In a Medievalists.net paper of November 17, 2017 the unearthing of a large treasure at the Abbey of Cluny, France was reported. The precense of Arab world currency illustrates a direct connection between Cluny and the Arab world. The following text quotes parts of the paper.
"A "first crude experiment" in compulsory almsgiving, the levy of 1166 begins the history of general taxation for financing the crusades.
Usually the Knights Templar are referred to as if it was a a coherent body. This may have been the case in their later days. But in their early days, when the concept of knight-monks and the organisation were as such new, it seems more likely that they were a on-coherent group of individuals of different origins, mainly coming from early 12th century Francia.
"The military religious orders were founded to fight on behalf of their fellow Christians, in defence of pilgrims and Christian territory. They fought alongside and supported the crusaders in the Holy Land. (...) In an era in which warriors who died fighting non-Christians were increasingly depicted as martyrs, it is not surprising that writers of the 1120s and 1130s associated the first knight-brothers with martyrdom. But as the Franks of the Holy Land met with division and defeat, how far did this imagery continue? Did outsiders continue to depict the brothers of the military orders in this way?
