TemplarsNow: 2019

Philosophy and Christian Context of the Crusades

"The crusades were wars justified by faith conducted against real or imagined enemies deﬁned by religious and political elites as perceived threats to the Christian faithful. The religious beliefs crucial to such warfare placed enormous significance on imagined awesome but reassuring supernatural forces of overwhelming power and proximity that were nevertheless expressed in hard concrete physical acts: prayer, penance, giving alms, attending church, pilgrimage, violence.

Merry Christmas with Medieval Carols

Merry Christmas

Medieval Carols, Oxford Camerata, Jeremy Summerly

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Key Qualities of the Cistercian Order - Simplicity, Practicality and Self-sufficiency

"The promotion of the tenets of their faith on one hand and desire to return to the simplicity of early monasticism on the other, permitted the Cistercians (...) art and architecture. (...) As St Bernard envisaged the Earth as the work of Divine Architect, he himself as a head of his order, actively participated in many practical aspects of founding new Cistercian monasteries, including solving concrete architectural problems. (...)

Few authors have shaped our image of the Knights Templar as powerfully as Walter Scott. Yet his dramatic villains of pride and corruption bear little resemblance to the disciplined, austere warriors who founded the Order in 1119.

"Formed in the setting of the Chapter of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem from a brotherhood of Champenois and Burgundian knights, the Templars received their rule at the Council of Troyes in 1129. They inspired all the foundations that followed by showing the way to militarization of charitable fraternities.

Many popular pictures show Knights Templar clean shaven. Is this correct?

"Crusaders in the East were for the time militia (to the Byzantine Emperor, TN) who were there to serve a purpose. The question of restituting the churches of the East to Rome was not in the crusader’s plans. This position changed drastically when (Emperor TN) Alexius abandoned the Crusaders in view of the impending Muslim backlash.

Every five years, the general chapter of the Order of the Temple convened to debate political questions, decide acts binding upon the whole Order, and serve as its internal court of appeal. Most chapters were held in the Latin East, but the first European assembly took place in Paris in 1147. What is known about that Council?

In March 1095, the devastation incurred by the onstorming Seljuk Turks in the Byzantine territories forced Emperor Alexius I to ask Pope Urban II for help. This request inspired Urban’s preaching of the crusades later that year at the church council of Clermont.

In his famous book The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple Malcom Barber reconstructs in detail the birth of the Order. He argues that it is probable that, prior to their recognition by King Baldwin II sometime after Spring 1118, the brotherhood that later became the Knights Templar existed in another form. Prior to settlement on the former royal palace at the Temple Mount and becoming "The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon" (in Latin: Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici), this brotherhood probably already existed for some years as one of the brotherhoods of the Holy Sepulcher.

When in the 12th to 14th centuries Knights Templar returned from their Crusade, they settled also on the territory of Banyuls and Collioure, (departement Pyrénées-Orientales, region of Occitanie, Southwest France), and restored the noble grape varieties planted there by the Phoenicians centuries earlier.

The Knights Templar Commandery at Arville, France

This video, hosted by a very enthousiastic Frenchman, provides a nice introduction to the well preserved Knights Templar Commandery at Arville, Loir-et-Cher Department, France.

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Map of medieval monasteries in the Netherlands published

In 2019 the Vrije Universiteit at Amsterdam, the Netherlands, published The Map of Monasteries. This map shows the monasteries of all orders which have been represented in the present-day Netherlands during the Middle Ages and Early Modern period (until 1800).

The Templars established themselves in the duchy of Brittany in the second quarter of the twelfth century, perhaps as early as 1128, during the travels in western Europe of the first master of the order, Hugh of Payns.

The Templars lived on well beyond the Middle Ages in the local collective memory, in spite of the poorness of the buildings which may be directly ascribed to them.

Even if the present paper is interested in the traditions and myths the Templars provoked in Brittany, it is based on medieval and modern sources which are not as scarce as scholars have often thought.

Thus, over a period of two hundred years, this study explains the Templars’ regional growth, violently broken by the trial of 1307, and it throws light on the establishment of a complete network of possessions organized at its peak, during the second half of the thirteenth century, in about ten commanderies and integrated in the province of Aquitaine.

