Saint Francis of Assisi, early missionary to the Muslim world

Saint Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order, was born at Assisi in Umbria, in 1181 or 1182. He died there on 3 October, 1226. Many of the stories that surround the life of St. Francis say that he had a great love for animals and the environment. Therefore October 4, Saint Francis' feast day, is celebrated as World Animal Day. Less known is that Francis visited Egypt and attempted rapprochement with the Muslim world, be it in the way of a missionary. 

Templar Houses and local society in Britain

"This article has set out a small selection of the evidence surviving in the records of the ‘Templar’s affair’ in the British Isles that may deepen scholars’ knowledge of the Templars’ relations with society at large.

It appears that at least some Templar houses were integrated into their locality, with travellers passing through the house on a regular basis, lodging there or visiting the chapel. Many local people were employed by a Templar commandery, on a full-time basis all year round or on a part-time seasonal basis. In addition, through the provision of corrodies and charitable giving, a Templar house could be a significant local provider of care to the elderly or needy. The evidence set out here indicates that the level of provision varied from house to house, and that some houses were more significant to their locality than others.

However, as this article has barely scratched the surface of the surviving evidence, there is great potential for further research in this area(....) The documents relating to the investigations into the Templars in the British Isles between 1308 and 1312 contain many examples of contact between the brothers and their local communities which, taken together, suggest that the relationship between the order’s houses and their localities could be close, even though this relationship might infringe the letter of the order’s privileges and regulations."

This blog quotes from the text of the paper "Relations between Houses of the Order of the Temple in Britain and their local communities" by Helen J. Nicholson published in Knighthoods of Christ: Essays on the History of the Crusades and the Knights Templar Presented to Malcolm Barber, ed. Norman Housley (Aldershot etc.: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 195-207. Published article Copyright © 2007; this edition © 2015; Illustration adapted from this source

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Eastern influence in pre-crusade southern France

Southern France has, long before the start of the Crusades at the end of the 11th Century, been a gateway to the Orient. 

"Just warfare" and the rise of the military religious orders in the 12th century

"In an ideological sense, the growth of the military orders was fostered by a theological shift in attitude of the Church towards just warfare. Prior to the First Crusade, the Peace of God movement had developed a policy within the Church that knights should be restricted from fighting among themselves and instead put their energies into fighting for the Church. Prior to this, the knightly class had been in almost a constant state of civil war amongst themselves and with the Church.

At the Council of Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II advocated for the service of secular knights for the church by declaring that “you have promised more firmly than ever to keep the peace among yourselves and to preserve the rights of the church, there remains still an important work for you to do.” By deliberately trying to encourage secular knights to fight for God in the Crusades, the Church created an acceptable form of warfare within Christian ideology.

While Urban was not encouraging monks to go on Crusade, the military orders could not have existed without the ideology behind his speech because of Christianity’s traditional pacifism. The key element to this new ideology was the idea of miles Christi. The term miles Christi was essential to the ideology of the military orders and is critical in understanding their rise to power. Coming into use through the writings of St Augustine and literally meaning “soldier of Christ,” it reflects the duty of a Christian knight to protect Christendom from outside evils. As the monk fought the spiritual enemies of the Church from within his monastery, the soldier of Christ fought Christianity’s physical enemies. Instead of committing the sin of murder, the traditional Christian view of warfare, a miles Christi was actually doing penance for his sins.

The Hospitallers and the Templars fought Islam in the Holy Land and the Teutonic Knight was hugely instrumental in fighting paganism in eastern Europe. The knights of the military orders were by definition miles Christi and their development and rise to power would not have been possible without the widespread acceptance of this idea.

To the Church, the military orders provided the perfect outlet for the knightly class even when there was no official crusade being promoted. Therefore, the Church was more than willing to support them and allow their power to grow both in the Holy Land and in Europe. As the dominant European ideology, the Church’s changing theology played a large role in the growth of the military orders, and was aided most directly by the theological support of St. Bernard." 

This blog quotes form a publication based on a 2014 paper by Sarah E. Hayes in the Gettysburg Historical Journal, www.medievalists.net; Illustration Templar and Hospitaller Knights, source

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Were the Knights Templar and the Ismaili Assassins linked?

Historians point out repeatedly analogies linking the Shia Ismaili to the Templars: both orders used initiation and were military and held the title of "Guardian of the Holy Land". What are the facts?

Clairvaux Abbey - 900 years in 3D animation

Watch de video here

The abbey of Clairvaux (today at the commune of Ville-sous-La-Ferté, in the Aube Department, France), the third daughter of the Cistercian abbey of Cîteaux, was founded in the summer of 1115 by Bernard de Fontaine, the later Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153). 

Knights Templar and martyrdom: the most original form of Christian sanctity

In battle, martyrdom "for the good cause" is and has always been present. As it was in the ranks of the Knights Templar. In their case, "martyrdom" had both a religious and a temporal value.

