Post by Sir Dmitrii Zurban on Jun 4, 2008 15:28:18 GMT -6
The Knights Templar, Who are they?
“History tells of the Knights Templar as an organization of warrior monks, knight mystics, clad in white mantles with splayed red crosses. They have been portrayed many ways, as haughty arrogant bullies, shamelessly abusing their power, as King attendants, or even as devil worshipers and heretics. I have found them as hapless victims, sacrificial pawns in high level political maneuvering of the Church and State. And yet there are others, who regard the Templars as mystical adepts and initiates, custodians of an arcane wisdom that transcends Christianity itself.”
Adam Aberdeen, Lord of the Isles…
“Secrecy gives greater zest to the whole... The slightest observation shows that nothing will so much contribute to increase the zeal of the members of a secret union... We must try to obtain an influence in... all offices which have any effect, either in forming, or in managing, or even in directing the mind of man. I have contrived an explanation which has every advantage, in inviting to Christians of every communion; gradually frees them from religious prejudices [and] cultivates the social virtues... My means are effectual and irresistible. Our secret association works in a way that nothing can withstand.”
Jacques Armand, Merchant of Skye
The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, commonly known as the Knights Templar, or the Ordre du Temple. The organization was founded in the aftermath of the First Crusade of 1096, its original purpose to ensure the safety of the many Europeans who made the pilgrimage to Holy Lands of Jerusalem after its conquest. They were sworn to chastity, poverty and obedience and by 1139 they owed allegiance to no one but the Pope.
Over the next two decades, young sons of noble families flocked to join the Templars and since with admission to the Order, a man was compelled to sign over all his possessions, including his land, the Templar holdings proliferated.
The Templars were organized as a monastic order, where the organizational structure had a strong chain of authority. Each country with a major Templar presence (France, England, Aragon, Portugal, Poitou, Apulia, Jerusalem, Tripoli, Antioch, Anjou, and Hungary) had a Master of the Order for the Templars in that region. All of them were subject to the Grand Master, appointed for life, who oversaw both the Order's military efforts and their financial holdings.
There was a threefold division of the ranks of the Templars:
o the aristocratic knights,
o the lower-born sergeants,
o and the clergy.
Knights were required to be of knightly descent, and wore white robes with a red cross, and a white mantle. They were equipped as heavy cavalry, with three or four horses, and one or two squires. Squires were generally not members of the Order, but were instead outsiders who were hired for a set period of time.
Beneath the knights in the Order and drawn from lower social strata were the sergeants. They wore a black tunic with a red cross on front and back They were either equipped as light cavalry with a single horse, or served in other ways such as administering the property of the Order or performing menial tasks and trades.
Chaplains, constituting a third Templar class, were ordained priests who saw to the Templars' spiritual needs and wore a black or brown mantle.
Officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church around 1129, the Order became a favored charity across Europe and grew rapidly in membership and power. Templar knights were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades. Non-combatant members of the Order managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom, innovating financial techniques that were an early form of banking, and building many fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land. The Order maintained their own hospitals and surgeons, sea-ports, shipyards and fleets, both military and commercial, with their major fleet in La Rochelle, France.
A Templar Knight is truly a fearless knight, and secure on every side, for his soul is protected by the armor of faith, just as his body is protected by the armor of steel. He is thus doubly-armed, and need fear neither demons nor men.
The Templar Mission
The Knights Templar were called "The Protectors of Christ." The Pilgrims who traveled to the Holy Lands during the time of the Crusades believed that the Templar went with them to protect them on their way to worship Jesus, their God and Savior, at the place of His birth and death. The Knights Templar understood their mission a little differently. According to Templar beliefs, their holy mission was to protect the Holy Blood from which they all were descended. The Templar went to the Holy Lands to find the records of birth and marriage. They did this not to prove they were descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene, but to find the records of all the bloodlines from the House of David. The Knights Templar were believed to be guardians of later descendents of Christ's bloodline and suppressed sacred knowledge.
But there were additional reasons the Templar went to Jerusalem.
During the Crusades, the Templar, who take their name from the Temple of Solomon, erected the stable for their horses on the very site where King Solomon's Temple lay buried! The Knights Templar came to the holy lands and to King Solomon's Temple for three things:
- They came to find the records of births and marriages.
- They came for the gold that was stored in secret underground chambers.
- And they came for the ancient manuscripts, which were preserved in hermetically sealed chambers deep below the original temple.
