The Templars Read online

  THE TEMPLARS

  Dan Jones

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

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  About The Templars

  The Knights Templar were the wealthiest, most powerful and most secretive of the military orders that flourished in the crusading era. Their story – encompassing the greatest international conflict of the Middle Ages, a network of global finance, and a swift rise followed by a bloody and humiliating fall – has left a comet’s tail of mystery that continues to fascinate and inspire historians, novelists and conspiracy theorists.

  Dan Jones charts every stage in the Templars’ 200-year history: their foundation in the early twelfth century as a charitable order protecting pilgrims visiting the Holy Land; their growth into a warrior elite who fought as shock troops in crusader battles; their evolution into sophisticated financiers enjoying sweeping tax breaks, freedom from regulation and privileged access to popes, emperors and kings; and their suppression and final disbandment in 1312 by King Philip ‘the Fair’ of France and Pope Clement V.

  As rigorously researched as it is thrillingly recounted, The Templars offers state-of-the-art narrative history peopled by an extraordinary cast of characters; while the themes that pulse at its heart – a seemingly endless war in Palestine, Syria and Egypt; the clash of Sunni and Shi’a Muslims with Christian invaders from the west; the relationship between international finance and geopolitics; and the power of propaganda and mythmaking – continue to resonate powerfully today.

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About The Templars

  Dedication

  List of Maps

  Author’s Note

  Maps

  Introduction

  Part 1: Pilgrims, c.1102–1144

  Chapter 1: ‘A Golden Basin, Filled With Scorpions’

  Chapter 2: ‘The Defence of Jerusalem’

  Chapter 3: ‘A New Knighthood’

  Chapter 4: ‘Every Good Gift’

  Part 2: Soldiers, 1144–1187

  Chapter 5: ‘A Tournament Between Heaven And Hell’

  Chapter 6: ‘The Mill of War’

  Chapter 7: ‘The God-Forsaken Tower’

  Chapter 8: ‘Power and Riches’

  Chapter 9: ‘Troubles in the Two Lands’

  Chapter 10: ‘Tears of Fire’

  Chapter 11: ‘Woe to You, Jerusalem!’

  Part 3: Bankers, 1189–1260

  Chapter 12: ‘The Pursuit of Fortune’

  Chapter 13: ‘Nowhere in Poverty’

  Chapter 14: ‘Damietta!’

  Chapter 15: ‘Animosity and Hatred’

  Chapter 16: ‘Unfurl and Raise Our Banner!’

  Part 4: Heretics, 1260–1314

  Chapter 17: ‘A Lump in the Throat’

  Chapter 18: ‘The City Will Fall’

  Chapter 19: ‘At the Devil’s Prompting’

  Chapter 20: ‘Heretical Depravity’

  Chapter 21: ‘God Will Avenge Our Death’

  Epilogue: ‘The Holy Grail’

  Plate Section

  Appendices

  Appendix I: Cast of Major Characters

  Appendix II: Popes, 1099–1334

  Appendix III: Kings and Queens of Jerusalem

  Appendix IV: Masters of the Order of the Temple

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  About Dan Jones

  Also by Dan Jones

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  For Georgina

  List of Maps

  1. Europe and the Holy Land c.1119

  2. The Holy Land c.1119

  3. Saewulf’s journey, c.1102

  4. Templar properties in western Europe around the Second Crusade, c. 1147

  5. The Second Crusade, 1148–9

  6. Templar castles in the Latin East

  7. Saladin’s conquests by 1190

  8. Damietta and the Fifth Crusade

  9. The Mongols and Mamluks c.1260–91

  Author’s Note

  The story of the Templars takes us across a broad sweep of times, territories and cultures. Some of these are familiar to western readers, others less so. Naming conventions for people and places vary significantly between English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Turkish and every tongue that was in use during the period this book covers, and spelling very often lacks consistency in the original sources.

  Rendering Arabic and Turkish names into English is challenging. There is no single accepted formula for doing so, and no unchallenged agreement on the best way to spell in English even as important a name as Muhammad, let alone the names of less famous individuals. In writing this book I found myself constantly making choices, frequently arbitrarily.

  For example, Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, the great Kurdish sultan of Egypt and Syria and scourge of the Templars, is best known to most English and American readers by his crudely reduced crusader nickname of Saladin. Salah al-Din is sometimes considered more sensitive shorthand today, but it would not have been quite so clear who I meant. So ‘Saladin’ is what I have called him. However, I have called his less well-known brother and successor al-Adil rather than Saphadin, following the conventions of modern scholarship, rather than those of medieval Christian chroniclers.

  Not every case is this straightforward. How do we render the name of the empire established by the Turkic people of the steppe, who rode into Baghdad in 1055 and who were holding much of the Holy Land when the crusaders arrived a few decades later? We could transliterate the Arabic and get ‘Saljuq’, or render the Turkish into ‘Selcük’. There are other popular variations including ‘Seljuk’ and ‘Seljuq’. In cases such as this, where there are many plausible options but no obvious best, I have turned to The New Encyclopedia of Islam for guidance (it says Seljuq). Early on I also asked Professor Paul M. Cobb for his help on the matter; as always he gave me sensible advice, for which I am grateful. Those illiteracies that remain are my fault alone.