This blog quotes the English abstract of the paper "Les Templiers en Bretagne au Moyen Âge : mythes et réalités" by Philippe Josserand published on journals.openedition.org. Illustration from the same sorce, showing the Chapel of the Commandery of Coudrie (cliché Chr. Renault).

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The Templars at sea

Originally there was no reason for the Knights of the Temple to invest in maritime activities in the Mediterranean area. The foundation of the Temple did indeed have as only goal the pacification of "the roads and ways of the kingdom of Jerusalem". And there were many alternative transporters, such as the Genuese and Venitian merchants.

In June 2019 the OSMTHU-blog The Templar Globe reported on an agreement signed between the OSMTJ and the OSMTHU. Both organizations aim to conteract fragmentation in the worldwide Templar movement. This movement, as the publication rightly states, "is characterized by many small groups of undetermined origin and frequent divisions in the main branches."

For the purpose of unification a Cultural Exchange Association between both branches was proposed. Efgorts are undertaken to elect Vila Nova da Barquinha – of the Castle of Almourol, location of the Templar Interpretation Center (CIT), as the official seat of this Association.

Illustration left shows the adopted declaration. source the OSMTHU-blog

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Geo-politics in 11th and 12th century Francia

For the purpose of TemplarsNow the medieval geo-political landscape of what is now France is important. The County of Champagne, especially the area around Troyes, was the native region of many an early knight Templar. This geo-political situation was fragmented to say the least, as the adjacent maps show.

As we have argued in an earlier post, certain historians and conspiracists alike suggest that the Knights Templar did in fact form Switzerland. The evidence and likelyhood seem plausible. At the same time hard evidence is scarce and circumstantial at best.

TemplarsNow runs a project which pinpoints the geographical location of Templar sites in France. TemplarsNow has earlier done a similar job for The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg.

The Siege of Jerusalem took place from June 7 to July 15, 1099, during the First Crusade. This successful siege saw the Crusaders take Jerusalem from the Fatimid Caliphate and laid the foundations for the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

TemplarsNow is always looking to identify, promote and (re)distribute sources of reliable information on the Knights Templar and their time. Therefore this blog quotes the valuable list of "the 15 most important Books on the Crusades" prepared in 2017 by Andrew Holt PhD.

Dr Holt reported on his project to identify the "most important" books on the Crusades. He asked 34 leading medieval historians to provide their own preferential list. Their replies resulted in a list of some 150 titles. Analyzing this as to the number of times each title had been mentioned by the scolars, Dr Holt identified "the 15 most important Books on the Crusades". The titles are shown below, including the number of times each title was mentioned.

Carol Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Islamic Surveys) (1999). (13 mentions)
Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (1986). (13 mentions)
Carl Erdmann, The Origin of the Idea of Crusade (1977) (11 mentions)
Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades. 3 vols. (1951-1954). (11 mentions)
Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095-1131 (1997). (7 mentions)
R.C. Smail, Crusading Warfare 1097-1193 (1956, 2nd edition 1995). (7 mentions)
Kenneth M. Setton, ed., A History of the Crusades, 2nd ed., 6 vols. (1969-89). (7 mentions)
John France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (1994) (7 mentions)
Norman Housley, The Later Crusades, 1274-1580: From Lyons to Alcazar (1992). (6 mentions)
Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (2006). (6 mentions)
Paul Alphandéry & Alphonse Dupront, La Chrétienté et l’idée de croisade (1954, 1959). (5 mentions)
Benjamin Z. Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches towards the Muslims (1984). (5 mentions)
Denys Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus (1993- 2009). (5 mentions)
Joshua Prawer, Histoire du Royaume Latin de Jérusalem (1969-71). (5 mentions)
Paul Cobb, The Race for Paradise: an Islamic History of the Crusades (2014). (4 mentions)
Susan B. Edgington and Sarah Lambert, eds. Gendering the Crusades (2002). (4 mentions)
Norman Housley, Contesting the Crusades (2006). (4 mentions)
Christopher MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (2007). (4 mentions)
Hans Eberhard Mayer ed. In collaboration with Jean Richard, Die Urkunden der lateinischen Könige von Jerusalem (2010). (4 mentions)
Joseph Michaud, Histoire des croisades, 4 vol. (1862). (4 mentions)
James M. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213-1221 (1986). (4 mentions)
Queller, Donald E., and Thomas F. Madden. The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople. 2d ed. (1997). (4 mentions)