With these three things in hand, the Knights Templar went back to Europe and became the undisputed Rulers of Europe. They ruled until King Phillip the Fair of France conspired with the Catholic Pope Clement III to destroy the Templar. But even their destruction was part of a hidden agenda.
The Templar had accomplished what they set out to do. They had accumulated enormous wealth and knowledge. Now they needed to establish an empire whose descendants would carry out their benevolent plan for the World.
The Decline
Decades of internecine feuds weakened Christian positions, politically and militarily in Europe while, several unsuccessful campaigns against the Muslims, the Crusaders lost their last foothold in the Holy Land. With the Templars’ military mission now less important, European support for the organization began to dwindle. The Templars' success was tied closely to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the Order faded. The situation was complex though, as over the two hundred years of their existence, the Templars had become a part of European daily life.
The organization's Templar Houses, hundreds of which were dotted around Europe, gave them a widespread presence at the local level. The Templars still managed many businesses, and many Europeans had daily contact with the Templar network, for instance working at a Templar farm or vineyard, or using the Order as a bank in which to store personal valuables. The Order continued to not be subject to local government, making it everywhere a "state within a state." It also had a standing army that could pass freely through all borders, but that no longer had a well-defined mission. This situation heightened tensions with some European nobility, especially as the Templars were indicating an interest in founding their own monastic state, just as the Teutonic Knights had done in Prussia, and the Knights Hospitaller had done in Rhodes.
In 1305, the new Pope Clement V, based in France, sent letters to both the Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Hospitaller Grand Master Fulk de Villaret to discuss the possibility of merging the two Orders. Neither was amenable to the idea but Pope Clement persisted, and in 1306 he invited both Grand Masters to France to discuss the matter. De Molay arrived first in early 1307, but de Villaret was delayed for several months. While waiting, De Molay and Clement discussed charges that had been made two years prior by an ousted Templar. It was generally agreed that the charges were false, but Clement sent King Philip IV of France a written request for assistance in the investigation. King Philip was already deeply in debt to the Templars from his war with the English and decided to seize upon the rumors for his own purposes. He began pressuring the Church to take action against the Order, as a way of freeing himself from his debts.
On Friday, October 13, 1307, Philip ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The Templars were charged with numerous heresies and tortured to extract false confessions of blasphemy. The confessions, despite having been obtained under duress, caused a scandal in Paris. After more bullying from Philip, Pope Clement then issued the bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae on November 22, 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.
Pope Clement called for papal hearings to determine the Templars' guilt or innocence, and once freed of the Inquisitors' torture, many Templars recanted their confessions. Some had sufficient legal experience to defend themselves in the trials, but in 1310 Philip blocked this attempt, using the previously forced confessions to have dozens of Templars burned at the stake in Paris.
With Philip threatening military action unless the Pope complied with his wishes, Pope Clement finally agreed to disband the Order, citing the public scandal that had been generated by the confessions. At the Council of Vienne in 1312, he issued a series of papal bulls, including Vox in Excelso, which officially dissolved the Order, and Ad Providam, which turned over most Templar assets to the Hospitallers.
As for the leaders of the Order, the elderly Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who had confessed under torture, retracted his statement. His associate Geoffrey de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, followed de Molay's example, and insisted on his innocence. Both men were declared guilty of being relapsed heretics, and they were sentenced to burn alive at the stake in Paris on March 18, 1314. De Molay reportedly remained defiant to the end, asking to be tied in such a way that he could face the Notre Dame Cathedral, and hold his hands together in prayer. According to local reports, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before God. Pope Clement died only a month later, and King Philip died in a hunting accident before the end of the year.
With the last of the Order's leaders gone, the remaining Templars around Europe were either arrested and tried under the Papal investigation, absorbed into other military orders such as the Knights Hospitaller, or pensioned and allowed to live out their days peacefully. Some may have fled to other territories outside Papal control, such as excommunicated Scotland or to Switzerland. Templar organizations in Portugal simply changed their name, from Knights Templar to Knights of Christ.
Organized Crime or Good Businessmen??
Just prior to the time of the arrests, the annual income of the Templars order in Europe has been roughly estimated at six million sterling! The Templars possessed nine thousand manors or lordships in Christendom, besides a large revenue and immense riches arising from the constant charitable bequests and donations of sums of money from pious persons. They were also endowed, with farms, towns, and villages, to an immense extent both in the East and in the West, out of the revenues of which they would had sent yearly a certain sum of money for the defense of the Holy Land to their head Master at the chief house of their order in Jerusalem. The Templars, in imitation of the other monastic establishments, obtained, from pious and charitable people, all the advowsons (the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish) within their reach, and frequently retained the tithe and the glebe (an area of land belonging to a benefice) in their own hands, authorizing as an agent or a representative, a priest of the order to perform divine service and administer the sacraments.
