The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors

by Dan Jones

The Templars were founded in 1119 on the principles of chastity, obedience and poverty—the

But the order soon grew rich and influential.

To some observers the order was dangerously unaccountable and a corruption of the supposedly peaceful principles of Christianity.

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.

The notion that churchmen might go into battle armed not only with prayer but with deadly weapons was hardly new. It spoke to a tension at the heart of Christian thought for a thousand years, as the pacifism suggested by the example of Christ’s life rubbed against a martial mentality embedded in the language of Christian rhetoric and Scripture.

The men who met in Nablus were not just working out a code of law and morality for the Holy Land. They were seeding in law a revolutionary idea, which would evolve before long into the notion—and fact—that religious men under arms might serve as a central plank in the defense of the crusader states.

Part bodyguards, part paupers, a tiny brotherhood devoted only to arms and prayer: these were the men who became the first Knights of the Temple.

Bernard (known later as Bernard of Clairvaux, and later still simply as Saint Bernard) would grow up to be one of the greatest churchmen of his age: a champion of monastic reform, a renowned scholar, a bombastic and tireless letter writer, a brilliant preacher and an early patron and founding father of the Knights Templar.

This was the self-same Hugh who, as a former overlord (and possibly relative) of Hugh of Payns, had resigned his title in 1125 and joined the Order of the Temple in Jerusalem. (Bernard of Clairvaux had written to commend him around the time of his abdication: “You from being a count have become a simple soldier, from being a rich man have become poor.”)22 When the council assembled in 1129 Hugh remained in the Holy Land, but it was his connections and wealth that had drawn together the master of the Temple and the abbot of Clairvaux.

It was recognized that the Templars were killers. “This armed company of knights may kill the enemies of the cross without sinning,” stated the rule, neatly summing up the conclusion of centuries of experimental Christian philosophy, which had concluded that slaying humans who happened to be “unbelieving pagans” and “the enemies of the son of the Virgin Mary” was an act worthy of divine praise and not damnation. Otherwise, the Templars were expected to live in pious self-denial.

Saladin’s greatest insight, which directed much of his career, was the understanding that fostering unity in the fragile Islamic world (and cementing his personal authority over it) could best be achieved by rallying his fellow Muslims under the banner of holy war against an unbelieving enemy.