HistoryExtra https://www.historyextra.com/tag/knights-templar Wed, 12 Feb 2025 13:12:27 GMT en hourly 1 Conspiracy: legends of the Knights Templar https://www.historyextra.com/membership/video-conspiracy-knights-templar/ Thu, 08 Feb 2024 11:50:13 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/video-conspiracy-knights-templar/ Historian Steve Tibble casts his eye over the myriad of conspiracy theories connected to the medieval military order In the early 14th century, the Knights Templar were suppressed and the 200-year history of this military religious order came to an abrupt end. Or did it? What if some of the Templars escaped persecution to operate secretly until the present day, holding on to precious religious relics and maybe even discovering America? In this new episode of Conspiracy, Rob Attar is joined by medieval historian Steve Tibble to explore why myths have surrounded the Templars from the Middle Ages until the present day – and to explain how Rosslyn Chapel and the Holy Grail fit into the story.
View Green Video on the source website]]> Conspiracy: legends of the Knights Templar https://www.historyextra.com/membership/conspiracy-legends-of-the-knights-templar-podcast-steve-tibble/ Thu, 18 Jan 2024 11:44:54 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/conspiracy-legends-of-the-knights-templar-podcast-steve-tibble/ Historian Steve Tibble casts his eye over the myriad of conspiracy theories connected to the medieval military order In the early 14th century, the Knights Templar were suppressed and the 200-year history of this military religious order came to an abrupt end. Or did it? What if some of the Templars escaped persecution to operate secretly until the present day, holding on to precious religious relics and maybe even discovering America? In this new episode of Conspiracy, Rob Attar is joined by medieval historian Steve Tibble to explore why myths have surrounded the Templars from the Middle Ages until the present day – and to explain how Rosslyn Chapel and the Holy Grail fit into the story.
]]> Templars on trial: why were the Knights accused of such heinous crimes? https://www.historyextra.com/membership/templars-on-trial/ Tue, 10 Oct 2023 11:42:39 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/templars-on-trial/ From 1307, members of the Knights Templar were beaten, brutalised and put to death on charges of heresy, Satanism and mass murder. But, asks Steve Tibble, were this elite band of holy warriors fitted up for crimes they didn’t commit? They arrived with no warning, striking swiftly as a guillotine blade. As dawn broke over France on 13 October 1307, hundreds of royal troops stormed the residences of Templar knights, rounded up the brethren and put them in chains.
The knights were caught completely unawares – and the charges that were set out against them were extraordinary. Allegations included participating in Satanic initiation ceremonies; spitting or trampling on the crucifix; worshipping idols; and kissing their brothers on the navel, penis, lips and anus in profane masses.
It was a spectacular fall from grace for the Knights Templar, a military-religious order that had long been esteemed across Europe and beyond.
For nearly two centuries, since the order’s foundation in Jerusalem c1119, the Templars had been charged with defending residents of, and pilgrims to, the crusader states of the Middle East.
Once celebrated across the Christian world for their unwavering courage in battle and the zeal with which they served God, suddenly they were being reviled and at- tacked. How and why did this dramatic collapse in fortunes come about?
The driving force behind the assault on the Templars was France’s King Philip IV, ‘the Fair’. Philip was outwardly pious, but also in great need of cash. Indeed, he had a track record of crushing minority groups in pursuit of easy money.
In the early 1290s, he had arrested all of the so-called Lombard bankers – Italian moneylenders – in France, and confiscated their goods. And in 1306, he had expelled France’s Jewish community and seized their assets.
Now he turned his sights on the Templars – another reputedly wealthy group. Pope Clement V was coerced into acquiescence and, in 1307, the pontiff ordered the Templars’ arrest. The torture now began.
Accused of a litany of heinous crimes, some Templars proclaimed their innocence. Thirty-six such men died during the initial interrogations in Paris; their defiant testimonies were erased from the legal records.
Most, though, confessed quickly. Across France, torture was routinely applied to suspects: victims were told what to say, and then brutalised until they said it.
One Templar priest in Albi, north-east of Toulouse, told how his feet had been burned over a fire. This did not mean just an uncomfortable toasting: a couple of days later, two bones fell out of the dead flesh of his gruesomely barbecued foot. One brother later testified that he was encouraged to confess “by the hanging of weights on his genitals and other members”.
Another French Templar, Brother Ponsard of Gizy, disarmingly honest about the power of torture, summed up the pros and cons of the methodology.
When he appeared in front of a papal commission in November 1309, he was adamant that the charges made against him were trumped up – but added that, if his captors chose to torture him, he would readily agree with whatever they suggested. He wanted it placed on record that he would confess to anything – if subjected to torture.
Over the following months, the confessions kept flooding in. Satanism, heresy, sexual perversion and financial corruption – the Templars of France were found guilty of them all. In fact, given the sheer weight of the obscene and outlandish crimes of which they stood accused, it’s perhaps surprising that it would be another four years before the order was finally dissolved.
A brief history of the Knights Templar
On 15 July 1099, Jerusalem – the Holy City, spiritual epicentre of Christianity and Judaism, and third-holiest city of Islam – was captured from Muslim forces by the armies of the First Crusade. Yet it would prove immensely difficult to hold on to. Set inland and desperately underpopulated, Jerusalem was a military disaster waiting to happen for the Christian occupiers. The success of the First Crusade, launched in 1096 following a papal call for Christian forces to retake the Holy Land, had enjoyed a huge stroke of luck. The big problem the new occupiers now faced was how to recruit high-quality soldiers to defend it in the long term. The answer to that problem was the Templars, established in Jerusalem in c1119. This hybrid military-religious order, officially the Poor Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, comprised dedicated men who combined the spiritual and martial virtues that would enable them to help protect pilgrims to the Holy Land and defend the new crusader states of the near east. The order quickly grew into an elite warrior force, and a close approximation of a standing army. Volunteers were recruited from across Europe, and pious donors gave the order estates though which it could generate funds for the cause. The Templars rose to the challenge, taking over the policing of major roads, building fortifications and garrisoning vulnerable frontier lands. For almost two centuries, the order led the defence of the Christian Middle East – ultimately, to no avail. By 1291, the last crusader cities there had fallen, and in 1307 the Templars in France were rounded up and arrested for heresy and Satanism, while their brethren in Britain were also targeted, though with less virulence. The order was officially suppressed in 1312.
A papal edict
Templars weren’t only found in France, though: this international order drew members from Christian nations across Europe. What, then, was the fate of the Templars across the Channel?
After all, at the time England was still a Catholic nation, subject to papal edict just as much as France. And though Edward II initially doubted the charges levelled at the order, in December 1307 he received a directive from the pope to arrest Templars in England – which he did in January 1308. Soon, all but a very small handful of the 144 Templars based in Britain and Ireland were in custody.