The manors of the Templars produced them rent either in money, corn, or cattle, and the usual produce of the soil. By the custom in some of these manors, the tenants were annually to mow three days in harvest, one at the charge of the house; and to plough three days, whereof one at the like charge; to reap one day, at which time they should have a ram from the house, eight-pence, twenty-four loaves, and a cheese of the best in the house, together with a pail full of drink. The tenants were not to sell, their horse-colts, if they were foaled upon the land belonging to the Templars, without the consent of the fraternity, nor marry their daughters without their license. There were also various regulations concerning the cokes and hens and young chickens.
The Templars, in addition to their amazing wealth, enjoyed vast privileges and immunities.They also established a system of banking and in effect became the bankers for every throne in Europe. By placing your riches in one Templar stronghold, one could travel to another and redeem the money by script. They enjoyed a monopoly on the best and most advanced technology of their age, stonemasonry, surveying, road building, map making and navigation.
As with many other religious orders, the Templars acted as bankers from the very beginning. It was normal for the peasants to entrust their money and properties to churches and abbeys to benefit from the "Protection de Dieu" given to these houses. Some people gave themselves and all their properties to a religious house in exchange for protection and security. In addition other people deposited their movable properties, money and jewels with the same religious houses without losing the ownership.
The treasure of the churches and abbeys were then the equivalent of the present bank strong-boxes. The valuables were in this way under the protection of trusted persons, always present and in a place untouchable according to the common view. In the case of the Templars having houses in many places this depository function helped the pilgrims who could cash money in the Middle East against the proof of a deposit in Europe. The Templars were also able to transfer money and valuables in their own boats more safely that an ordinary man or knights could do.
The double aspect of the Order- military and religious- gave a guaranty of safety to the customers. In addition to money, jewels and other valuables, the Templars were also the custodians of the standard weights. They offered guard and caution in many fields. For instance many pilgrims deposited their fortune with the Templars to be transferred to their heirs in case of death during the trip. Their immense resources allowed them to lend money on a large scale in particular in the Middle East. They in fact, in a certain way, financed the crusades and all the needs of the Holy Land. Among their numerous customers were the Italian traders present everywhere in Palestine and in the commercial fairs of Champagne, Flanders, and north of France. Cautions, loans and reimbursements were kept in the archives of their numerous houses. The Templar house in Paris was dealing with the finances of the King since the end of the 12th century. When Philip-August went for the crusade he wrote a will and designated the treasurer of the Templar as executor. The royal income during his absence went directly to the Templars.
From that moment the Paris Temple became the depository of the royal treasure and remained such until the end of the 13th century. It was then transferred to the Louvre under King Philip the Fair to come back again to the Templars in 1303. The King had a kind of open account that he used for his needs and those of the administration of his kingdom. It is not possible to know if the King had a debit or a credit with the Templars when he gave the order to imprison all of them in 1307. All the documents were destroyed after their arrests. From 1307 the King administered himself his finances through his agents. The royal treasure anyway remained in the Temple until 1313 when part of it went back to the Louvre. After King Philip the Fair's death the treasure was unified and the Hospitallers took possession of the Temple. Or did they??
The Templars had become a powerful force in both Europe and the Holy Land and were involved in high level diplomacy between monarchs and nobles throughout the Western world. Their links were not limited to Christendom; they had close ties to the Muslim world and garnered much respect from the Saracen leaders.
Through the Templars on-going relations with the Islamic and Judaic cultures, they absorbed a great many ideas alien to orthodox Roman Christianity. They came to learn and to accept new areas of knowledge and new sciences.
Ideally, they wanted a state of their own where they could enjoy an unchallenged sovereignty out of the reach of both secular and ecclesiastical control, like the other chivalric, religious military order, the Teutonic Knights whose order encompassed the whole of the eastern Baltic region.
Cathars or Albigensians
When the Templars last stronghold in the Holy Land came under Muslim control, they established their headquarters in southern France in an area now known as the Languedoc. Languedoc was not officially part of France, it was an independent principality ruled by a handful of noble families.
The Languedoc held knowledge and learning in high esteem. The nobility was literate and literary. The Languedoc practiced a civilized, easygoing religious tolerance, unlike the fanatical zeal that spread though most of Europe.
