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The mission of most of the members was one of support — to acquire resources which could be used to fund and equip the small percentage of members who were fighting on the front lines. There were actually three classes within the orders. The highest class was the knight. When a candidate was sworn into the order, the initiation made the knight a monk. They wore white robes. The knights could hold no property and receive no private letters. He could not be married or betrothed and cannot have any vow in any other Order.

He could not have debt more than he could pay, and no infirmities. The Templar priest class was similar to the modern day military chaplain. Wearing green robes, they conducted religious services, led prayers, and were assigned record keeping and letter writing. They always wore gloves, unless they were giving Holy Communion. The mounted men-at-arms represented the most common class, and they were called "brothers".

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They were usually assigned two horses each and held many positions, including guard, steward, squire or other support vocations. As the main support staff, they wore black or brown robes and were partially garbed in chain mail or plate mail. The armor was not as complete as the knights. Because of this infrastructure, the warriors were well-trained and very well armed. Even their horses were trained to fight in combat, fully armored. The combination of soldier and monk was also a powerful one, as to the Templar knights, martyrdom in battle was one of the most glorious ways to die.

The Templars were also shrewd tacticians, following the dream of Saint Bernard who had declared that a small force, under the right conditions, could defeat a much larger enemy.


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One of the key battles in which this was demonstrated was in , at the Battle of Montgisard. The famous Muslim military leader Saladin was attempting to push toward Jerusalem from the south, with a force of 26, soldiers.

Knights Templar History

He had pinned the forces of Jerusalem's King Baldwin IV , about knights and their supporters, near the coast, at Ascalon. Eighty Templar knights and their own entourage attempted to reinforce. They met Saladin's troops at Gaza , but were considered too small a force to be worth fighting, so Saladin turned his back on them and headed with his army towards Jerusalem.

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The Templars, though relatively small in number, routinely joined other armies in key battles. They would be the force that would ram through the enemy's front lines at the beginning of a battle, or the fighters that would protect the army from the rear. In addition to battles in Palestine, members of the Order also fought in the Spanish and Portuguese Reconquista.

Though initially an Order of poor monks, the official papal sanction made the Knights Templar a charity across Europe. Further resources came in when members joined the Order, as they had to take oaths of poverty , and therefore often donated large amounts of their original cash or property to the Order. Additional revenue came from business dealings. Since the monks themselves were sworn to poverty, but had the strength of a large and trusted international infrastructure behind them, nobles would occasionally use them as a kind of bank or power of attorney.

If a noble wished to join the Crusades, this might entail an absence of years from their home. So some nobles would place all of their wealth and businesses under the control of Templars, to safeguard it for them until their return. The Order's financial power became substantial, and the majority of the Order's infrastructure was devoted not to combat, but to economic pursuits.

By , the Order's original mission of guarding pilgrims had changed into a mission of guarding their valuables through an innovative way of issuing letters of credit, an early precursor of modern banking. Pilgrims would visit a Templar house in their home country, depositing their deeds and valuables. The Templars would then give them a letter which would describe their holdings.

Modern scholars have stated that the letters were encrypted with a cipher alphabet based on a Maltese Cross ; however there is some disagreement on this, and it is possible that the code system was introduced later, and not something used by the medieval Templars themselves. While traveling, the pilgrims could present the letter to other Templars along the way, to "withdraw" funds from their accounts.

This kept the pilgrims safe since they were not carrying valuables, and further increased the power of the Templars. The Knights' involvement in banking grew over time into a new basis for money , as Templars became increasingly involved in banking activities. One indication of their powerful political connections is that the Templars' involvement in usury did not lead to more controversy within the Order and the church at large.

Officially the idea of lending money in return for interest was forbidden by the church, but the Order sidestepped this with clever loopholes, such as a stipulation that the Templars retained the rights to the production of mortgaged property. Or as one Templar researcher put it, "Since they weren't allowed to charge interest, they charged rent instead. Their holdings were necessary to support their campaigns; in , a Burgundian noble required 3 square kilometres of estate to support himself as a knight, and by this had risen to The Order potentially supported up to 4, horses and pack animals at any given time, if provisions of the rule were followed; these horses had extremely high maintenance costs due to the heat in Outremer Crusader states at the Eastern Mediterranean , and had high mortality rates due to both disease and the Turkish bowmen strategy of aiming at a knight's horse rather than the knight himself.