Relations between Templars in Britain and France were close, and members on either side of the Channel would almost certainly have been equally guilty (or, more likely, innocent) of the alleged crimes. But the two groups experienced strikingly different fates at the hands of the respective authorities following the mass arrests of October 1307, mostly because English law was strikingly different from that of France.
In early 14th-century England, there was less royal control of the judiciary. English courts did not have an inquisition. Most importantly, English law relied on witnesses and a jury, and torture was not routinely used within the legal system. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, two years of harsh but non-violent interrogation in England yielded no confessions and almost no evidence of guilt.
For all that, Templars in Britain were still charged with terrible crimes – and by examining those accusations in greater detail, we can get to the bottom of a question that has puzzled historians for centuries: were the Templars guilty of any of the charges laid against them, or were they the victims of an egregious 14th-century stitch-up?
Chief among the charges in Britain was the allegation that the Templars’ leaders had deliberately sent whistleblowers overseas to die.
One of the witnesses, for example, was a Carmelite friar (the Templars, it should be noted, had privileges that did not always endear them to rival monastic orders) named Robert of Maidenesford, who said that he had been told by a servant, who remained conveniently anonymous, that because a brother “did not agree to their cursed profession he was sent secretly to overseas regions and there was killed by those to whom he was sent”.
But Robert of Maidenesford was no ordinary cleric. The imaginative Carmelite was also allegedly party to a plot to burn a man to death in an oven, so he may not have been the most reliable witness.
Similarly, two Dominican friars testified that troublesome Templars in Britain were given sealed letters to take out to the east, the contents of which were later found to include instructions that the recipient of each letter should kill the bearer. But this hearsay was an old trope: it later found a suitably dramatic and equally fictitious home in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Of course, many Templars in Britain were sent abroad – fighting and serving overseas was, after all, what they had volunteered to do. In the absence of any real evidence, or real crimes, their inquisitors were surely just scraping the barrel with this allegation.
But was another grave accusation made against the Templars also false: that they were fabulously rich and hoarding treasure?
This charge was not entirely irrational. The money for crusading had to come from somewhere, and the Templars were given substantial tax breaks and properties through which to fund the defence of the Holy Land.
It’s not hard to see how other clerical orders, lacking these advantages, could soon start accusing the Templars of greed and avarice.
Far from hoarding secret treasure, though, property owned by Templars in Britain was carefully documented. Inventories of their assets were made by royal officials in January 1308, when the brothers were first arrested, and again a year later, on 4 March 1309.
Any Satanic idols or secret treasures would not have remained secret – yet the accounts show that the personal possessions of the Templars were, in fact, surprisingly simple.
In London, the king’s men seized only some clothes and wall coverings; two crossbows and a few swords; two books; and some sundry iron forks and fire stands. They found no precious metals, with the poignant exception of the property of one Richard of Herdwick, from whom were confiscated two silver cups and 12 silver spoons.
Certainly, any hidden treasure remained firmly hidden. Even the rumoured corporate treasure of the order’s New Temple headquarters proved a major disappointment for the bailiffs.
A number of valuables were held in its vestry – rich furnishings and beautiful fabrics, some reliquaries, ivory and high-quality silverwork – but nothing out of the ordinary for the provincial headquarters of a major religious order.
Was there any concealed loot? Inventories of goods owned by Templars in Britain record no hoards of money, jewels or idols, just items that might be expected in a holy order’s properties.
A total of 53 silver spoons were mentioned in the inventories, six of which were found at a home for aged and infirm Templars in Denney, Cambridgeshire. This amounted to one spoon for every two Templars arrested in Britain – hardly a treasure trove. Even in France, where the order was taken completely by surprise, no treasures were discovered.
Dark knights?
Another of the most damaging charges laid against the Templars – and the one that has arguably done most to fuel the conspiracies and bizarre tales of covert societies that still reverberate around the internet today – was the accusation that the Templars had evolved into a secret Satanic cult.
A secret cult requires, above all else, secrecy – but the Templars were never shut off from the rest of society. Their famous New Temple headquarters complex in London had the walls, the money and the financial skills that helped to create the Templar legend. Yet, as with so much of the mythology surrounding the order, almost nothing was what it seemed.
The New Temple was a vibrant and public centre for finance and worship, law and commerce – the very antithesis of a malevolent nest of conspiracies, devil worship or secret societies. If Templars in Britain were, in fact, trying to run a secret society, they were doing a spectacularly bad job of it.
This headquarters was a remarkably public place: people were walking in and out of the precinct almost all of the time. The church was open to the public for prayer. Pilgrims came to see the relics held there. Many non-Templars – women as well as men – worked or lived in the order’s houses.
There was even a thoroughfare running through the middle of the precinct. This right of way was used by pedestrians and as a lane for trans- porting goods down to a wharf on the Thames. In other words, the supposedly most secretive and private site owned by the order had what was, in effect, a public road running through the middle of it.
Yet not one of the countless people passing through the Templars’ headquarters spotted that the order had turned away from mainstream Christianity to devil worship and idolatry.
Another accusation was that admission to the Templars was a secretive affair. Admission ceremonies were of particular interest to the inquisitors, who imagined such a ritual to be the moment when devout and enthusiastic volunteers would learn that the order was a front for Satanic worship.
But could this really have been true? In Britain, the Templars’ induction service was held in public. Far from being secretive, it was a cross between a family party and a modern graduation ceremony.
Across western Europe, young recruits usually joined the Templar house closest to their homes, so their devout and often influential families were close at hand, had there been anything untoward to report. They would have been eager to support their sons in revealing any trace of heresy.
It is true that many left the order, sometimes because of misdemeanours, or because they did not take to the rigours of Templar life. But these men, often disgruntled and with every reason to hold a grudge, told no tales of rampant wrongdoing.
Then there was the lack of complaints from the new entrants. Young knights joined because they were, as one Templar told the papal commissioners in Paris, “inspired by zeal for the orthodox faith, [and] have made their profession in the order of the Temple, remaining in it until the end of their lives.
If such men had known, seen or heard of the detestable insults and blasphemies to the name of Jesus Christ, they would have cried out against them and revealed everything to the whole world.” His logic was unarguable.
But perhaps the most convincing proof of innocence – especially relating to charges of Satanism – was conspicuous by its absence at Templar trials. It was never produced in court precisely because it was so compelling.
On the day the order was dissolved in France, an inventory was made of all Templar possessions. There had been no warning of the impending suppression, so all idols would still have been held in Templars’ treasuries and chapels.
But the results were hugely disappointing for the inquisitors. Physical evidence of devil worship was non-existent in both France and Britain. Many religious books were found, but no hint in writing of any Satanic worship. There were crosses – large and small, precious and valueless – again, all normal items of Christian devotion and in suspiciously good condition.
This was particularly embarrassing, given that new entrants to the order were supposedly forced to trample and then urinate on a crucifix.
In fact, the meticulous catalogues of possessions reveal nothing more than the pious reliquaries and other devotional aids that might be expected in one of the less academically gifted holy orders.
