islam’s equivalent of the Templars. The Hashishim paid tribute to the Temple and were rumored to be in its employ.
On almost every political level the Templars acted as official arbiters in disputes, and even kings submitted to their authority. In 1252 Henry III of England dared to challenge them, threatening to confiscate certain of their domains. "You Templars ... have so many liberties and charters that your enormous possessions make you rave with pride and haughtiness. What was imprudently given must therefore be prudently revoked; and what was inconsiderately bestowed must be considerately recalled." The master of the order replied, "What sayest thou, O King? Far be it that thy mouth should utter so disagreeable and silly a word. So long as thou dost exercise justice, thou wilt reign. But if thou infringe it, thou wilt cease to be King."8 It is difficult to convey to the modern mind the enormity and audacity of this statement. Implicitly the master is arrogating for his order and himself a power that not even the papacy dared explictly claim—the power to make or depose monarchs.
At the same time the Templars’ interests extended beyond war, diplomacy, and political intrigue. In effect they created and established the institution of modern banking. By lending vast sums to destitute monarchs they became the bankers for every throne in Europe—and for certain Muslim potentates as well. With their network of preceptories throughout Europe and the Middle East, they also organized, at modest interest rates, the safe and efficient transfer of money for merchant traders, a class that became increasingly dependent upon them. Money deposited in one city, for example, could be claimed and withdrawn in another by means of promissory notes inscribed in intricate codes. The Templars thus became the primary money changers of the age, and the Paris preceptory became the center of European finance.9 It is even probable that the check as we know and use it today was invented by the order.
And the Templars traded not only in money but in thought as well. Through their sustained and sympathetic contact with Islamic and Judaic culture they came to act as a clearinghouse for new ideas, new dimensions of knowledge, new sciences. They enjoyed a veritable monopoly on the best and most advanced technology of their age—the best that could be produced by armorers, leatherworkers, stonemasons, military architects, and engineers. They contributed to the development of surveying, mapmaking, road building, and navigation. They possessed their own seaports, shipyards, and fleet—a fleet both commercial and military, which was among the first to use the magnetic compass. And as soldiers the Templars’ need to treat wounds and illness made them adept in the use of drugs. The order maintained its own hospitals with its own physicians and surgeons— whose use of mold extract suggests an inkling of the properties of antibiotics. Modern principles of hygiene and cleanliness were understood. And with a sophistication also in advance of their time, they regarded epilepsy not as demonic possession but as a controllable disease.10
Inspired by its own accomplishments, the Temple in Europe grew increasingly wealthy, powerful, and complacent. Not surprisingly, perhaps, it also grew increasingly arrogant, brutal, and corrupt. "To drink like a Templar" became a cliché of the time. And certain sources assert that the order made a point of recruiting excommunicated knights.
But while the Templars attained both prosperity and notoriety in Europe, the situation in the Holy Land had seriously deteriorated. In 1185 King Baudouin IV of Jerusalem died. In the dynastic squabble that followed, Gérard de Ridefort, grand master of the Temple, betrayed an oath made to the dead monarch and thereby brought the European community in Palestine to the brink of civil war. Nor was this Ridefort’s only questionable action. His cavalier attitude toward the Saracens precipitated the rupture of a long-standing truce and provoked a new cycle of hostilities. Then, in July 1187, Ridefort led his knights, along with the rest of the Christian army, into a rash, misconceived, and as it transpired, disastrous battle at Hattin. The Christian forces were virtually annihilated; and two months later Jerusalem itself—captured nearly a century before—was again in Saracen hands.
During the following century the situation became increasingly hopeless. By 1291 nearly the whole of Outremer had fallen and the Holy Land was almost entirely under Muslim control. Only Acre remained, and in May 1291 this last fortress was lost as well. In defending the doomed city the Templars showed themselves at their most heroic. The grand master himself, though he was severely wounded, continued fighting until his death. As there was only limited space in the order’s galleys, the women and children were evacuated while all knights, even the wounded, chose to remain behind. When the last bastion in Acre fell, it did so with apocalyptic intensity, the walls collapsing and burying attackers and defenders alike.
The Templars established their new headquarters in Cyprus, but with the loss of the Holy Land, they had effectively been deprived of their raison d’être. As there were no longer any
accessible infidel lands to conquer, the order began to turn its attention toward Eu- rope, hoping to find there a justification for its continued existence.