The Cathars, or Albigensians, lived in the Languedoc and they were considered heretics posing a threat to Roman Christianity. These heretics composed a multitude of diverse sects; The Cathars believed in reincarnation, the recognition of the feminine principle in religion, and that knowledge took precedence over all creeds and dogma. They formed their own church in opposition to Rome. They lived their lives in peace and harmony with nature. Women were held in high esteem, and allowed to preach.
The Cathars in the town of Albi were condemned by an ecclesiastical council. Thought the Templars remained neutral during the Albigensian Crusade, they took in refugees and were sympathetic to the Cathar’s plight and possibly to their beliefs.
From their earliest years, the Templars had maintained a certain rapport with the Cathars. Many wealthy land owners had donated vast tracts of land to the Templars and many Cathar noblemen’s sons joined the Order. Through the influx of the Cathar nobility into their ranks, the Templars were now exposed or re-exposed to Knowledge and the ancient Hebrew traditions. The Cathars beliefs were closer to ancient Christianity than to those of the Roman Church. They believed that Jesus was a prophet, a priest king and Messiah, a fully human agent who was the anointed Son of God, a man, no different from any other mortal being who, on behalf of the principle of love, died on the cross. There were rumors that the Cathars were extremely wealthy and that they had a great treasure in their stronghold at Montsegur. More rumors arouse during the Albigensian Crusade of a fantastic, mystical treasure far beyond material wealth. During a time of truce it was rumored that 3 men escaped with a treasure. Could that treasure have been "THE HOLY GRAIL"? When the last of the Cathars were killed and the Albigensian Crusade ended, the treasure was never found.
Also present was yet another belief that the Knights were actually descended from the Merovingian kings of France - a red cross on their shoulder - which also appears on the white tunics of the Templar. Rumors of hidden "treasure" surround them and the Languedoc region of France which is home to several possible sites for the Mountain of Salvation.
Arrest and Escape
By 1303, the Templars, with their wealth and their autonomy posed a particular threat to the French King, Phillip. He envied the Templars power and he owed the Templars money. He vowed to disband them, and set about to discredit them. First he engineered the kidnapping and death of one Pope, then the murder of another, then secured the election of his own candidate, the archbishop of Bordeaux, to the Vatican papal throne.
Armed with a list of charges, among them denying Christ and worshipping the devil, Phillip ordered the Templars arrested. At dawn on Friday October the 13th, 1307 all the Templars in France were to be seized and placed under arrest, their preceptories (communities of Knights Templar located on a provincial estate and subordinate to the main temples at Paris and London) to be given over to the King and their goods confiscated.
The Templars appeared to have been warned in advance because there was an organized flight of Templars, the treasure of the Temple in Paris and almost all their documents disappeared. Rumors were that the Templar treasure had been taken to their naval base at La Rochelle, loaded into galleys which were never heard from again. Some of them may have fled to Portugal, Scotland, and maybe even to America.
Many French Templars found a refuge in Scotland. Others soon followed. The Templars also found refuge in Lorraine, which was then part of Germany, and in Germany with the Teutonic Knights and the Hospitalliers of Saint John. In Portugal the order was cleared by inquiry and modified its name to become the Knights of Christ, devoting themselves to maritime activities.
The Scottish faction of the Templars
The mystery of the missing Templar fleet - At least 18 ships vanished from the French Atlantic coast port of La Rochelle, and an unknown number from the Templars' Mediterranean fleet. On the grounds that these vessels must eventually have put ashore somewhere, several people reviewed the the options and found that the west coast of Scotland was an ideal destination. Not only were there plenty of isolated places where a large number of ships could find safe haven, but also by sailing around the western coast of Ireland, they could be reached without passing through other shipping lanes and being spotted.
Scotland was an ideal place for the Templars to go to ground. Its King, Robert Bruce had been excommunicated the year before the Order's suppression, so the Pope's order to the kings of Europe to arrest the Templars simply didn't have any force there. Neither did his decree of 1312 officially abolishing the Order and ordering that its land and possessions be handed over to the Knights Hospitaller.
This was the period of the bitter conflict over Scotland's sovereignty between The King of England and Robert the Bruce. At the time of the Templar roundup in France of 1307, The English King was in the stronger position - but with much more important things to worry about than the Scottish Templars. Robert the Bruce, who, because of their fighting skills, eagerly accepted the Templars. But by the time of the abolition of the Order five years later, Robert the Bruce was in the ascendancy. His position was secured by his victory at the Battle of Bannockburn on 24 June 1314.