So why, in the absence of real evidence, was the order suppressed? Greed and credulity played a large part. The Templars’ property portfolios were undoubtedly tempting.
But perhaps the final key to understanding the ‘guilt’ of the Templars lies in their role – or, rather, lack of one.
No longer useful
For as long as the Templars still had a useful part to play in defending the Christian near east, no one accused them of anything substantive. But in 1291, Acre, capital of the last remaining crusader outposts in the Middle East, fell.
On 18 May, Mamluk armies broke through the city’s defences. The Templar grand master, William of Beaujeu, had gathered his men for a last charge, but their numbers were pitifully few – no more than “10 or 12 brethren and [William’s] own household troops”.
In that last battle, an English Templar squire struggled to rise from the body of his dead horse, while pots of Greek fire – an early incendiary weapon – exploded around him. He was so badly hit “that his surcoat burst into flames. There was no one to help him, and so his face was burned, and then his whole body, and he burned as if he had been a cauldron of pitch, and he died there.”
But heroism counted for nothing. The fall of Acre meant the loss of the crusader states of the Middle East. It also meant that the Templars were left unemployed, unfocused and easy prey for opportunistic enemies.
Templars were doubtless guilty of many minor misdemeanours. But, beyond the normal vagaries of human weakness, the charges they faced were trumped up, based on almost no evidence other than irredeemably compromised confessions extracted from frightened men under torture.
Their real ‘crime’ was far more prosaic than all of the medieval and modern conspiracy theories. No one needed an elite and expensive army on the frontiers of Christendom any more – the Templars were redundant. And in March 1312, the papal order was finally issued to suppress the order.
The Templars were no more.
- On the podcast | The Knights Templar: everything you wanted to know
This article was first published in the October 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]> The Knights Templar: everything you wanted to know https://www.historyextra.com/membership/knights-templar-everything-podcast-helen-nicholson/ Sun, 02 Oct 2022 10:07:57 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/knights-templar-everything-podcast-helen-nicholson/ Helen Nicholson answers listener questions on the crusading medieval military order made famous by its mysterious connections to the Holy Grail and Masonic order Who joined the Knights Templar? When not waging war, what did they get up to on a day-to-day basis? And how did they become associated with the Holy Grail? In this Everything you wanted to know episode, Emily Briffett speaks with Helen Nicholson to uncover the answers to your top questions about the crusading military order.
]]> Richard the Lionheart may not have spoken English – plus 7 more surprising facts https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/8-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-richard-the-lionheart/ Wed, 08 Apr 2020 12:10:00 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/8-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-richard-the-lionheart/ Richard I – aka Richard the Lionheart – is remembered for being a chivalrous medieval king; for battling Saladin during the Crusades; and for rebelling against his father, Henry II (1133–89). His name has become an English legend, but how much do you know about him? Here, writing for History Extra, author Douglas Boyd reveals eight surprising facts about Richard the Lionheart... Was he really betrothed at the age of nine? Did he spend most of his time abroad, fighting the Crusades? And did King Richard ever meet the legendary Robin Hood, as the 1973 Disney film suggests? Find out more about Richard the Lionheart (1157–99)…
Despite being born in England, Richard may not have spoken English
Richard was born in September 1157 in what was then known as ‘the King’s Houses’, a palace built by his great-grandfather Henry I outside the north gate of Oxford city because it was a comfortable ride from there to his hunting tower at Woodstock. Standing near the present site of Worcester College, the palace was later demolished, but a commemorative plaque on the north side of Beaumont Street records its existence and the possibility that two kings of England may have been born there: Richard I and his younger brother John. However, Richard did not spend a great deal of time in England and he may not have learned to speak English. In his whole reign, he spent no more than six months north of the Channel.
There was a notable social divide in England
At that time, half of England was owned by a network of 200 related Anglo-Norman families (and the rest by the crown and the church). In the century since the Norman Conquest, followers of William the Bastard and his successors married noble Anglo-Saxon women to form a new French-speaking aristocracy. Their wealth and even their food were supplied by the toil of their native Anglo-Saxon serfs, few of whom rose to greatness.
Traces of the racial and class divide of this time still exist in modern English. For the live animals herded, tended, milked and slaughtered by the natives we still use their Anglo-Saxon names like sheep, calf, cow and swine. For the cooked meat on the table, which only the French-speaking overlords were allowed to eat, we use the French equivalents: mutton, veal, beef and pork.
More cruelly still, the poor natives were not allowed to hunt wild animals for food in the forests, or even gather winter fuel there. Some modern placenames tell this story: Cannock Chase in Staffordshire is so named because ‘chase’ comes from the French word chasse meaning ‘hunt’. It was originally enclosed land, where the game was reserved for the exclusive pleasure of the overlords. A peasant defying the “forest laws for the protection of vert and venison” risked a long term in prison – or even death.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine: the medieval queen who took on Europe’s most powerful men
- 7 myths about Robin Hood
Richard was betrothed at nine years old
At the age of nine, Prince Richard was betrothed to 9-year-old Princess Alais, daughter of the French King Louis VII. She was a pawn in the power struggle between the Plantagenet dynasty that ruled England – and much of France – and the Capetian French kings in Paris. Richard’s father, Henry II of England, was also Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy – titles that Richard would eventually inherit. Richard’s mother Eleanor was the Duchess of Aquitaine. So both were technically vassals of Louis VII for their French possessions.
Yet Henry II tricked the weakling Louis VII into handing over his young daughter, promising that she would marry Richard when she had come of age. Like most of Henry’s promises, this was never fulfilled, resulting in poor Alais being kept for 25 years as a prisoner, during part of which time Henry II used her as his mistress.
Richard was unwilling to get married and produce an heir
When Richard succeeded his father to the throne at the age of 31 in 1189, he had an obligation to father an heir for the kingdom in order to avoid the kind of chaos that did ensue when he died childless and his brother John succeeded to the throne ten years later.
But Richard’s lack of interest in women and unwillingness to marry any of a long list of eligible princesses meant that the part of queen at his coronation was played by his formidable mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, the only noble woman to whom he showed any consideration.
Did Richard meet the legendary Robin Hood?
Whether Richard met the legendary outlaw Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, we do not know, although film buffs call him ‘Richard of the Last Reel’ because he appears at the end of every Robin Hood film as the heroic, and supposedly victorious, crusader monarch returning to punish treacherous Prince John and the wicked Sherriff of Nottingham.
- Was King John really that bad?... Yes!
The truth is that, having insulted and alienated most of his Christian allies while on crusade against Saladin, Richard was unable to return to his kingdom except by sneaking in disguise through the territory of the Duke of Austria, one of the many enemies he had made in the Holy Land. Once caught, he was handed over to the German emperor, who demanded a huge ransom for his liberation, and the enduring legend of ‘Good King Richard’ originated as a PR campaign by Queen Eleanor to persuade the citizens of the Plantagenet empire to stump up the crippling ransom.
Were tournaments really so chivalrous?