A century earlier the Templars had presided over the foundation of another chivalric, religious-military order, the Teutonic Knights. The latter were active in small numbers in the Middle East but by the mid-thirteenth century had turned their attention to the northeastern frontiers of Christendom. Here they had carved out an independent principality for themselves—the Ordenstaat or Ordensland, which encompassed almost the whole of the eastern Baltic. In this principality, which extended from Prussia to the Gulf of Finland and what is now Russian soil, the Teutonic Knights enjoyed an unchallenged sovereignty far from the reach of both secular and ecclesiastical control.
From the very inception of the Ordenstaat the Templars had envied the independence and immunity of their kindred order. After the fall of the Holy Land they thought increasingly of a state of their own in which they might exercise the same untrammeled authority and autonomy as the Teutonic Knights. Unlike the Teutonic Knights, however, the Templars were not interested in the harsh wilderness of eastern Europe. By now they were too accustomed to luxury and opulence. Accordingly, they dreamed of founding their state on more accessible, more congenial soil—that of the Languedoc. 11
From its earliest years the Temple had maintained a certain warm rapport with the Cathars, especially in the Languedoc. Many wealthy landowners—Cathars themselves or sympathetic to the Cathars—had donated vast tracts of land to the order. According to a recent writer, at least one of the cofounders of the Temple was a Cathar. This seems somewhat improbable, but it is beyond dispute that Bertrand de Blanchefort, fourth grand master of the order, came from a Cathar family. Forty years after Bertrand’s death his descendants were fighting side by side with other Cathar lords against the northern invaders of Simon de Montfort.12
During the Albigensian Crusade the Templars ostensibly remained neutral, confining themselves to the role of witnesses. However, the grand master at the time would seem to have made the order’s position clear when he declared there was in fact only one true crusade—the crusade against the Saracens. Moreover, a careful examination of contemporary accounts reveals that the Templars provided a haven for many Cathar refugees. 13 On occasion they do seem to have taken up arms on these refugees’ behalf. And an inspection of the order’s rolls toward the beginning of the Albigensian Crusade reveals a major influx of Cathars into the Temple’s ranks—where not even Simon de Montfort’s crusaders would dare to challenge them. Indeed, the Templar rolls of the period show that a significant proportion of the order’s high-ranking dignitaries were from Cathar families.14 In the Languedoc, Temple officials were more frequently Cathar than Catholic. What is more, the Cathar nobles who enrolled in the Temple do not appear to have moved about the world as much as their Catholic brethren. On the contrary, they appear to have remained for the most part in the Languedoc, thus creating for the order a long-standing and stable base in the region.
By virtue of their contact with Islamic and Judaic cultures, the Templars had already absorbed a great many ideas alien to orthodox Roman Christianity. Templar masters, for example, often employed Arab secretaries, and many Templars, having learned Arabic in captivity, were fluent in the language. A close rapport was also maintained with Jewish communities, financial interests, and scholarship. The Templars had thus been exposed to many things Rome would not ordinarily countenance. Through the influx of Cathar recruits they were now exposed to Gnostic dualism as well—if, indeed, they had ever really been strangers to it.
By 1306 Philippe IV of France—Philippe le Bel—was acutely anxious to rid his territory of the Templars. They were arrogant and unruly. They were efficient and highly trained, a professional military force much stronger and better organized than any he himself could muster. They were firmly established throughout France, and by this time even their allegiance to the Pope was only nominal. Philippe had no control over the order. He owed it money. He had been humiliated when, fleeing a rebellious Paris mob, he was obliged to seek abject refuge in the Temple’s preceptory. He coveted the Templars’ immense wealth, which his sojourn in their premises made flagrantly apparent to him. And having applied to join the order as a postulant, he had suffered the indignity of being haughtily rejected. These factors—together, of course, with the alarming prospect of an independent Templar state at his back door—were sufficient to spur the king to action. And heresy was a convenient excuse.
Philippe first had to enlist the cooperation of the Pope, to whom, in theory at any rate, the Templars owed allegiance and obedience. Between 1303 and 1305 the French king and his ministers engineered the kidnapping and death of one Pope (Boniface VIII) and quite possibly the murder by poison of another (Benedict XI). Then, in 1305, Philippe managed to secure the election of his own candidate, the archbishop of Bordeaux, to the vacant papal throne. The new Pontiff took the name Clement V. Indebted as he was to Philippe’s influence, he could hardly refuse the king’s demands. And these demands included the eventual suppression of the Knights Templar.
