The Knights Templar

There has been a lot written about the Knights Templar, some of it probably true. What follows is a brief overview from a variety of sources.

Friday, October 13, 1307 AD. The minions of Philippe IV of France opened secret orders and raided the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon arresting anyone they found on charges of heresy. Philippe had murdered at least one Pope (and was about to bring the papacy to Avignon, splitting the church further) and could count on papal support. The Knights Templar were perhaps the most powerful and richest institution in Christiandom, after the Pope, and he wanted to steal their money and their power. He didn't get it.

What became of most of the Knights Templar that unlucky Friday the 13th (often considered the reason why the date has that reputation), is unknown. Despite Philippe's secrecy, his intentions were discerned by the Knights and most of them fled. Along with their money and their fleet. To this day, we don't know what happened to the powerful fleet and the chronicles of the crusader knights remain unwritten. Their legacy seems to include (and/or be claimed by) a free Scotland, the voyages of Christopher Columbus, Northern Ireland, CIA Director William Casey, the Masons, pirate ships and at least the name of George W. Bush's Yale fraternity the Skull and Bones.

The problem for the Knights Templar was that they didn't have any official reason for being around anymore. They were part of the crusades and after the fall of Acre in 1291 AD to the Saracens the remnants of their claim to the Temple of Solomon (or what was left of it) was not in their hands anymore.

Nine knights showed up in Jerusalem one day in 1118, which marks their official entrance on the world stage though they seem to have gotten started a few years earlier. Contemporary reports don't mention them for a number of years as their power and influence grow. They were a miltary monastic religious order. Brave, chaste and disciplined in battle. Think Knights of the Round Table: The Holy Grail legend seems to have something to do with the Templars (perhaps coding Celtic and/or Cathar thought into a nominally Christian saga). They controlled the route to the holy land for pilgrims and owned land throughout Europe. The Knights Templar were a really big deal. When Richard the Lionhearted left England (as in the Robin Hood legends), he did so on a Templar ship. When King John (also of Robin Hood fame) was forced to sign the Magna Carta, the head of the English Templars was by his side as a signatory.

To quote The Temple and the Lodge (pp54-55), "The Order of the Temple was officially dissolved by Papal decree on March 1312, without a definitive verdict of guilt of innocence ever being pronounced. In France, hoever, the knightes were to be harried for another two years. Finally, in March 1314, Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master, and Geoffroid de Charnay, the Preceptor of Normandy, were roasted to death over a slow fire on the Ile de le Cite in the Seine. A plaque on the site commemorates the event." Sometimes the date of the dissolution is given in 1310 or even 11, but the exact dates don't mean much to the Inquisition or to Philippe, who had thrown the Jews out of France and murdered, bullied and moved several popes to steal land, money and power. France had a history of such atrocities. In 1209 AD, armies decended on the Languedoc (in what is now Southern France) to commit genocide against the Cathars in the Albigensian Crusade. It's this slaughter where the phrase, "Kill them all. God will recognize His own." come from. One can see why the Templars would want to go to places where papal decrees meant little, like the beleagued Scotland led by the excommunicated Robert the Bruce, or Germany (where the Teutonic Knights got their revenge on the pope a few hundred years later by supporting Martin Luther) or Portugal (see below).

Knights of that era were like tanks today. Powerful in battle, unstoppable except by another knight and requiring a great deal of logistical support. Just a few knights could turn the battle, and often did. Even among knights, the Templars were viewed with fear and awe: They never surrended, were never ransomed, fought to the death, and wouldn't retreat until the odds were worse than three to one. They were a religious order, comparable to the Islamic Hashashin (aka the Assassins), under their own version of the Christian cross: Blood red with arms of equal length. They were honored for their piety and their vows, though their power and growing numbers seem to have stained their reputation, or at least caused a lot of jealousy.

They, and the Knights Hospitaller (Knights of the Hospital, originally set up a few years before the appearance of the Templars to care for wounded pilgrims. The Hospitallers were based on Malta, and are sort of the background to the Maltese Falcon. William Casey, the head of the CIA who died before Reagan's scandals hit the newspapers and so was blamed for Iran-Contra, was a Hospitaller.) controlled perhaps half the fighting forces in the Holy Land and were exempt from certain taxes for shipping cotton. No one messed with the fleet. It was large and powerful with bases along the coasts and controlling river headways from Germany through Italy, including England and Ireland.