Tournaments in Richard’s lifetime were not the ordered ritual they later became, with noble ladies watching two knights charging at each other along separated tracks, each endeavouring to unseat the other with his lance. The mêlée of the 12th century featured two teams of heavily armed and armoured knights setting upon each other with whatever weapons they liked in a no-rules lethal forerunner of tag wrestling.
The painting of emblems on shields was originally to enable knights in a mêlée to recognise their own team-mates. The name Plantagenet comes from the habit of Richard’s grandfather, Count Geoffrey of Anjou, wearing a sprig of bright yellow broom – genêt in French – in his helmet as a highly-visible recognition symbol. Often, the shock of head-on collision between two knights shattered the wooden shafts of their lances, with splinters penetrating the eye-slits of their helmets and blinding them.
In both battle and the mêlée, an unhorsed knight risked being trampled to death by the horses, which is what happened to Richard’s brother Prince Geoffrey. Knights taken prisoner in a mêlée were freed after paying a ransom to their captors, which was calculated on their rank and wealth. So Richard could see nothing wrong with his subjects having to stump up crippling taxes to ransom so important a person as their king. In effect, this nearly bankrupted his kingdom for the second time in his short reign that ended in 1199.
- Listen | Historian Nicholas Paul explores some little-known aspects of the crusades and also considers why this aspect of medieval history has inspired the far-right
Richard spent the majority of his life at war
To understand Richard’s thinking, we have to take into account that, like many nobly born knights, he spent his whole life in warfare. The idea of chivalry and protecting the poor did not exist in the 12th century, when knights prosecuted their incessant power struggles not in pitched battles against a more or less equally matched enemy, but strategically by slaughtering defenceless peasant men, women and children, burning their humble homes, laying waste their fields and cutting down their orchards to bring starvation to the survivors, thus depriving their enemy of the support base that financed his unproductive way of life. It was, to use a modern expression, total war – an idea that the church struggled with, but could not stop.
Richard knighted his cook
On a lighter note: in those days of little hygiene, the cook was an important member of a noble household because his mistakes could kill his employer. After one particularly memorable feast, which put Richard in great good humour, he impulsively knighted his cook, making him ‘lord of the fief of the kitchen of the counts of Poitou’. Arise, Sir Cook!
Douglas Boyd’s Lionheart, the true story of England’s Crusader King was published by The History Press in 2014.
This article was first published on History Extra in November 2015
]]> The rise and fall of the Knights Templar https://www.historyextra.com/membership/knightfall-real-history-dan-jones-who-are-what-knights-templar-tv-series/ Thu, 27 Jun 2019 11:35:35 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/knightfall-real-history-dan-jones-who-are-what-knights-templar-tv-series/ Dan Jones tells the story of a crack unit of holy hard-men who spent 200 years defending crusaders' interests in the Middle East with unblinking ferocity On a cripplingly hot day at the start of July 1187, Saladin, the sultan of Egypt and Syria, stood beside his son al-Afdal and peered across the battlefield towards a red tent on a hill. The sultan’s face was pale with worry. The armies before him had been fighting for hours, tortured by near-unbearable heat, dust and smoke, which billowed up from the desert scrub Saladin’s own men had set alight. Thousands of men and horses lay dead. The enemy – a vast force led by the Christian king Guy of Jerusalem – was badly battered and falling back, but until the king’s red pavilion fell, victory would not be complete.
Al-Afdal, youthful and bullish, cheered every Christian charge that the Muslim army repulsed. Saladin scolded him. “Be quiet!” he said. “We have not beaten them until that tent falls.” Moments later, the sultan’s angst turned to tearful jubilation. The tent collapsed, King Guy was captured and the battle of Hattin was over. The Christians’ holiest relic – a fragment of the True Cross – was seized. The dead were left to rot where they lay, while the living were led off in disgrace: the lowliest Christian prisoners for slaves, and the more valuable for ransom.
- Dan Jones on the Templars and ‘Knightfall’
- The Templars on trial: a very muted inquisition
But there was one category of captives who received quite different treatment from all the rest. A reward of 50 dinars was offered to anyone who could present the sultan with a member of the military orders: Hospitallers and Templars. These knights and sergeants were the elite special forces within the armies of the cross. They were the most dedicated and highly trained warriors in the Holy Land. And Saladin had special plans for them.
Band of brothers
In 1187 the Order of the Poor Knights and of the Temple of Solomon was about 68 years old. The Order had first been assembled in 1119 at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by a French knight called Hugh of Payns. Hugh had travelled to the east around the time that Jerusalem fell to the Christian armies of the First Crusade, and he stayed there: seeking a way to combine his skill as a soldier with his yearning for religious purpose.
With a small number of like-minded men – later accounts said there were nine – Hugh established a brotherhood of religious warriors: skilled fighters who took oaths of chastity and poverty. They dedicated themselves to protecting Christian pilgrims on roads around the holy city, which were menaced by brigands preying on vulnerable travellers touring unfamiliar countryside.
This fraternity of holy hard-men soon gained official recognition. The then-ruler of Jerusalem, Baldwin II, put them up in the al-Aqsa Mosque, which they identified with the biblical temple built by Solomon. This was how the Templars gained their name.
Papal tax breaks
For survival, the brothers relied on charitable handouts, and they quickly became expert at soliciting these – particularly in western Europe, where they built up a large network of profitable estates donated by supporters of the crusading movement. In the 1120s the order was granted a quasi-monastic rule to live by, designed by the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux. In the 1130s the pope granted them sweeping tax breaks and an official uniform of white or black tunics emblazoned with a cross.
By the 1140s the Templars had begun to expand their mission of merely providing roadside rescue for pilgrims. In parallel with the Hospitallers, who branched out from providing medical services in Jerusalem to assuming military duties, the Templars manned castles throughout the Holy Land and assisted in raids on Muslim cities such as Damascus.
At the other end of the Mediterranean they had been drafted into the Reconquista: the Christian campaigns for control of the Muslim states of al-Andalus, in southern Spain. The Templars were by now a self-sustaining paramilitary organisation, a crack squad of hardened and dedicated soldiers, able to fight across all terrains and oath-bound to serve God and their brothers. In modern terms, they were the equivalent of the SAS, the Navy SEALS or the French Foreign Legion.
“They were the fiercest fighters of all the Franks.” This was the Muslim chronicler Ibn al-Athir’s assessment of the Templars. (By ‘Franks’, he meant the western Christians in the Holy Land.) Ibn al-Athir was around 27 years old in 1187 and, like his contemporary Saladin, he knew just how competent – and dangerous – the Templars could be.
After all, history fairly buzzed with examples. In 1148 the Templars had saved the French armies of the Second Crusade from annihilation. Tens of thousands of ill-disciplined troops led by King Louis VII had tried to cross hostile territory in Asia Minor on foot and horseback, on their way to Syria, where they planned to liberate the city of Edessa. Bedraggled and badly led, they were prey to repeated attacks from Turkish horsemen, who inflicted a particularly terrible defeat on the crusaders at Mount Cadmus, near modern-day Denizli in Turkey. Hundreds were killed and Louis only escaped capture by hiding on a boulder.