Philippe planned his moves carefully. A list of charges was compiled, partly from the king’s spies who had infiltrated the order, partly from the voluntary confession of an alleged renegade Templar. Armed with these accusations, Philippe could at last move; and when he delivered his blow, it was sudden, swift, efficient, and lethal. In a security operation worthy of the SS or Gestapo, the king issued sealed and secret orders to his seneschals throughout the country. These orders were to be opened everywhere simultaneously and implemented at once. At dawn on Friday, October 13, 1307, all Templars in France were to be seized and placed under arrest by the king’s men, their preceptories placed under royal sequestration, their goods confiscated. But although Philippe’s objective of surprise might seem to have been achieved, his primary interest—the order’s immense wealth—eluded him. It was never found, and what became of the fabulous "treasure of the Templars" has remained a mystery.
In fact it is doubtful whether Philippe’s surprise attack on the order was as unexpected as he, or subsequent historians, believed. There is considerable evidence to suggest the Templars received some kind of advance warning. Shortly before the arrests, for example, the grand master, Jacques de Molay, called in many of the order’s books and extant rules and had them burned. A knight who withdrew from the order at this time was told by the treasurer that he was extremely "wise," as catastrophe was imminent. An official note was circulated to all French preceptories, stressing that no information regarding the order’s customs and rituals was to be released.
In any case, whether the Templars were warned in advance or whether they deduced what was in the wind, certain precautions were definitely taken. 15 In the first place, the knights who were captured seem to have submitted passively, as if under instructions to do so. At no point is there any record of the order in France actively resisting the king’s seneschals. In the second place, there is persuasive evidence of some sort of organized flight by a particular group of knights—virtually all of whom were in some way connected with the order’s treasurer. It is not perhaps surprising, therefore, that the treasure of the Temple, together with almost all its documents and records, should have disappeared. Persistent but unsubstantiated rumors speak of the treasure being smuggled by night from the Paris preceptory shortly before the arrests. According to these rumors it was transported by wagons to the coast—presumably to the order’s naval base at La Rochelle—and loaded into eighteen galleys, which were never heard of again. Whether this is true or not, it would seem that the Templars’ fleet escaped the king’s clutches because there is no report of any of the order’s ships being taken. On the contrary, those ships appear to have vanished totally, along with whatever they might have been carrying.16
In France the arrested Templars were tried and many subjected to torture. Strange confessions were extracted and even stranger accusations made. Grim rumors began to ci
rculate about the country. The Templars supposedly worshiped a devil called Baphomet. At their secret ceremonies they supposedly prostrated themselves before a bearded male head, which spoke to them and invested them with occult powers. Unauthorized witnesses of these ceremonies were never seen again. And there were other charges as well, which were even more vague: of infanticide, of teaching women how to abort, of obscene kisses at the induction of postulants, of homosexuality. But of all the charges leveled against these soldiers of Christ who had fought and laid down their lives for Christ, one stands out as most bizarre and seemingly improbable. They were accused of ritually denying Christ, of repudiating, trampling, and spitting on the cross.
In France, at least, the fate of the arrested Templars was effectively sealed. Philippe harried them savagely and mercilessly. Many were burned, many more imprisoned and tortured. At the same time the king continued to bully the Pope, demanding ever more stringent measures against the order. After resisting for a time the Pope gave way in 1312, and the Knights Templar were officially dissolved— without a conclusive verdict of guilt or innocence ever being pronounced. But in Philippe’s domains, the trials, inquiries, and investigations continued for another two years. At last, in March 1314, Jacques de Molay, the grand master, and Geoffroi de Charnay, preceptor of Normandy, were roasted to death over a slow fire. With their execution the Templars ostensibly vanish from the stage of history. Nevertheless, the order did not cease to exist. Given the number of knights who escaped, who remained at large, or who were acquitted, it would be surprising if it had.
Philippe had tried to influence his fellow monarchs, hoping thereby to ensure that no Templar anywhere in Christendom should be spared. Indeed, the king’s zeal in this respect is almost suspicious. One can perhaps understand his wanting to rid his own domains of the order’s presence. It is rather less clear why he should have been so intent on exterminating Templars elsewhere. Certainly he himself was no model of virtue; and it is difficult to imagine a monarch who had arranged for the deaths of two Popes being genuinely distressed by infringements of faith. Did Philippe simply fear vengeance if the order remained intact outside France? Or was there something else involved?