None of the ships stationed in France were ever captured. While most seem to have escaped to Scotland, it's quite possible that some simple left to be on their own. It's interesting that the popular conception of the pirate flag, the Jolly Roger, is a Templar symbol. (Although the Skull and Crossbones was unlikely to have been the flag actually used much, if at all. The pirates, once they were close enough, hoisted a "joile rouge" (red flag) to panic the ship into surrendering.

But whatever became of the Templar fleet, there's no question that their navigation skills (honed by bringing pilgrims from Europe to Jerusalem while being harried by Muslims) changed the world. Again from The Temple and the Lodge: "In Portugal, the Templars were cleared by an inquiry and simply modified their name, becomeing the Knights of Christ. They survived under this title well into the sixteenth century, their maritime explorations leaving an indelible mark on history. (Vasco da Gama was a Knight of Christ; Prince Henry the Navigator was a Grand Master of the Order. Ships of the Knights of Christ sailed under the Templar's familiar red patte cross. And it was under the same cross that Columbus's three caravels crossed the Atlantic to the New World. Columbus himself was married to the daughter of a former Grand Master of the Order, and had access to his father-in-laws charts and diaries.)"Fleeing to Scotland, they played an important part in the Battle of Bannockburn, one of the most important battles in European history, supporting Robert the Bruce and freeing Scotland from English rule. Not only did Templar support help a free Scotland, Bruce's heirs the Stuarts continued to play an important part in British Isle history. The ruckus in Northern Ireland today is part of that continuing conflict between religions and political power. (It's worth mentioning that the Templar's part in Bannockburn is disputed, since they weren't mentioned at the time. On the other hand, the Templars were declared by the pope to rogue heretics, and even though that didn't have any official power in Scotland it's easy to see why they'd want to keep a low profile. On the other hand, the circumstantial evidence is pretty convincing; were were at least some Templars in Scotland and known to be friendly to Robert Bruce, and even a few well trained Templars would have been critical in leading the charge that turned the battle. On the other hand... oh, never mind.)

The mystique of the Templars wouldn't be complete without a curse or two. This site says succinctly: "Legend says as the flames grew higher, Jacques de Molay shouted a curse on Philip of France and Pope Clement V to meet him before the throne of God to answer for their crimes. They both joined him in death within the year." This mystique continues up to the recent move The Matrix: Reloaded. One of the characters is The Merovingian. (The two best named characters were the Merovingian and Persephone. If you know the history/legends behind the names, their characters were exactly on point.)

The Masons claim descendency from the Knights Templar. While their precise relationship has been called into question, the Masons clearly inherited (or reclaimed) much of the Templar code. Are the Masons some part of a deep dark conspiracy or are they just an old boy network using a bunch of old rituals? I won't get into that, though personally I think they're much, much closer to the latter than the former.

The fun part about the Templars is that they are connected to so many other organizations and people. They were big, powerful and rich... and don't officially exist anymore and their hasn't been anyone to answer questions with authority for hundres of years. Were their leaders descended from King David through Jesus? Were they Cathars, or at least had much Cathar thought in their symbolism? Does the King Arthur legend really contain much Templar symbolism and is the search for the Holy Grail really about finding the descendant of King David and not about some cup? Seems likely... if you read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. One of the great controversial books of our time, and loads of fun if you read it (and the others in the series, including the aforementioned Temple and the Lodge) with a certain grain of salt. (There's a moderately good synopsis here.)

Of course, like any good conspiracy theory, things get scary if you connect the dots using a very soft pencil. If (and this is a big if) George W's Skull and Bones Society is somehow connected to the Crusaders and if (and this is a smaller if but still speculative) the real reason we are screwing around in the Middle East is to ensure Jerusalem is in God's (ie our) hands for the Second Coming and if (and this isn't particularly iffy) the conservative extremists holding the Republicans hostage think they are doing God's work and don't give a fig about anything else including the Constitution... well, you can come up with your own dots and your own connections. Personally, I think the evil in the Bush administration feeds off but isn't directly connected to the religious fanatacism of the far right. Politics always trumps religion: Immediate personal gain is a greater motivator than the interpretation of God's will.

If the panel I'm moderating at Convergence about the Knights Templar in Fact and Fiction generates interesting leads I'll jot down notes and point you to some of the good stuff.

Some online resources (often Masonic sites):

• They claim to be the World's Most Popular Knights Templar Web Site and I can't disprove that. Take their Templar Quiz, updated monthly.
• Skull and Crossbones. (Quick quiz: In the skull and crossbones symbol, what bones are they? And why?)
• A longer synopsis (with the author's comments) about the sweep of history from King David to current times is part of The Terrible Secret.

'Dr Poo'

from that Mad Cat, JD

The Coalition Of The Willing Occupation Poem

Last Night