  Other choices: I have decided not to include the marks sometimes used for transliterating Arabic into Roman script, on the basis that these are often more distracting than helpful to readers in a text that is not solely produced for academic reference. I have consistently translated the names of most characters in this book into their standard English form, so that we have James of Molay and not Jacques de Molay, as is standard practice in most modern English works about this historical period.

  In many cases I have modernized or at least updated place-names for the sake of clarity; thus, in Chapter 1, Joppa becomes Jaffa (although the settlement I describe is today to be found in Tel Aviv-Jafo). Cairo has been substituted for the archaic crusader term Babylon. Yet in many cases modernization would be inappropriate, which is why I refer to Constantinople rather than Istanbul.

  In the case of crusader settlements in the Holy Land, there are sometimes three or more different renderings possible for the same place. The great Templar fortress south of Acre (modern-day Akka) was known by the men who built it as Castel Pèlerin. Today scholars call it ‘Atlit or Athlit. But I have chosen to modernize the French and call it Château Pèlerin, giving ‘Atlit in parentheses at the first instance of use and occasionally thereafter. I have chosen not to translate it fully into English, which would have been Castle Pilgrim.

  None of this amounts to a system, except to say that I have sought readability rather than consistency. From time to time I may have achieved neither: I can ask only for your patience and understanding.

  Maps

  Think not that I am come to send peace on earth:

  I came not to send peace, but a sword.

/>   Matthew 10:34

  Introduction

  The Templars were holy soldiers. Men of religion and men of the sword, pilgrims and warriors, paupers and bankers. Their uniforms, emblazoned with a red cross, symbolized the blood that Christ had shed for mankind, and that they themselves were prepared to spill in the Lord’s service. Although the Templars were only one among a host of religious orders that sprang up in medieval Europe and the Holy Land between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, they were by far the best known and the most controversial.

  Their order was the product of the crusades, the wars instigated by the medieval church that took aim primarily, although not exclusively, at the Islamic rulers of Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, north-west Africa and southern Spain. As such, Templars could be found across a vast swathe of the Mediterranean world and beyond: on the battlefields of the Near East and in towns and villages throughout Europe, where they managed extensive estates that funded their military adventures. The word ‘Templars’ – shorthand for ‘The Poor Knighthood of the Temple’ or, less frequently, ‘The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Jerusalem’ – advertised their origins on the Temple Mount in Christianity’s holiest city. But their presence was felt almost everywhere. Even in their own lifetimes the Templars were semi-legendary figures, featuring in popular stories, artworks, ballads and histories. They were part of the mental landscape of the crusades – a position they still occupy today.

  The Templars were founded in 1119 on the principles of chastity, obedience and poverty – the last of which was memorialized in the master’s official seal, showing two armed brothers sharing a single horse – but the order soon grew rich and influential. Senior Templar officials in the Holy Land and the west counted among their friends (and enemies) kings and princes, queens and countesses, patriarchs and popes. The order helped finance wars, loaned money to pay kings’ ransoms, subcontracted the financial management of royal governments, collected taxes, built castles, ran cities, raised armies, interfered in trade disputes, engaged in private wars against other military orders, carried out political assassinations and even helped make men kings. From meagre beginnings they became as mighty an outfit as existed during the later Middle Ages.

  Yet – perhaps strangely – the Templars also had broad popular appeal. For many people they were not distant elites but local heroes. The prayers that the order’s many non-fighting brothers said in their religious houses across Europe were just as important as the sacrifices Templar knights and sergeants made on the battlefield, and both were of the utmost importance in seeking heavenly salvation for all Christians. Some of the order’s wealth came from the patronage of the pious nobility, but just as much grew from the small donations of ordinary men and women, who gave what little they had – a jacket here, a vegetable patch there – to their local branch to help fund the order’s militant mission in the east.

  Of course, there were dissenters. To some observers the order was dangerously unaccountable and a corruption of the supposedly peaceful principles of Christianity. At times the Templars were the subject of fierce attacks, particularly from scholars and monks suspicious of their privileged status: protected by the authority of the pope and exempted from the rules and taxes that were imposed on other religious groups. Bernard of Clairvaux – a sort of godfather to the order – hailed the Templars as ‘a new knighthood’, but a century later another learned French monk dismissed them as ‘a new monstrosity’.

  Nevertheless, the sudden dissolution of the order in the early fourteenth century, which involved mass arrests, persecution, torture, show trials, group burnings and the seizure of all the Templars’ assets, shocked the whole of Christendom. Within a few years the order was shut down, wound up and dissolved, its members accused of a list of crimes designed specifically to cause outrage and disgust. The end came so suddenly and so violently that it only added to the Templar legend. Today, more than 700 years after their demise, the Templars remain the object of fascination, imitation and obsession.