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The subsurface of Temple Mount, Jerusalem

The subterranean part of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem contains a lot of acheological information mirroring its intensive use during many centuries. Part of this archeological information is documented bij artefacts from the Stone and Bronze Age up to and including the 20th century found by the Temple Mount Sifting Project (TMSP).

In the Crusader story, a strange event just prior to the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusader army in July 1099, seems to be scarcely mentioned. This is the taking of Jerusalem from its Muslim Seljuk Turkish ruler (since 1073) by the Muslim Fatimid ruler of Egypt.

The summer of 1098 saw the much-fought-over fortress city in Egyptian hands. The Fatimid Emir (commander) al-Afdal Shahinshah had taken Jerusalem from the Seljuk Turks after a 40-day siege, on orders of Vizier (minister of state) al-Musta’li, ruler of Egypt.

The agricultural revolution described in an earlier blog resulted in a change in the land use that allowed the subsistence farmer to go with his surplus crop to the market, originally at the local church, to buy and sell.

"During the medieval period, hundreds of thousands of Europeans migrated to the Near East to take part in the Crusades, and many of them settled in the newly established Christian states along the Eastern Mediterranean coast. This changed the genetic codes of the region."

According to some authors the religious Templar churches and chapels were built in a way specific to the Order and arranged for the exercise of secret and mysterious rites. Hence the existence of a Templar architectural symbolism, the famous "Templar architecture", whose models would be octagonal buildings or rotunda, like the rotunda of the Temple of Paris.

A series of revolutions in economic and political life transformed Northern Europe. Technology (tools) drove the process, and it was the entrepreneurial spirit of inventive farmers, craftsmen, and what we call today business that triggered change

Crusading for the sake of commerce - the Genoa case

"There were another body of crusaders, outside the knightly class, to whom it is worth turning in any discussion of the economic gains and losses of the First Crusade. By the end of the eleventh century a growing social milieu was beginning to assert itself in parts of Europe: the urban manufacturer and merchant.

On March 18, 2019 we commemorate the 705th anniversary of the death of the last official Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay. De Molay, born in 1244 was put to death in Paris by the King of France on 18 March 1314.

Number of participants of the First Crusade

"The most thorough discussion of the number of combatants on the First Crusade is that offered by John France and this study cannot improve on his painstaking assembly of the relevant data and the plausible manner in which it assessed. However, the estimates of the size of the Crusader army vary considerably.

"Upon leaving for the crusade, very many property owners made substantial donations to the church, in return for ready coin with which to finance their involvement on the expedition. These transactions were recorded and churches and monasteries preserved the charters throughout the centuries, being ever diligent on such matters.

Prologue of the Crusades - Jerusalem and the Seljuks

"When the Muslim Seljuks, a Turkish steppe tribe, spectacularly defeated an army of the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Manzikert in ancient Armenia in August 1071 CE, a series of events followed which would lead to centuries of East-West warfare couched in religious terms: the Crusades.

"Participants in a historic religious procession during the 2018 Heiligdomsvaart (Relics Pilgrimage) in Maastricht, Netherlands.
The history of this seven-yearly catholic pilgrimage goes back to the Middle Ages. The first 'modern' version took place in 1874. On both Sundays of the 10-day festival, a procession is held in which the main relics and other devotional objects are exhibited.
This photo was taken at Het Bat during the (second) procession on Sunday 3 June 2018. This particular group consists of members of the interdenominational OSMTH Order of the Knights Templar. They are followed by a group representing the nearby parish of Houthem-Sint Gerlach, where Saint Gerlachus is venerated."

Source text and illustration Wikimedia. Photo by Kleon3 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

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The Knights Templar: orthodox or heretics?