Known Templars of Skye
Jacques Armand is a short, chubby man, in his forties, with a noticeable paunch and rounded, almost boyish looking features. He wears his hair cut to a medium length, brushed back from his face to settle in neat, oiled waves. It has also been noticeably dyed to a near black, with his arching, delicate eyebrows being slightly different in color. He has close set, dark blue eyes and a small, somewhat flattened nose. Chubby jowls frame his wide, pouting mouth, and his rounded, pudgy chin has a scar that runs to his throat. His hands are marred by both scars and callus. This man has a secret past known only to a special few. He spends not the wealth of a Templar but is a fine businessman.
William Sable, mid-40s, is a tall, wiry man with long dark hair graying at the temples. William is one of Teangue's most beloved men. He is famed for having a quiet nature and suitable disposition, as well as his long-standing professional and romantic relationship with Sheila MacLeod. Of course, the relationship is only mentioned in whispers, as well as the stories of his bravery in combat as a Templar.
Richard Burns is in his late 40s, with salt-and-pepper hair, shorter than usual and a bit heavier than most men. Richard is a kind-faced man with a dry and incisive wit. He is one of Ardvasar’s most beloved residents. Its is rumored that he and William Sable have vied many times over the years to win Sheila MacLeod’s hand in marriage, yet she continues to choose one over the other. About he too, are the rumors of Knight Templar.
Robert Frail is an imposing figure, with a large muscular frame of a man in his mid forties. Something about him disheartens people. His movements are slow and calculated, and his eyes are always scanning the area, even when he speaks to you. When his eyes fall upon you, you feel as if he is seeing through you to what you hide, and that he knows just what it is. His clothes are made of dark dyed wool, and his sword is stuck into a leather belt. He continues his prayers of a Templar in secrecy. His wealth is not advertised as many would suspect. He is a strong goodhearted person with a dark past.
Philip Ridgeford, an average sized man, who is the committed, moralistic leader of Isle Raasay with a peculiar lack of affinity for the occult. The nimble, nurturing man in his fifties who had a near-death experience that changed him significantly. About he too, are the rumors of Knight Templar. He is married to Elana of clan Macsween.
“History tells of the Knights Templar as an organization of warrior monks, knight mystics, clad in white mantles with splayed red crosses. They have been portrayed many ways, as haughty arrogant bullies, shamelessly abusing their power, as King attendants, or even as devil worshipers and heretics. I have found them as hapless victims, sacrificial pawns in high level political maneuvering of the Church and State. And yet there are others, who regard the Templars as mystical adepts and initiates, custodians of an arcane wisdom that transcends Christianity itself.”
Adam Aberdeen, Lord of the Isles…
“Secrecy gives greater zest to the whole... The slightest observation shows that nothing will so much contribute to increase the zeal of the members of a secret union... We must try to obtain an influence in... all offices which have any effect, either in forming, or in managing, or even in directing the mind of man. I have contrived an explanation which has every advantage, in inviting to Christians of every communion; gradually frees them from religious prejudices [and] cultivates the social virtues... My means are effectual and irresistible. Our secret association works in a way that nothing can withstand.”
Jacques Armand, Merchant of Skye
The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, commonly known as the Knights Templar, or the Ordre du Temple. The organization was founded in the aftermath of the First Crusade of 1096, its original purpose to ensure the safety of the many Europeans who made the pilgrimage to Holy Lands of Jerusalem after its conquest. They were sworn to chastity, poverty and obedience and by 1139 they owed allegiance to no one but the Pope.
Over the next two decades, young sons of noble families flocked to join the Templars and since with admission to the Order, a man was compelled to sign over all his possessions, including his land, the Templar holdings proliferated.
The Templars were organized as a monastic order, where the organizational structure had a strong chain of authority. Each country with a major Templar presence (France, England, Aragon, Portugal, Poitou, Apulia, Jerusalem, Tripoli, Antioch, Anjou, and Hungary) had a Master of the Order for the Templars in that region. All of them were subject to the Grand Master, appointed for life, who oversaw both the Order's military efforts and their financial holdings.
There was a threefold division of the ranks of the Templars:
o the aristocratic knights,
o the lower-born sergeants,
o and the clergy.
Knights were required to be of knightly descent, and wore white robes with a red cross, and a white mantle. They were equipped as heavy cavalry, with three or four horses, and one or two squires. Squires were generally not members of the Order, but were instead outsiders who were hired for a set period of time.
Beneath the knights in the Order and drawn from lower social strata were the sergeants. They wore a black tunic with a red cross on front and back They were either equipped as light cavalry with a single horse, or served in other ways such as administering the property of the Order or performing menial tasks and trades.