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In desperation, the French king handed over military command of the entire expedition to a Templar named Gilbert. He was one of only 50 or so brothers among the vast procession, but Gilbert’s leadership was inspired. He divided the pilgrims into battalions, each with a single brother in charge. All the able-bodied were given a crash-course in military conduct, and shown how to hold their shape and discipline under attack. As a result, the French survived the hard trek east, and on arrival in the Holy Land the Templars even raised an emergency loan to keep Louis’s troubled campaign afloat.
In the years that followed, the Templars were trusted to defend castles around Gaza in the south, where Christian territory gave way to Egyptian lands. Further north they guarded the passes through the Amanus Mountains, which controlled the routes from Asia Minor into the Christian principality of Antioch. They advised secular leaders on military strategy, but were also pointedly independent, carrying out kidnapping missions and raids of their own as they pleased. Even the Assassins – the shadowy Shia terrorist sect who lived in the Syrian mountains and specialised in spectacular public assassinations of leaders of all faiths – would not touch the Templars, and paid them a fat fee to be left alone.
The Templar Rule, which originally resembled a Cistercian monk’s order of daily routine, was heavily revised around 1165 to become more of a military handbook: setting the Templars’ battlefield protocols, and emphasising the importance of discipline and obedience. The order’s famous black-and-white flag was only to be lowered when the last man defending it was dead. “No brother should leave the field… while there is a piebald banner raised aloft; for if he leaves he will be expelled from the house forever,” it read.
When they rode into battle, the Templars sang a psalm: ‘‘Not to us, O lord, not to us, but to your name give the glory, for your steadfast love and faithfulness.” The sight and sound of these men charging in their red-crossed white and black cloaks was rightly feared throughout the Holy Land.
Suicidally proud
When Saladin’s men had finished rounding up Templars and Hospitallers after the battle of Hattin in 1187, around 200 prisoners had been delivered. These included the Templar grand master, Gerard of Ridefort, an impulsive and suicidally proud leader who repeatedly led his men into fights against impossible odds, yet somehow always emerged with his own life. He would do so again now, as Saladin ordered him to be imprisoned and exchanged for the Templars’ castle at Gaza.
The rest were not so lucky. Saladin had witnessed the Templars’ bravery at first hand several years previously, when the commander of their besieged fortress at Jacob’s Ford met his death by deliberately riding headlong into a burning section of the castle. Now, wrote his secretary and biographer Imad al-Din: “He wished to purify land of these… unclean orders, whose practices are useless, who never give up their hostility and who have no use as slaves… He ordered that each would have his head cut off and be erased from the land of the living.”
Instead of committing the job to a professional headsman, Saladin asked for volunteers from his religious entourage. Sufis, lawyers and scholars stepped forward for the chance to decapitate an infidel, with predictably gruesome results. Some deaths were swift. Others were painful and slow, as inexperienced clerics hacked away with blunt blades and no technique. Many, wrote Imad al-Din, “proved themselves ridiculous and had to be replaced”.
Saladin sent a letter to Baghdad containing news of his extermination of the Christian military orders. “Not one of the Templars survived,” he wrote, with satisfaction. And he was very nearly correct.
- Listen | Bestselling medieval historian Dan Jones discusses his new book Crusaders, which tells the stories of these religious conflicts through the people who were involved in them
The Templars fight back
Nearly, but not quite. It took several years for the Templars to rebuild their numbers and their military reputation, but they managed it. When Richard the Lionheart arrived in the Holy Land to lead the Third Crusade in 1191 he revived the order’s fortunes, installing new leaders from his own entourage and ensuring that the Templars rode either at the vanguard or rearguard of his army as it marched down the coast from Acre to Jaffa, reclaiming cities Saladin had conquered. He briefly handed the Templars a military dictatorship on Cyprus, although they found the island ungovernable and sold it on. And when Richard left the Holy Land for Europe in 1192, he was said to have travelled incognito, wearing Templar uniform.
The order remained at the military heart of the crusades for another century. In 1218–19 they starred in the Fifth Crusade to Damietta in Egypt, deploying armoured galleys in the water of the Nile Delta, as the Christian armies attempted an amphibious siege of the city. Two generations later they were back again, having helped fund and provision another crusader army with designs on Damietta, this time led by Louis IX of France. Throughout the 13th century, the Templars continued to be involved in the Reconquista, helping King James I of Aragón to conquer Ibiza and Mallorca between 1229 and 1235, and the kingdom of Valencia by 1244.
Then, at the end of the century, when the Christians were being swept from the Holy Land by an Egyptian slave-soldier regime called the Mamluks, the Templars provided the very last line of defence. Their huge fortress in Acre was the last bastion to hold out against Mamluk forces storming through the breached walls in 1291, in what turned out to be the crusaders’ final stand.
In 1307, however, the order was destroyed by a cruel and conniving king of France, Philip IV. Philip used a popular wish for the Templars and Hospitallers to be merged into one military super-order as a pretext for investigating their practices and then confiscating their wealth. Their collapse was swift and dramatic, as the king’s lawyers and papal inquisitors accused the brothers of corruption, blasphemy, and sexual crimes. By 1312 the Templars had been disbanded. Their last master, James of Molay, was burned at the stake as a heretic in Paris in 1314.
Other orders survived the decline of crusading. The Hospitallers continued the fight against the church’s enemies from a new base on the island of Rhodes, while the German Teutonic Order governed a semi-autonomous state in Prussia for centuries. The Mamluks, who were themselves somewhat like an Islamic military order, ruled Egypt and Syria until they were swept aside by the Ottomans in 1517.
Why did the Templars fall? Part of the answer lies in the weakness of their last master, James of Molay; part in the cruel caprice of Philip IV. But what is seldom noted is that the Templars, for all their wealth and privilege, never established for themselves a geographical base that they could defend against all assaults, even from their own side.
The brothers were famed for their bravery, dedication and piety but these were not enough to save them when Philip IV attacked. Had they established themselves as the rulers of Cyprus when they had the chance in 1191, their history might have been different. But they did not, and the Knights Templars’ shocking demise now dominates our memory of an order that was, in its day, better known by Ibn al-Athir’s assessment: “The fiercest fighters of all the Franks.”
Dan Jones is a historian, TV presenter and author of The Templars. He was a historical advisor for the historical drama Knightfall.
