Hidden guardians of the Holy Grail. Vile, debauched perverts. Inheritors of the wisdom and mystic power of Solomon the Great. Secret architects of the New World Order. Fathers of banking and Freemasonry. The greatest warriors of the entire medieval era. Martyrs betrayed by a King’s greed. Demonologists and sorcerers…. The Knights Templar are the most famous historical military organisation of the last thousand years, and the subject of a thousand legends, rumours and romantic speculations.
Dan Brown’s smash novel “The Da Vinci Code” is the most recent work to bring the Templars back into the public eye. Following the historical research of authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, the Da Vinci Code suggests that the Templars were the inheritors of sacred wisdom, gained during their time in the Middle East. This was then supposedly passed on to the even-more-secretive Priory of Sion after the order’s suppression, along with huge amounts of gold and other treasure. Then again, tales of the sudden rise and even sharper fall of the West’s pre-eminent warrior-monks have been inspiring poets, dreamers and conspiracy theorists for eight hundred years.
The truth, however, is that the mighty Templars started out as a tiny band of weary veteran crusaders looking for somewhere to lodge.
Hugh de Payens
In 1099 AD, the armies of the first Crusade captured the city of Jerusalem, slaughtered the inhabitants and announced the formation of a new state, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. The purpose of the Crusade, officially, had been to rescue the holy sites around Jerusalem from desecration by the area’s Moslem and Jewish population. The Crusade also sought to make the long journey from Europe safe for pilgrims, protecting them from heathen attack. In this, at least, it failed, stirring up all manner of anti-Christian sentiment.
Twenty years later, following an unusually spectacular massacre of Easter pilgrims – too weak from Lent fasting to even run – a group of nine long-term crusaders offered their services to the King of Jerusalem. Their leader, Hughes de Payens, sought a base. He promised to defend the pilgrim route, and the group swore oaths of poverty, chastity and obedience to prove their piety. The King accepted their offer, and gave them barracks in the city. Hughes de Payens may have been a distant relative – little is known about him for sure. He was certainly a minor French noble serving the Duke of Champagne, a knight from the first Crusade who, it is thought, had stayed on campaigning in the area ever since.
The new group took their name from the location of their quarters, the former site of King Solomon’s Temple. The Poor Fellow-Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon – the Knights Templar – started their new careers very quietly indeed. After their initial formation, the Templars vanished into total obscurity for almost ten years. Would-be new recruits were turned away.
Whatever De Payens intended, no records remain to suggest they even so much as helped a pilgrim cross the street, let alone that nine men successfully defended a route hundreds of miles in length through hostile territory.