Chaplains, constituting a third Templar class, were ordained priests who saw to the Templars' spiritual needs and wore a black or brown mantle.
Officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church around 1129, the Order became a favored charity across Europe and grew rapidly in membership and power. Templar knights were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades. Non-combatant members of the Order managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom, innovating financial techniques that were an early form of banking, and building many fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land. The Order maintained their own hospitals and surgeons, sea-ports, shipyards and fleets, both military and commercial, with their major fleet in La Rochelle, France.
A Templar Knight is truly a fearless knight, and secure on every side, for his soul is protected by the armor of faith, just as his body is protected by the armor of steel. He is thus doubly-armed, and need fear neither demons nor men.
The Templar Mission
The Knights Templar were called "The Protectors of Christ." The Pilgrims who traveled to the Holy Lands during the time of the Crusades believed that the Templar went with them to protect them on their way to worship Jesus, their God and Savior, at the place of His birth and death. The Knights Templar understood their mission a little differently. According to Templar beliefs, their holy mission was to protect the Holy Blood from which they all were descended. The Templar went to the Holy Lands to find the records of birth and marriage. They did this not to prove they were descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene, but to find the records of all the bloodlines from the House of David. The Knights Templar were believed to be guardians of later descendents of Christ's bloodline and suppressed sacred knowledge.
But there were additional reasons the Templar went to Jerusalem.
During the Crusades, the Templar, who take their name from the Temple of Solomon, erected the stable for their horses on the very site where King Solomon's Temple lay buried! The Knights Templar came to the holy lands and to King Solomon's Temple for three things:
- They came to find the records of births and marriages.
- They came for the gold that was stored in secret underground chambers.
- And they came for the ancient manuscripts, which were preserved in hermetically sealed chambers deep below the original temple.
With these three things in hand, the Knights Templar went back to Europe and became the undisputed Rulers of Europe. They ruled until King Phillip the Fair of France conspired with the Catholic Pope Clement III to destroy the Templar. But even their destruction was part of a hidden agenda.
The Templar had accomplished what they set out to do. They had accumulated enormous wealth and knowledge. Now they needed to establish an empire whose descendants would carry out their benevolent plan for the World.
The Decline
Decades of internecine feuds weakened Christian positions, politically and militarily in Europe while, several unsuccessful campaigns against the Muslims, the Crusaders lost their last foothold in the Holy Land. With the Templars’ military mission now less important, European support for the organization began to dwindle. The Templars' success was tied closely to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the Order faded. The situation was complex though, as over the two hundred years of their existence, the Templars had become a part of European daily life.
The organization's Templar Houses, hundreds of which were dotted around Europe, gave them a widespread presence at the local level. The Templars still managed many businesses, and many Europeans had daily contact with the Templar network, for instance working at a Templar farm or vineyard, or using the Order as a bank in which to store personal valuables. The Order continued to not be subject to local government, making it everywhere a "state within a state." It also had a standing army that could pass freely through all borders, but that no longer had a well-defined mission. This situation heightened tensions with some European nobility, especially as the Templars were indicating an interest in founding their own monastic state, just as the Teutonic Knights had done in Prussia, and the Knights Hospitaller had done in Rhodes.
In 1305, the new Pope Clement V, based in France, sent letters to both the Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Hospitaller Grand Master Fulk de Villaret to discuss the possibility of merging the two Orders. Neither was amenable to the idea but Pope Clement persisted, and in 1306 he invited both Grand Masters to France to discuss the matter. De Molay arrived first in early 1307, but de Villaret was delayed for several months. While waiting, De Molay and Clement discussed charges that had been made two years prior by an ousted Templar. It was generally agreed that the charges were false, but Clement sent King Philip IV of France a written request for assistance in the investigation. King Philip was already deeply in debt to the Templars from his war with the English and decided to seize upon the rumors for his own purposes. He began pressuring the Church to take action against the Order, as a way of freeing himself from his debts.
On Friday, October 13, 1307, Philip ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The Templars were charged with numerous heresies and tortured to extract false confessions of blasphemy. The confessions, despite having been obtained under duress, caused a scandal in Paris. After more bullying from Philip, Pope Clement then issued the bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae on November 22, 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.
Pope Clement called for papal hearings to determine the Templars' guilt or innocence, and once freed of the Inquisitors' torture, many Templars recanted their confessions. Some had sufficient legal experience to defend themselves in the trials, but in 1310 Philip blocked this attempt, using the previously forced confessions to have dozens of Templars burned at the stake in Paris.