The rise and fall of the Templars
1119: Hugh of Payns and eight other knights band together in Jerusalem, agreeing to protect Christian pilgrims outside the city. They are officially recognised in 1120. Their base is the al-Aqsa mosque, which they call the Temple of Solomon. 1129: The first Templar Rule is written at a church council in Troyes. Templars are committed to a life of celibacy, poverty and military exercise, and banned from knightly frivolities such as hunting with birds or wearing pointed shoes. 1134: Alfonso I ‘the Battler’, king of Aragon, dies and leaves one third of his kingdom to the Templars, drawing the order into the Reconquista. 1139: Pope Innocent II decrees that the Templars are only answerable to papal authority, and grants them the right to wear the sign of the cross on their chests. 1148: During the Second Crusade to liberate the city of Edessa, the Templars repel Turkish attacks and shepherd a French army all the way to the Holy Land. 1187: On 4 July, Saladin defeats a huge Christian army at the battle of Hattin. He then orders the summary beheading of all Templars captured by his forces. 1191: Richard the Lionheart conquers Cyprus and sells it to the Templars. But the order cannot hold it peacefully and quickly sell it on to Guy of Lusignan, the former king of Jerusalem. c1200: German author Wolfram von Eschenbach casts Templar-like figures as the defenders of a mysterious item known as the Holy Grail. 1218: Templars join the Fifth Crusade in the Nile Delta, fighting on board armoured galleys. 1291: Mamluk armies attack the last crusader outpost in the city of Acre. The Templar master William of Beaujeu is killed leading the defence. 1307: On Friday 13 October, agents working for King Philip IV arrest every Templar in France. In 1312, the order is disbanded and its property confiscated.
This article was first published in the October 2017 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]> The Knights Templar https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-knights-templar/ Thu, 14 Sep 2017 15:21:29 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-knights-templar/ Dan Jones and Suzannah Lipscomb discuss the rise and fall of the medieval military order who became the stuff of legend In a special extended-length episode popular historian Dan Jones is joined by Dr Suzannah Lipscomb to discuss his new book The Templars, which explores the rise and fall of the medieval military order who became the stuff of legend.
]]> History explorer: The Knights Templar https://www.historyextra.com/membership/history-explorer-the-knights-templar/ Thu, 19 Jan 2017 10:18:52 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/history-explorer-the-knights-templar/ Helen Nicholson and Charlotte Hodgman visit Temple Church in London to explore an order of warrior monks who won glory on the battlefields of the Holy Land in the 12th and 13th centuries... This article was first published in the January 2017 issue of BBC History Magazine
Hidden in plain sight between bustling Fleet Street and the busy waters of the river Thames is Temple Church, an oasis of calm in the heart of London. Our journey to the church is by way of a ‘secret’ passageway, a cobbled lane that today echoes to the clip-clop of smart shoes and the rumble of cases. The passageway conveys you to a site that, 800 years ago, was the English headquarters of the Knights Templar, an order of warrior monks whose raison d’être was to guard pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land and protect territory captured during the First Crusade.
Hidden in plain sight between bustling Fleet Street and the busy waters of the river Thames is Temple Church, an oasis of calm in the heart of London. Our journey to the church is by way of a ‘secret’ passageway, a cobbled lane that today echoes to the clip-clop of smart shoes and the rumble of cases. The passageway conveys you to a site that, 800 years ago, was the English headquarters of the Knights Templar, an order of warrior monks whose raison d’être was to guard pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land and protect territory captured during the First Crusade. Consecrated in February 1185, with Henry II – the order’s most high-profile patron – most likely present, Temple Church originally formed part of a much larger monastic compound of domestic buildings, military training facilities and cloisters, leading straight down to the Thames. The church’s very shape would have made it stand out from the buildings surrounding it, as it still does today. The circular nave – the first part of the church to be built – mirrors the shape of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which is claimed to contain the sites of both the crucifixion and tomb of Jesus of Nazareth.
As we enter Temple Church, winter sunlight streams through the tall glass windows, illuminating the effigies of some of its more famous residents. Famed knight William Marshal, chief advisor to King John and regent in the minority of Henry III, is buried here, together with his son, William, one of the 25 barons appointed to enforce Magna Carta. So too is an infant son of Henry II. The nine stone effigies set into the chancel’s limestone floor are eternally poised for battle, lying under the gaze of the stone gargoyles that circle the nave – some gruesome, others cheeky.
Templar beginnings
“The Gothic beauty of Temple Church belies the movement’s humble beginnings,” says Helen Nicholson, professor of medieval history at Cardiff University.
“The order began in Jerusalem, in around 1118-19, and was officially sanctioned by Pope Honorius II at the Council of Troyes in north-eastern France in 1129.” It wasn’t long before the order was making its presence felt across Europe.
“The Knights Templars started to acquire property and support in England in c1128, after Hugh de Payens – one of the order’s founding members – met with Henry I,” says Nicholson. “Donations of money and land flowed in steadily, with the order receiving particular support from Queen Matilda (who, helpfully for the Templars, was the niece of the king of Jerusalem), her husband, King Stephen, and Henry II, who became one of the order’s main patrons.”
As a military, as well as religious, force, the Knights Templar was constantly on the hunt for new recruits, as well as money to pay for equipment and campaigns in the Holy Land. But becoming a Templar was not a decision to be undertaken on a whim, and not every recruit was destined to join the order.
“In theory, all you needed to join the Knights Templar was to be convinced of your vocation to fight for God,” says Nicholson. “The brothers (as they became on joining) were required to make three monastic vows: to relinquish all personal property; to obey their commanding officer; and to abstain from sex. Links to the outside world were forbidden, so successful recruits had to be unmarried, debt-free, able-bodied and prepared to fight.
However, if you brought a lot of money or land with you, a blind eye could be turned to any, or all of the above.”
A familiar sight
Once a recruit had been deemed to meet all the criteria, he would be required to attend an admission ceremony, which would initially have taken place at London’s Temple Church. His uniform – a white mantle to which a red cross at the left breast or shoulder was later added – would have been a familiar sight across Europe from the 1140s, when it was first introduced. The order achieved notable successes on the battlefields of the Holy Land, for example at Montgisard in 1177, where they helped defeat a far larger force led by the great Muslim warrior Saladin. This earned them the respect of their enemies, not least because they were forbidden from retreating in battle. Even Saladin held the Knights Templar in high regard, declaring that they were the only people he was prepared to trust and negotiate with.“The idea of the ‘warrior monk’ who served God but who was prepared to kill was pretty revolutionary,” says Nicholson, “and there was some criticism of the order. Nevertheless, the Knights Templar was soon well-established across the British Isles, particularly in Norman-French areas such as Wales, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and along the east coast of England.” In fact, it’s thought that, at one point, it was the biggest landowner in England after the king.
Buzzing with activity
“The Knights Templar was more than just a crusading movement; it was a business,” says Nicholson. “The lands they held needed to be managed, not just to make money, but also for the benefit of the order’s patrons to ensure their continued support. Many people were employed on estates owned by the Knights Templar, working the land for profit, and local communities would have expected to receive charity from their local Templars. The order even ran its own pension scheme! The complex here at Temple Church would have been buzzing with activity, and its position close to the river put it in a prime position for trading.”