Knights Templar stables at Jerusalem not built by Solomon but by Herod

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In the eighteenth year of his reign (20–19 BCE), king Herod the Great (74/73 BCE – 4 BCE) rebuilt the Second Temple in Jerusalem on "a more magnificent scale".The new Temple was finished in a year and a half, although work on out-buildings and courts continued another eighty years.

To comply with religious law, Herod employed a thousand priests as masons and carpenters for the rebuilding. The finished temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, is often referred to as Herod's Temple. The Wailing Wall (Western Wall) in Jerusalem was for many years the only section visible of the four retaining walls whose construction was begun by Herod to create a flat platform (the Temple Mount) upon which his Temple was constructed. Recent findings suggest that the Temple Mount walls and Robson's Arch may not have been completed until at least 20 years after his death during the reign of Herod Agrippa II. (source of this paragraph: Wikipedia)

"When Herod built the Temple Mount courtyard he made it 485 m long and 315 m wide. The courtyard sloped southwards, and the southern part of the plat-form therefore had to be raised to keep the surface level. Herod filled in only the lower part of the space between the retaining wall and the natural slope, and built the remaining space, to the top of the platform, in the form of vaults, with their ceilings supported by pillars. The south-east corner of the Temple Mount, which had a retaining wall 48 m high, was filled with rubble and soil to a height of 32 m; over this filling was a hall, its roof forming the pavement of the courtyard, and above this rose the upper wall.

The walls of the Temple Mount were 5 m thick and consisted of enormous ashlar blocks weighing up to 150 tons. This formidable structure made the Temple into a mighty fortress, unequaled in the architecture of antiquity. Josephus writes (Antiquities XV, ): ". . . which wall was itself the most prodigious work that was ever heard of by man". The southern wall had a height equal to that of a modern fifteen-story building.

Herod constructed two halls with an area of 500 sq. m, the ceilings supported by eighty-eight pillars in twelve parallel rows with thirteen aisles between them, thus raising the level of the courtyard by 12 m. The arches were 9-10 m high, the length of the halls from east to west was 83 m and the width, from north to south, 60 m. There were additional structures which changed the shape of the halls somewhat.

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The pillars consisted of large, square blocks, over 1 m high; and each pillar was 1.2 m thick. At the bases of the pillars were rings for tethering horses. The Single Gate, now walled up, can be seen at the southern end of the sixth row of pillars, from the east, and the Triple Gate is at the south end of the twelfth row; it is clearly visible from outside the wall. Tunnels and aqueducts were found underneath the Double and Triple Gates, and a drain ran under the halls.

During the Second Temple period these halls were entered by the Huldah Gates, and stairs led to the upper level of the Temple courtyard. When the Crusaders took Jerusalem they identified the halls of pillars as the stables of King Solomon, as did Nasir i-Khosrau and other Moslems.

The Crusaders used the halls to stable the horses of the Knights Templar, whose headquarters were in the El Aksa Mosque. The Crusaders entered their stables through the Triple and Single Gates (both now walled up), which they rebuilt.
 
(from Menashe Har-El, This is Jerusalem, Canaan Publishing House, PO Box 7645, Jerusalem 1977)"

Upper illustration and quoted text from Solomon's Stables and the Southern Gates by Tuvia Sagiv.

See many more illustrations on former and present day architecture of Temple walls, ancient Jerusalem and Herod's Temple here.

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Cistercian Clairvaux Abbey - 900 years

"The event "Clairvaux 2015" is to celebrate the 900 years of this jewel of European memory. A young monk of 25 years of age, Bernard de Fontaine went to make his abbey a model, copied throughout Europe. Clairvaux, which was to have 339 daughter abbeys, was as much an architectural model with its ribbed vaults as well as an economic and spiritual model. It is this authentic Cistercian adventure that is told by the exhibition-event organized by the Department at the Hotel-Dieu with more than 150 works and rare items on the history of Clairvaux Abbey. Co-organized by the County Council, the Renaissance Association Abbey and the Ministry of Culture, this "Clairvaux 2015" event celebrates an abbey finally refound, after a decade of major restorations. And it hides another birthday, that of thirty years of the opening of the abbey to the public: "It was not until 1985, said Jean-François Leroux, that for the first time in eight centuries, people who were neither monks nor detainees were able to enter Clairvaux." Neither sculpture nor painting or stained glass. Only the architecture, with its ribbed vaults illuminates this pure Abbey of silence. A symbol that evokes the spiritual success of Clairvaux. But this success was primarily economic. Like the Templars with their Commanderies, the Cistercians relied on a network of barns located at up to 44 agricultural and industrial operation centers. Despite the Hundred Years War and the Black Death, the small business prospered. In the fourteenth century, Clairvaux and his nine hundred monks manage 25,000 hectares of land, 15,000 hectares of forests, 230 ha of vineyards, 133 houses and 43 mills, not forgetting the forges and salt and iron mines." Illustrations and text (translated and slightly adapted) from this French brochure on the Clairvaux 2015 Event.  Watch on Youtube this great 3D animated movie that tracks the evolution of this famous Cistercian abbey through time.