With Philip threatening military action unless the Pope complied with his wishes, Pope Clement finally agreed to disband the Order, citing the public scandal that had been generated by the confessions. At the Council of Vienne in 1312, he issued a series of papal bulls, including Vox in Excelso, which officially dissolved the Order, and Ad Providam, which turned over most Templar assets to the Hospitallers.
As for the leaders of the Order, the elderly Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who had confessed under torture, retracted his statement. His associate Geoffrey de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, followed de Molay's example, and insisted on his innocence. Both men were declared guilty of being relapsed heretics, and they were sentenced to burn alive at the stake in Paris on March 18, 1314. De Molay reportedly remained defiant to the end, asking to be tied in such a way that he could face the Notre Dame Cathedral, and hold his hands together in prayer. According to local reports, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before God. Pope Clement died only a month later, and King Philip died in a hunting accident before the end of the year.
With the last of the Order's leaders gone, the remaining Templars around Europe were either arrested and tried under the Papal investigation, absorbed into other military orders such as the Knights Hospitaller, or pensioned and allowed to live out their days peacefully. Some may have fled to other territories outside Papal control, such as excommunicated Scotland or to Switzerland. Templar organizations in Portugal simply changed their name, from Knights Templar to Knights of Christ.
Organized Crime or Good Businessmen??
Just prior to the time of the arrests, the annual income of the Templars order in Europe has been roughly estimated at six million sterling! The Templars possessed nine thousand manors or lordships in Christendom, besides a large revenue and immense riches arising from the constant charitable bequests and donations of sums of money from pious persons. They were also endowed, with farms, towns, and villages, to an immense extent both in the East and in the West, out of the revenues of which they would had sent yearly a certain sum of money for the defense of the Holy Land to their head Master at the chief house of their order in Jerusalem. The Templars, in imitation of the other monastic establishments, obtained, from pious and charitable people, all the advowsons (the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish) within their reach, and frequently retained the tithe and the glebe (an area of land belonging to a benefice) in their own hands, authorizing as an agent or a representative, a priest of the order to perform divine service and administer the sacraments.
The manors of the Templars produced them rent either in money, corn, or cattle, and the usual produce of the soil. By the custom in some of these manors, the tenants were annually to mow three days in harvest, one at the charge of the house; and to plough three days, whereof one at the like charge; to reap one day, at which time they should have a ram from the house, eight-pence, twenty-four loaves, and a cheese of the best in the house, together with a pail full of drink. The tenants were not to sell, their horse-colts, if they were foaled upon the land belonging to the Templars, without the consent of the fraternity, nor marry their daughters without their license. There were also various regulations concerning the cokes and hens and young chickens.
The Templars, in addition to their amazing wealth, enjoyed vast privileges and immunities.They also established a system of banking and in effect became the bankers for every throne in Europe. By placing your riches in one Templar stronghold, one could travel to another and redeem the money by script. They enjoyed a monopoly on the best and most advanced technology of their age, stonemasonry, surveying, road building, map making and navigation.
As with many other religious orders, the Templars acted as bankers from the very beginning. It was normal for the peasants to entrust their money and properties to churches and abbeys to benefit from the "Protection de Dieu" given to these houses. Some people gave themselves and all their properties to a religious house in exchange for protection and security. In addition other people deposited their movable properties, money and jewels with the same religious houses without losing the ownership.
The treasure of the churches and abbeys were then the equivalent of the present bank strong-boxes. The valuables were in this way under the protection of trusted persons, always present and in a place untouchable according to the common view. In the case of the Templars having houses in many places this depository function helped the pilgrims who could cash money in the Middle East against the proof of a deposit in Europe. The Templars were also able to transfer money and valuables in their own boats more safely that an ordinary man or knights could do.
The double aspect of the Order- military and religious- gave a guaranty of safety to the customers. In addition to money, jewels and other valuables, the Templars were also the custodians of the standard weights. They offered guard and caution in many fields. For instance many pilgrims deposited their fortune with the Templars to be transferred to their heirs in case of death during the trip. Their immense resources allowed them to lend money on a large scale in particular in the Middle East. They in fact, in a certain way, financed the crusades and all the needs of the Holy Land. Among their numerous customers were the Italian traders present everywhere in Palestine and in the commercial fairs of Champagne, Flanders, and north of France. Cautions, loans and reimbursements were kept in the archives of their numerous houses. The Templar house in Paris was dealing with the finances of the King since the end of the 12th century. When Philip-August went for the crusade he wrote a will and designated the treasurer of the Templar as executor. The royal income during his absence went directly to the Templars.