The order continued to thrive throughout the 12th century and for much of the 13th. But then its fortunes changed. Islamic forces went on the offensive, inflicting a series of defeats upon their enemies. In 1291, the fall of Acre to the Muslims saw the Christians lose their last major stronghold in the Holy Land. The finger of blame for the failure of the crusades began to point at the Knights Templar. By the end of the 13th century, the wealth of the Templars had made them a sitting target, particularly in France where Philip IV was looking for ways to fill the royal coffers. Accusations of heresy against the order are first recorded in France, in 1307, with worshipping false idols, spitting and urinating on the cross, denying Christ at secret admission ceremonies, and sodomy appearing in a long list of alleged crimes.
Says Nicholson: “At dawn on Friday 13 October 1307, agents of Philip IV arrested large numbers of Knights Templars on charges of heresy, extracting confessions under torture where required. According to one contemporary source, 36 French Templars died under torture rather than confess and we have a long list of confessions from Templars admitting to most of the charges, but claiming that any denial of Christ had been with the lips and not with the heart. Pope Clement V, faced with a pile of confessions of heresy, was helpless in the face of Philip’s determination. The trials went ahead and, in May 1310, 54 Templars were burned at the stake.”In England, Edward II faced a dilemma – he was married to Philip’s daughter, Isabella. To refuse to follow Philip’s lead and arrest English Templars would have been tantamount to a declaration of war on France – a war Edward could ill afford. In 1307, yielding to pressure, the English king gave the order for Templar arrests, and trials were held in 1309.
Alleged heresies“
Some Templars may have been tortured towards the end of the English trial, in June 1311,” says Nicholson, “but the majority were allowed to reject all their alleged heresies and most were sent to do penance at various monasteries, with Edward keeping most of the land seized as a result of the arrests.”
Temple Church was among those properties seized by Edward and was later given to another charitable order and rival to the Templars, the Knights Hospitaller. The Knights Templar itself was officially dissolved in 1312.“Much of the suspicion against the Templars came from the secrecy and privacy that surrounded the order,” says Nicholson. “When Philip IV, jealous of Templar wealth, began making accusations of heresy, no one could prove otherwise and so gossip and rumour prevailed.”Today’s church, with its peaceful interior and air of quiet contemplation, is a far cry from its 12th-century heyday, but it remains a testament to the warrior monks who pledged their lives to the Knights Templar.
Knights Templar: five more places to explore
Temple Bruernorth (Kesteven, Lincolnshire)
Where a Templar community lived
Once attached to the chancel of a circular-naved Templar church, the 12th-century tower is all that remains of one of England’s largest Templar estates, which may have included hospital and agricultural buildings and workshops. The community here disbanded in 1308 when its Templar knights were arrested and taken to Lincoln Castle.
Visit heritagelincolnshire.org
Temple Church (Bristol)
Where the Templars had an HQ
Originally round in shape, Bristol’s Temple Church was the administrative centre for Knights Templars in the south-west of England. The shell of the church, with its leaning 14th-century bell tower, can be visited but the interior is not open to visitors.
Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk
Temple Manor (Rochester, Kent)
Where important guests stayed
Given to the Knights Templar by Henry II in 1159, Temple Manor, of which the two-storey stone hall remains, was probably used as a lodging for dignitaries travelling between Dover and London. Lying to the west of the river Medway, the house would have once stood in farmland, providing a substantial income to the order.
Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk
Creating Barns (Braintree, Essex)
Where an early Templar site remains
Cressing was one of the earliest Templar estates, given to the order in 1136. By 1185, it had become the largest such estate in Essex. Today, the site caters for weddings and events in its two 13th-century Templar-built barns.
Visit cressingbarns.co.uk
Penhill Templars Preceptory (West Witton, North Yorkshire)
Where Knights Hospitaller took over
Founded by English noble Roger de Mowbray in c1142, Penhill once comprised a range of Templar buildings that were given to the Knights Hospitaller in 1312. Today, the remains of the chapel can be seen, along with some graves.
Visit pastscape.org.uk
Helen Nicholson is professor of medieval history at Cardiff University. She has written widely on the crusades and the Knights Templar. Words: Charlotte Hodgman.
]]> Crusade logistics and the battle over the slave trade https://www.historyextra.com/membership/crusade-logistics-and-the-battle-over-the-slave-trade/ Thu, 13 Aug 2015 13:59:36 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/crusade-logistics-and-the-battle-over-the-slave-trade/ Christopher Tyerman describes how the medieval campaigns to capture the Holy Land were arranged, while Ryan Cronin discusses some remarkable letters regarding the slave industry Oxford historian Christopher Tyerman talks to us about his new book How to Plan a Crusade. Meanwhile, we pay a visit to the University of Cambridge where Ryan Cronin introduces some remarkable documents relating to British slave ownership.
]]> Living through the Crusades: 3 poems and songs that reveal how medieval people felt about the holy war https://www.historyextra.com/membership/living-through-the-crusades-3-poems-and-songs-that-reveal-how-medieval-people-felt-about-the-holy-war/ Wed, 04 Feb 2015 10:48:44 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/living-through-the-crusades-3-poems-and-songs-that-reveal-how-medieval-people-felt-about-the-holy-war/ In 1095, Christian knights mounted a religious war against Muslims in Jerusalem in an attempt to reclaim the Holy Land. Known collectively as the Crusades, the military expeditions transformed the western world, and left a profound legacy in inter-cultural and inter-faith relations nationally and worldwide. Now, long forgotten songs and poetry that reveal contemporary responses to the holy war have been made publicly available online In the first archive of its kind, researchers from the universities of Warwick, Royal Holloway College in London and La Sapienza University in Rome are uploading the works of troubadours and trouvères (medieval musicians and poet-musicians), which illustrate public perception of the Crusades.
The archive will be populated over the next four years with contemporary poems and songs, alongside translations and historical context of their original composition and performance.
Funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council of the UK, the project promises to bring to life “the profound and disturbing legacy of the Crusades”.
Professor Linda Paterson from the University of Warwick, who is leading the project, said: “Modern editions of these medieval texts are very often out of date and scattered in journals and disparate publications. This project aims not only to edit and collate the texts, but make them easily available to the public; they are a valuable resource for not only academic researchers, but also students and school-teachers and are particularly relevant in the current global political climate.”
Here, writing for History Extra, Paterson shares three of her favourite poems and songs to feature in the archive:
1) Marcabru, Pax in nomine Domini
I chose this troubadour song because it’s perhaps the most brilliantly robust crusade song urging men to go on crusade: not to the Holy Land where the French have made a mess of the Second Crusade, but to Spain, to take part in the Reconquista. It has a powerful, solemn tune, a recording of which can be heard on the website – listen here (click the logo to the left of the title).
The modern English translation of the poem reads:
I. Peace in the name of the Lord! Marcabru made the vers and the tune. Hear what he says: how the heavenly Lord in His loving-kindness has created for us, in our vicinity, a washing-place such as never existed before, apart from over there near the valley of Josaphat in Outremer; but it is about the one over here that I exhort you.
