The Original Red Cross

Umberto Eco wrote an excellent novel of high weirdness entitle Foucault's Pendulum. The plot follows three skeptical editors from an occult publishing house as their world unravels. In the opening chapters, Casaubon, the youngest of the three, makes his first acquaintance with his future partners through the one named Belbo. Casaubon is a student of medieval history, and in an effort to impress the older man, he tells him he is writing a thesis on the KNights Templar.

"What an awful subject," scoffs Belbo.

Intrigued, far more than offended, Casaubon asks Belbo what he knows of the Templars.

"I work for a publishing company," answers Belbo, "We deal with both lunatics and nonlunatics. After awhile an editor can pick out the lunatics right away. If somebody brings up the Templars, he's almost always a lunatic."

Over the centuries, and certainly through no fault of their own, the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon (to use their proper name) have moved from Catholic orthodoxy to the very center of high weirdness in the western world. Since no one interested in the strange can escape their influence, as we embark on our pilgrimage through the landscape of the weird, we would do well to make proper acquaintance with the Templars.

The Crusades: It's a shame that the conspiracy theorists have so well co-opted the Templars. The legitimate, mainstream history of the order is interesting in its own right. To begin their tale, we need to understand the world they were born into.

After several years of increasingly dire reports filtering back from pilgrims in the Holy Land, Pope Urban II called for a "Crusade" in 1095. Being a pilgrim in medieval times was always dangerous -- even on journeys to shrines inside Europe. Banditry, thievery, disease, poor roads and transportation were all common hazards. But these new reports were of persecution by the Muslims who ruled Palestine. Whether the Muslim treatment of Christian pilgrims was as bad as was reported is open to debate. Better historians than I have speculated on the other possible motivations behind the Crusading movement. A traditional explanation is that the Pope wanted to harness the aggressive tendencies of Christian knights against heathens rather than each other. More modern writers argue the importance of economic motives in invading the crossroads of European/Asian trade. There is little doubt that these motives all played some part. However, to de-emphasize the inherently religious impulse behind the Crusades is to fail to understand the medieval world. The deep faith of medieval Christians is difficult for even the most devout modern readers to fully comprehend. This faith drove many of the ordinary knights and warriors to fight for Jerusalem.

After a long campaign with substantial military and logistical obstacles, the Crusaders eventually succeeded in conquering Jerusalem in 1099. In the immediate aftermath the conquered lands were split into several kingdoms under European nobles. The situation, however, was extremely tenuous from the start. The Crusader kingdoms were surrounded by the Mediterranean on one side, and unified, hostile neighbors on the remaining three. On their way to Palestine, the Crusading army had managed to alienate the nearest Christian power, the Byzantine Empire. And finally, they looked at each other as rivals. Ironically, pilgrims to the Holy Land were only marginally safer after the First Crusade. There was still much uncertainty in traveling to Palestine.

In 1120, a small band of knights, lead by a man named Hugh de Payen went to see the local church council meeting in Nablus, just outside Jerusalem. They presented themselves as a possible solution to the security problem facing the pilgrims. Being devout christians, and skilled knights, they wished to live in community together and take holy orders as monks did. They further pledged to act in the defense of pilgrims. Although the request was somewhat unusual, the church council agreed that the proposal had promise and granted the knights request. King Baldwin II of Jerusalem also gave his blessing, and even presented the new brotherhood with the Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount to use as their headquarters. Since the Crusaders all called the mosque the Templae of Solomon, the order took this as part of their name.

From the start, the Templars captured the Christian imagination. They had combined into one profession the two competing ideals of medieval manhood: the monk, and the knight. In doing so, they had managed to distill the essence of service in the crusades to a set of core values. New members flocked to the order, and patrons lined up with donations of money and resources. In those early years, even a future saint, Bernard of Clairvaux, wrote of the Templars' virtue in an essay, "In Praise of the New Knighthood." In 1129, Hugh de Payen and a delegation of brother-knights returned to Europe to receive formal recognition from the Church at the Council of Troyes. The Pope, in fact, not only granted recognition but gave the Templars autonomy and independence from both church authorites other than the papacy and secular rulers. In essence, the Templars were their own nation.

This special status allowed them to grow. Their primary mission was military. The number of knights stationed in Jerusalem and the nearby garrisons probably never reached many more than 1000 at any given time. Probably far fewer through most periods. However, when combined with the mounted and unmounted sergeants, the local light cavalry (called turcoploes) in their employ, and the assorted men-at-arms and mercenaries, the Templars fielded the largest -- indeed the only -- standing army in the Western World and the first since Roman times. The whole enterprise was devoted to arming and training these fighting men, while in the household warbands of the Crusader nobles, the logistics were left mostly to the individual warriors. The fighting prowess and discipline of the Templars (and, to be fair, their sister order the Knights Hospitaller) was such that they were accorded significant slots in the marching and fighting orders of the Crusader armies.