In addition, the high mortality rates of the knights in the East regularly ninety percent in battle, not including wounded resulted in extremely high campaign costs due to the need to recruit and train more knights. In , at the battle of La Forbie, where only thirty-three of knights survived, it is estimated the financial loss was equivalent to one-ninth of the entire Capetian yearly revenue. The Templars' political connections and awareness of the essentially urban and commercial nature of the Outremer communities led the Order to a position of significant power , both in Europe and the Holy Land.

Their success attracted the concern of many other orders, with the two most powerful rivals being the Knights Hospitaller and the Teutonic Knights.

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Various nobles also had concerns about the Templars as well, both for financial reasons, and nervousness about an independent army that was able to move freely through all borders. The long-famed military acumen of the Templars began to stumble in the s. It again involved Saladin, who had been beaten back by the Templars in in the legendary Battle of Montgisard near Tiberias , but this time Saladin was better prepared.

Further, the Grand Master of the Templars was involved in this battle, Gerard de Ridefort , who had just achieved that lifetime position a few years earlier. He was not known as a good military strategist, and made some deadly errors, such as venturing out with his force of 80 knights without adequate supplies or water, across the arid hill country of Galilee.

The Templars were overcome by the heat within a day, and then surrounded and massacred by Saladin's army. Within months Saladin captured Jerusalem. But in the early s in a remarkably short and powerfully effective campaign Richard the Lionheart, King of England and leader of the Third Crusade, together with his allies the Templars, delivered a series of powerful blows against Saladin and recovered much of Christian territory.

In name and number the revived Crusader states were as before, but their outlines were diminished. There was the Kingdom of Jerusalem, though its capital was at Acre, which the Templars made their new headquarters. To the north was the County of Tripoli. But the Muslims retained control of the Syrian coast around Latakia for some time, and so the Principality of Antioch further to the north was now no longer contiguous to the other Crusader states.


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Nevertheless the Third Crusade, in which Richard relied heavily on the Templars, had saved the Holy Land for the Christians and went a long way towards restoring Frankish fortunes. In this he was abetted by the military orders whose great castles stood like islands of Frankish power amid the Muslim torrent. More than ever the Crusader states were relying on the military orders in their castles and on the field of battle, and the power of the orders grew.

In fact at no point in their history would the Templars be more powerful than in the century to come. Jacques de Molay , who was to be the last of the Order's Grand Masters, took office around One of his first tasks was to tour across Europe, to raise support for the Order and try to organise another Crusade.

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In or , the military orders the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller and their leaders, including Jacques de Molay , Otton de Grandson and the Great Master of the Hospitallers, briefly campaigned in Armenia, in order to fight off an invasion by the Mamluks. They were not successful and soon the fortress of Roche-Guillaume in the Belen pass , the last Templar stronghold in Antioch, was lost to the Muslims.

In , the Templars, along with the Knights Hospitaller and forces from Cyprus attempted to retake the coastal city of Tortosa.

They were able to take the island of Arwad , near Tortosa, but lost it soon after. The First Crusade saw the virtual conquest of the Holy Land by the Christian armies, who established a number of kingdoms and counties, including Jerusalem. They held it for a scant century before the Muslims, first the Egyptians but lately the Turks who had taken over the Egyptian army, started taking back much of the territory. In the last decade in the Holy Land, the Templars and all Christian armies had been reduced to five coastal cities including Acre and Beirut, and a few isolated castles, including Pilgrim, which is the one featured in the novel.

Acre fell to the Turks on May 28, a turning point in Templar history for it signaled the beginning of the end of European presence in the Holy Land. Pilgrim Castle, which sat a scant few miles away waited for the fatal blow for months. But on August 14th, before the Turks arrived, everyone in the castle left. How this happened is featured in my novel. As we know from Templar history nine knights founded the Knights Templar on Christmas day, in Jerusalem on the aftermath of the First Crusade.

Key among them was Hugh of Payns. Most of them had known ties to the Cathars. Their connection was clandestine, but detectable nevertheless after all these centuries. At any rate, the principles espoused in the monastery he founded and the nature of the orders he wrote for the Templars reflected Gnostic principles, thinly disguised in Catholic terms. Of note was also the distinction between Jesus the man, and Christ, the state that he achieved.

A Templar's Journey: The Squire from Champagne

This was quite a departure for any order, and Bernard was very careful how he worded these principles. Unfortunately not all Cistercians or Templars were the same. An austere form of fanaticism was pervasive throughout the Church. It was the norm, what begot the Crusades and the Inquisition.