II. We ought to wash night and morning, according to what is right, I assure you. Each has the opportunity to wash; he ought to go to the washing-place while he is still fit and well, for it is a true medicine for us, because if we go to death beforehand, instead of a lofty mansion we shall have lowly lodgings.
III. But avarice and no-faith divide youth from his companion. Ah, what grief it is, that all and sundry fly towards that place whose reward is infernal! If we do not run to the washing-place before we have our mouth and eyes closed, there is not one of us so puffed up with pride that he will not find a strong adversary at the moment of death.
IV. For the Lord who knows all that is, and knows all there will be and ever was, has promised us a crown and the title of emperor; and its beauty will be sapiential, for it will shine in the sky at the washing-place more than the morning star, provided that we avenge God of the wrongs that they do to Him both here and over there towards Damascus.
V. Akin to the line of Cain, the first evil man, there is a great number here of whom not one shows honour to God. We shall see who will be His close friend, for with the miracle of the washing-place Jesus will be in communion with you. And drive back the rabble who believe in augury and divination!
VI. But the lecherous wine-trumpeters, dinner-gobblers, brand-blowers, hearth-squatters will remain behind, those pilferers! For God wants to test the brave and the sound in His washing-place, and these others will keep an eye on the houses and dig their coulter into the garden (?), which is why I hound them to their shame.
VII. Here and in Spain the Marquis and all of Solomon’s Temple bear the weight and the burden of pagan pride, which is why youth gathers a base reputation; and the public outcry relating to that other washing-place pours down on the highest-ranking leaders: broken failures, weary of valour, who love neither joy nor delight.
VIII. The French are perverted if they say no to God’s cause, for I know how things stand! Antioch, here Guyenne and Poitou are in mourning for reputation and worth. May God conduct the count to His washing-place and lay his soul to rest, and may the Lord who rose from the tomb guard Poitiers and Niort.
2) Chardon de Croisilles, Li departirs de la douce contree
This trouvere song is typical of songs of departure and separation, when a crusader expresses his pain and sadness as he reluctantly leaves his lover for the Holy Land.
To read the original poem, click here.
The modern English translation reads:
I. Departure from the sweet land where lives my beauteous one has put me into great sadness; I am constrained to leave the one I have loved the most in order to serve the Lord God my creator, and yet I belong completely to Love, since I leave it all my heart and my thoughts: if my body goes to serve Our Lord, I have not forgotten true love on this account.
II. Love, this is too hard a parting, when I am forced to leave the best lady who ever existed or who was ever born; in her is all beauty and worth, and none should marvel if I weep at this; when my body goes to fulfil its destiny, see how my noble heart has already begun its return journey, musing and longing after my lady.
III. Lady, in whom is my death and my life, I depart from you more grief-stricken than I say; henceforth you have my heart in your power: keep it, or you have betrayed me. God, where shall I go? Shall I utter loud laments or cries when I am constrained to divide myself from my noble heart and leave it with the one who has never left me part of hers?
IV. Love justly thanks the false lover for the profit it receives from him, but I obtain no pity; it trusts the flatterer and the fraud, but I trust entirely to noble service; my loyalty, I know this well, deprives me of the joy which I have rightly deserved; it greatly grieves me that I ever set eyes on her, when on her account true love so defies me.
V. Sweet lady, whom my heart does not forget, for God’s sake please do not forget me! Never will I ever seek another love; for God’s sake, I beseech you, do not seek another lover! But if I learn that you are mocking me, I shall not die entirely, but only half; however you will not make an enemy of me if loyalty is not my enemy.
VI. At the moment of departure, sweet lady, I beg you, whatever a flatterer may say to you, do not forget me, and towards you I in turn will never behave basely.
Oracle of the Crusaders before Jerusalem during the First Crusade. © INTERFOTO/Alamy
3) Daspol, Seinhos, aujas, c’aves saber e sen
This comic fictional dialogue between Daspol and God has the the troubadour asking God some cheeky questions about why people don’t want to go on crusade any more, challenging His ordering of the world and offering Him some advice on improvements.
To read the original poem, click here.
The modern English translation reads:
I. Lords, you who have knowledge and sense, listen to what happened to me the other night when I was asleep. I was up in Heaven where God was holding assembly, and people were crowding all around here; and I’ll tell you about the charge He was making against Christians: that they behave falsely, since neither counts nor dukes nor princes nor clerics are claiming back His Holy Sepulchre.
II. And I stood up and spoke wisely in refutation: You are in the wrong here, God, and you should take a different approach: you give power to false people who commit the sin of pride and villainy with it every day, for they neither believe nor do anything that is good; and you give them heaps of gold and silver, so that Christians are spineless ‒ for after all, people can’t be fighting all the time!
III. Lord Daspol, since you confute me I’ll send the clerics every misfortune, and I’ll take property away from the Orders, so that if they’re rich now they’ll soon be in want, and on top of that I’ll make them gravely ill and the princes will lose tax revenues; then they will be shamed and dishonoured and eventually have their grave in hell!
IV. Fair lord God, you’re obviously powerful, since you live in a safe place and on high. Why do you think we should fight for you, since you honour Saracens and vicious people who leave you no stronghold or stockade, and raze the buildings to the ground? But this dispute has gone on a long time so I don’t know what’s the point of us accusing you.
V. Lord Daspol, if the princes and prelates had any love for me in their hearts, they ought to remember with true charity how I was put on the cross for the human race; each of them would willingly take part in the passage if they recalled the spilling of my blood, even if they died after such a hard endeavour; but none of them pays any attention to that journey.
VI. Fair lord God, you’ve talked a great deal, but you could easily repair this damage if you made each Saracen want to acknowledge his sin of his own accord; then no-one would need to go astray, since each would recognise his error. For we suffer death for their ancient sin ‒ and you think nothing of pitching us into a massacre.
VII. Lord Daspol, it’s turned out that the Temple and the Hospital and the Orders, begun in holiness, do evil instead of good, and are keen to go on sleeping in their wickedness, for all of them are full of pride and avarice and don’t want to think of any other task. But I’ll make them change room and lodging so that the very boldest of all will be in terror!
VIII. Fair lord God, you could achieve royal glory if you put a stop to base behaviour: since you recognise that they’re all disloyal, why do you let them carry on in their vile ways? And since the world is going to ruin through greed, give us enough so that we are all equal; and since we’ll all be true and faithful / high-minded and high-born, everyone will want to think about his nobility!
IX. Then I awoke. But may it please God through His holiness to ordain that the kings and cardinals, prelates and princes have a change of heart so that (lit.: be such that) each may desire to end in great goodness.
X. King of Aragon, father and son of prowess, castle of worth, fount of what makes a man worthy, I tell you my dream, lord, God save you, for you will direct your nobility aright towards Him.
To find out more about the archive, click here.
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