As mentioned, the Templars maintained a world-wide enterprise to support their military organization. As wealthy patrons donated resources to the fledging order, the Templars made investments in creating a logistical and supply network. Arguably, the majority of Templar holdings were agricultural. Some of these activities, such as horse-breeding farms or the shipping fleet, directly supplied and supported the war effort. These were early examples of corporate vertical integration. Other activities sold their products to raise capital and represented a form of horizontal integration.

With many different economic activities spread over vast territory and throughout multiple kingdoms, the Templars developed a rather advanced accounting and audit system to manage their finances. Over time, this developed into an international banking system serving many customers outside the Templars. It became possible for a lord going on Crusade to deposit money at a Templar house in France and then draw on the funds in Jerusalem. The Templars developed a checking system, financed loans, and even acted as trustees for state treasuries.

Thanks in part to the advantages provided by these far-sighted innovations, coupled with a ferocious faith in their God and causem the Templars and their Crusader allies achieved many battlefield successes. However, the strategic advantage enjoyed by the Muslims weighed heavily in the ultimate outcome. Also, the many, if occassional, bad judgments by Crusader leaderships added up. Gradually the Muslims pushed the Europeans out of Palestine.

For example, in 1187, the Muslim general Saladin threatened Jerusalem and his forces conducted successful harassment raids on Christian outposts. In a smart move, the Crusaders fielded an army to take the fight to Saladin rather than be put on the defensive. However, at the urging of the Templar Master, the Crusader army marched through the blistering desert for several days and ran out of water. They found Saladin's wel-rested army near a saddle-shaped hill called the Horns of Hattin. Without pausing, the Templars lead a heavy cavalry charge against superiro numbers. The Muslims rightly feared the heavy cavalry charge of the European knights. However, by this time, they had developed tactics to counter this kind of atteck. In this case, the Muslim's drew the Templars to extend their line. Then the Muslims surrounded the charging troops. Once cut-off from the main army, the Templars and Hostpitallers were easily killed and captured. The rest of the Crusader army was pursued and broken. As a result, Saladin's forces were able to take Jerusalem with a minimum of resistance. After the battle at Hattin, Saladin ordered the beheading of the Templar and Hospitaller prisoners because he considered them to be especially dangerous. The other Crusader knight were ransomed.

Although the Templars moved their headquarters from Jerusalem to Acre, recruited replacements, and retained their supporting logistics network, the strategic stituation dictated that they were fighting a losing battle. A series of military set-backs for the Crusaders pushed them out of the Holy Land by 1300. By this time, the Templars had moved their headquarters to the island of Cyprus and hoped to reinvigorate an effort to invade Palestine again. However, they were too focused on their military enemies, and not focused enough on the changing politcal situation in Europe. New enemies were lining up against them, and the Templars could not hope to defend themselves in the coming fight.

Next: The Trial of the Templars

Surf it: www.templarhistory.com; www.newadvent.org/cathen/14493a.htm; www.newadvent.org/cathen/o4543c.htm; www.newadvent.org/cathen/07477a.org; I went looking for a website with Templar re-enactment groups so you could have a visual for what these warriors looked like in full equipment. Unfortunately, most of the re-enactment groups are defunct. I'll leave that up to you whether or not that is symbolic of anything. In the meantime, you can visit www.museumreplicas.com and click on the Kingdom of Heaven section to see the white tabard and red cross motif of Templar heraldry. They are also an excellent source for replica medieval weapons -- if you're into that sort of thing. You can also visit www.imperialweapons.com for quality replicas. And, of course, you'll want to check out www.kingdomofheavenmovie.com to see what the Crusader armies, Hospitallers and the Templars looked like in action. Thank god for Ridley Scott; savior of the epic movie. I'll typically leave movie reviews to my friend at www.dandorman.blogspot.com, but I'm really looking forward to this movie. If I had money, I'd be buying the associated Templar duds from Museum Replicas.
Read It: I have an extensive library of Templar books -- most of them on the actual history. Before posting this article, I reviewed Knight Templar:1120-1312 by Helen Nicholson, and published by Osprey Publishing. Nicholson is the current leading historian on the mainstream Templars. If you are looking for an excellent history of all things Templar, and putting them in the context of the Crusades, The Templars, by Piers Paul Read can not be beat. If you're a masochist looking for the best primary source of Templar knowledge, The Rule of the Templars, translated by Upton-Ward tells you how the Templars ordered their days, their wardrobes, their armories, their barracks, etc. I have a copy. Invaluable if you're writing a Templar novel, not so much if you have only a passing interest.