"(...) Local (14th Century TN) chroniclers in England ‘supported the French version of the Templars’ heresy’, although King Edward II and his prelates did not. This raises the question of whether local chroniclers were aware of irregularities in the Templars’ religious beliefs that were not known to the higher authorities.

The Latin Rule, also known as the Primitive Rule, was the result of the discussions that took place at the Council of Troyes, which was under the heavy guidance of Bernard of Clairvaux, the new rising star of the Church. This Council took place in January 1129.

The original Latin Rule, from the Council of Troyes, was actually written by the council’s scribe, John Michael, though the credit for its contents goes to St Bernard; ‘At the very least he must have been a major influence on the framing of the Latin Rule, for it is clear that the later Templars valued their Cistercian links above all’.

The structure of the text is strikingly similar to that of ‘Carta Caritatis’ and the Rule of St Benedict, which implies a replication of Cistercian organisation and values. What is very interesting to note is that it was at the Council of Troyes that the Knights Templar came to follow the Rule of St Benedict; ‘At the time of the Council, the Templars had been following the Rule of St. Augustine, however, this changed in 1129 with the direct influence of the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux.’

The Rule itself describes procedures that the Templar brothers should adhere to on a day-to-day basis. The description of procedures -in particular clause three, which relate to clothing- resonates the tone of both the Cistercian ‘Charter of Charity’ and also the Rule of St Benedict. In fact much of the Rule appears to have strong monastic overtones, rather than a military aspect and the detail that is given to food and drink is very similar to that of the Cistercians.

Buy your own Rule here. For the original Latin Rule in French visit templiers.org.free.fr

This blog is in part based on the thesis by Lori Firth, Hull University (2012): "A Comparison of the Cistercian and Knights Templar Orders, And the Personal Influence of Bernard of Clairvaux", to be found here

The Primitive Rule in English is quoted below in its entirety. Source: www.templiers.org

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"Sint Gummarus Processie" 21 November, 2018 at Lier, Belgium

source video

Every year the city of Lier (Belgium) is celebrating its patron Saint St Gummarus by a procession. The Saint Gummarus procession takes place on the first Sunday after 10 October (Sint-Gummarus fair).

Sixteen members of the Society of the Bearers carry the silver reliquary of St. Gummarus, which weighs more than 800 kg, through the streets of Lier.

During the feast day of the Saint (11 October), pilgrims from everywhere world come to the Sint-Gummarus church to ask for healing of malfunctions and call in the Saint's help to stay free of fractures.

In pronouncing the blessing, the priest puts the belt of Saint Gummarus on the shoulders of the pilgrim, the ritual of laying the band. This refers to the story where Saint Gummarus healed a cut down tree by wrapping his belt around the trunk and bringing it back into bloom.

source text (in Dutch)

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Reconstruction of a Templar Commandery in 3D

Video in French - source

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The Holy Sepulchre, cradle of the Knights Templar

"According to a chronicle on the Templars’ beginnings, attributed to Ernoul, (...) the first Templars were a group of knights who had dedicated themselves to the Holy Sepulchre after the First Crusade. They realized that the country needed warriors, and criticized themselves for living an idle and comfortable life when they should be working. So they decided, with the permission of the prior of the Sepulchre, to elect a Master who could lead them in battle if necessary.

Templar Key Information

The Rule of St Benedict c. 500 CE, starting point for the rule of the Cistercian Order, which was the monastic mother of the Order of the Knights Templar

Charta Caritatis c. 1119 CE, rule of the Cistercian Order, originally written by Stephan Harding, 3rd abbot of the first Cistercian Abbey at Citeaux, France. The Charter in other languages is to be found here

Primitive Rule of the Knights Templar c. 1129 CE, by Bernard de Clairvaux, abbot of the Cistercian Clairvaux Abbey, France, presented by him at the Council of Troyes, and accepted there after which the Order was officially endorsed by the Church.

In Praise of the New Knighthood c. 1136 CE, by Bernard de Clairvaux, in support of the juvenile Order of the Knights Templar. The complete text of this work (all 13 chapters in French) can be found here

Rule of the Order of St John (Hospitallers) by blessed Raymond de Puy (1120-1160)

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