  So, who were the Templars? It is sometimes hard to tell. The Templars have featured in numerous works of fiction, television shows and films, where they have been presented variously as heroes, martyrs, thugs, bullies, victims, criminals, perverts, heretics, depraved subversives, guardians of the Holy Grail, protectors of Christ’s secret bloodline and time-travelling agents of global conspiracy. Within the field of ‘popular’ history, a cottage industry exists in exposing ‘the mysteries of the Templars’ – suggesting their role in some timeless plot to conceal Christianity’s dirty secrets, and hinting that the medieval order is still out there, manipulating the world from the shadows. Occasionally this is very entertaining. None of it has very much to do with the Templars themselves.

  This book seeks to tell the story of the Templars as they were, not as legend has embellished them since. My goal is not so much to debunk or even engage with the more outlandish themes of Templar mythology, but rather to show that their real deeds were even more extraordinary than the romances, half-truths and voodoo histories that have swirled around them since they fell. I also believe that the themes of the Templar story resonate powerfully today. This is a book about a seemingly endless war in Palestine, Syria and Egypt, where factions of Sunni and Shi’a Muslims clashed with militant Christian invaders from the west; about a ‘globalized’, tax-exempt organization that grew so rich that it became more powerful than some governments; about the relationship between international finance and geopolitics; about the power of propaganda and mythmaking; about violence, treachery, betrayal and greed.

  Readers of my books about Plantagenet England will not be surprised to learn that this is a narrative history. It tells the story of the Templars from their creation to their dissolution, exploring the order’s changing nature, its spread across the Near East and Europe and the part it played in the medieval wars between Christian armies and the forces of Islam. I have presented the text with detailed endnotes and a bibliography pointing readers to a wide range of original sources and academic studies, but I have not strayed from my usual ambition, which is to write a book that will entertain as well as inform.

  To guide readers through the two centuries from the order’s unremarkable birth to its spectacular annihilation, I have divided the book into four sections. The first, ‘Pilgrims’, describes the Templars’ origins in the early twelfth century, when they were founded as an order of Christian religious warriors by the French knight Hugh of Payns and (so it was later said) eight of his companions, who were looking for a purpose in Jerusalem in the turbulent aftermath of the First Crusade. The initial intention of this little band was to form a permanent bodyguard for western pilgrims following in Christ’s footsteps on the dangerous roads of the Holy Land. They took their lead in part from a group of volunteer medics who had established a hospital in Jerusalem around 1080, known as the Hospital of St John or the Hospitallers. Having received royal approval from the Christian king of Jerusalem, and papal blessing from Rome, the Templars quickly institutionalized and expanded. They set up headquarters in the Holy City in the al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount (known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif), sent emissaries to Europe to round up men and raise financial support, and they sought out famous patrons. Their spiritual guide was Bernard of Clairvaux, who helped write their Rule, and early supporters included the leading crusaders of the day, such as the Plantagenet forefather Fulk, count of Anjou, who – with a little help from the Templars – became king of Jerusalem. Within a couple of decades the Templars were no longer nine penniless warriors in search of a cause: they were an ambitious organization with a clear purpose and the means to achieve it.

  The second part of this book, ‘Soldiers’, shows how the Templars transformed themselves from a roadside rescue team into an elite military unit at the forefront of the crusader wars. It describes the Templars’ crucial role in the Second Crusade, when they helped guide not a handful of pilgrims but an entire army under the king of France through t
he mountains of Asia Minor, delivering them safely to the Holy Land, bailing out their bankrupt commander, then fighting in the front line as the crusaders attempted to conquer Damascus, one of the greatest cities in the Islamic world. From this point on the Templars were prominent agents in the political and military history of the Christian crusader states (the kingdom of Jerusalem, the county of Tripoli and the principality of Antioch). Part II follows them as they developed a network of castles, a set of military protocols and the institutional expertise necessary to carry out their task. It also features some of the most extraordinary characters in the whole history of crusading: the pious but unlucky Louis VII of France; the suicidally proud Templar master Gerard of Ridefort, who helped lead the armies of God into an apocalyptic battle at Hattin in 1187; the leper king of Jerusalem Baldwin IV; and the most famous Muslim sultan who ever lived, Saladin, who made it his personal mission to wipe the crusaders off the map, and personally oversaw the execution of hundreds of Templar knights in a single day.

  Part III is entitled ‘Bankers’, and it examines how the Order of the Temple matured from a crusading auxillary force supported by donations from the west into an institution that combined military capability with a sophisticated network of properties and personnel across Christendom, binding together the Christian west with the eastern war zone at a time when crusading fervour was beginning to ebb.

  Having been nearly wiped out as a fighting force by Saladin, the Templars were rebuilt in the 1190s with the help of a brilliant, brutal and very famous king of England, Richard the Lionheart, whose trust in and reliance on the Templars’ leading officials suggested the direction the order would take during the thirteenth century. Protected by royal patronage, which was soon mimicked by nobles and urban authorities, the Templars grew their landholdings, expanded their property portfolio, and were granted lucrative tax breaks. They became dazzlingly wealthy and financially sophisticated, and in due course popes and kings turned to them to manage bookkeeping, guard treasure, organize wars and raise bailouts in times of crisis.