Much has been said about the Knights Templar and the holy wars. The crusades.
Much of what you hear from the people around you isn't really true in many cases.
So, I thought I’d write down my understanding of what it was all about.
I have read books by many different authors—Swedish, English, American, and French. They agree on much , though there are some differences—but that is only to be expected among historians.
And I have to say, I'm not an expert, I'm not an historian, so just as you know.
I don’t know if you were like me when we were kids, but we often played war. We played cowboys and Indians. I was usually an Indian.
But we also played knights—especially Knights Templar. I had a sword and a helmet. As I recall, it was a lot of fun.
Long before the Crusades, the Rashidun Caliphate took Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire after a six-month siege. Caliph Umar traveled to the city in person to accept its peaceful surrender from the Christian Patriarch Sophronius. This was around 637-639 AD
For the vast majority of the 462-year period between 637 and 1099,
life for Christians in Jerusalem was generally stable and peaceful, but it was marked by periods of severe, violent persecution in the 11th century.
As "People of the Book," Christians were classified as dhimmis (protected citizens). They were exempted from military service and granted freedom of worship and property rights. In exchange for this protection and autonomy, Christians had to pay a special poll tax known as the jizya
It was a lot of money. If you could not pay, well you were killed.
For the ones who could pay, it was ok, but things changed.
In 1009 the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah abandoned tolerance. He launched a brutal campaign against religious minorities and ordered the complete destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This sent shockwaves through Europe and planted the early ideological seeds for the Crusades.
Al-Hakim did not spare the Jewish community. Alongside his destruction of churches, he ordered the destruction of synagogues, forced many Jews to wear heavy wooden blocks around their necks to distinguish them from Muslims, and pressured many into forced conversions before reversing his policies later in his reign.
Europe could not just sit and wait.
The first so called crusade took place 1096-1099
So almost 460 years after the Muslim takeover of Jerusalem and the Holy land.
1095: Pope Urban II calls for it at the Council of Clermont in France — Deus vult — to help the Byzantine Empire and retake Jerusalem.
1096: The unofficial People's Crusade leaves first and gets slaughtered in Anatolia.
1096-1099: The main Princes' Crusade — armies led by Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond of Taranto etc. — marches through Constantinople, takes Antioch in 1098 after an 8-month siege, then moves south.
July 15, 1099: They take Jerusalem from the Fatimid Caliphate.
That conquest is what creates the situation that makes the Templars necessary 20 years later. The Crusaders now control Jerusalem, but they only control the cities
Sad to say these warriors were no angels. Back in those days prisoners were not taken. Many were killed.
When these Crusaders breached the defences on July 15, 1099, they carried out a massive slaughter. The bulk of Jerusalem's Jewish population retreated to their chief synagogue for safety. The Crusaders surrounded the building, barricaded the exits, and burned the synagogue to the ground, killing everyone inside.
Still no Knights templar!
This came later.
The Knights Templar were founded in 1119-1120 in Jerusalem, just after the First Crusade.
A small group of knights led by Hugues de Payens and Godfrey de Saint-Omer approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem.
Why?
The roads to the Holy Land were full of pilgrims being robbed and killed, and they offered to form a military monastic order to protect them.
At first there were only 9 knights. They were officially endorsed by the Church at the Council of Troyes in 1129, after being championed by Bernard of Clairvaux, and then grew into the most powerful military order in Christendom.
The name we use, Knights Templar, is a nickname. Their full name was:
Pauperes Commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici
In English: The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon
Why that name one might wonder?
Pauperes / Poor: Like monks, they took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The early seal of the order shows two knights riding a single horse, a famous image of their poverty and brotherhood. They were not supposed to own anything personally.
Templique Salomonici / of the Temple of Solomon: King Baldwin II gave them quarters in the captured Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Crusaders believed the mosque was built on top of the ruins of the original Temple of Solomon. Because they were headquartered in the Templum, they became known as the knights of the Temple.
So: Poor, because they were monk-knights, Fellow-Soldiers of Christ, because they fought for the Church, and of the Temple of Solomon, because that is literally where they lived.
These knights at their core were only a few hundred knights at any one time. They wore the white mantle with the red cross. Beneath them were sergeants, squires, chaplains, and servants — maybe 2,000-3,000 men total in the East. They were famous for never retreating unless outnumbered 3-to-1 and for never ransoming a brother.
They fought in almost every major battle of the Crusades — Hattin in 1187, Acre, etc. — and built a chain of massive castles like Krak des Chevaliers and Safita.
In my next blog post I will explain who they were, who they were not and what they did, not only fighting.
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