From that moment the Paris Temple became the depository of the royal treasure and remained such until the end of the 13th century. It was then transferred to the Louvre under King Philip the Fair to come back again to the Templars in 1303. The King had a kind of open account that he used for his needs and those of the administration of his kingdom. It is not possible to know if the King had a debit or a credit with the Templars when he gave the order to imprison all of them in 1307. All the documents were destroyed after their arrests. From 1307 the King administered himself his finances through his agents. The royal treasure anyway remained in the Temple until 1313 when part of it went back to the Louvre. After King Philip the Fair's death the treasure was unified and the Hospitallers took possession of the Temple. Or did they??
The Templars had become a powerful force in both Europe and the Holy Land and were involved in high level diplomacy between monarchs and nobles throughout the Western world. Their links were not limited to Christendom; they had close ties to the Muslim world and garnered much respect from the Saracen leaders.
Through the Templars on-going relations with the Islamic and Judaic cultures, they absorbed a great many ideas alien to orthodox Roman Christianity. They came to learn and to accept new areas of knowledge and new sciences.
Ideally, they wanted a state of their own where they could enjoy an unchallenged sovereignty out of the reach of both secular and ecclesiastical control, like the other chivalric, religious military order, the Teutonic Knights whose order encompassed the whole of the eastern Baltic region.
Cathars or Albigensians
When the Templars last stronghold in the Holy Land came under Muslim control, they established their headquarters in southern France in an area now known as the Languedoc. Languedoc was not officially part of France, it was an independent principality ruled by a handful of noble families.
The Languedoc held knowledge and learning in high esteem. The nobility was literate and literary. The Languedoc practiced a civilized, easygoing religious tolerance, unlike the fanatical zeal that spread though most of Europe.
The Cathars, or Albigensians, lived in the Languedoc and they were considered heretics posing a threat to Roman Christianity. These heretics composed a multitude of diverse sects; The Cathars believed in reincarnation, the recognition of the feminine principle in religion, and that knowledge took precedence over all creeds and dogma. They formed their own church in opposition to Rome. They lived their lives in peace and harmony with nature. Women were held in high esteem, and allowed to preach.
The Cathars in the town of Albi were condemned by an ecclesiastical council. Thought the Templars remained neutral during the Albigensian Crusade, they took in refugees and were sympathetic to the Cathar’s plight and possibly to their beliefs.
From their earliest years, the Templars had maintained a certain rapport with the Cathars. Many wealthy land owners had donated vast tracts of land to the Templars and many Cathar noblemen’s sons joined the Order. Through the influx of the Cathar nobility into their ranks, the Templars were now exposed or re-exposed to Knowledge and the ancient Hebrew traditions. The Cathars beliefs were closer to ancient Christianity than to those of the Roman Church. They believed that Jesus was a prophet, a priest king and Messiah, a fully human agent who was the anointed Son of God, a man, no different from any other mortal being who, on behalf of the principle of love, died on the cross. There were rumors that the Cathars were extremely wealthy and that they had a great treasure in their stronghold at Montsegur. More rumors arouse during the Albigensian Crusade of a fantastic, mystical treasure far beyond material wealth. During a time of truce it was rumored that 3 men escaped with a treasure. Could that treasure have been "THE HOLY GRAIL"? When the last of the Cathars were killed and the Albigensian Crusade ended, the treasure was never found.
Also present was yet another belief that the Knights were actually descended from the Merovingian kings of France - a red cross on their shoulder - which also appears on the white tunics of the Templar. Rumors of hidden "treasure" surround them and the Languedoc region of France which is home to several possible sites for the Mountain of Salvation.
Arrest and Escape
By 1303, the Templars, with their wealth and their autonomy posed a particular threat to the French King, Phillip. He envied the Templars power and he owed the Templars money. He vowed to disband them, and set about to discredit them. First he engineered the kidnapping and death of one Pope, then the murder of another, then secured the election of his own candidate, the archbishop of Bordeaux, to the Vatican papal throne.
Armed with a list of charges, among them denying Christ and worshipping the devil, Phillip ordered the Templars arrested. At dawn on Friday October the 13th, 1307 all the Templars in France were to be seized and placed under arrest, their preceptories (communities of Knights Templar located on a provincial estate and subordinate to the main temples at Paris and London) to be given over to the King and their goods confiscated.
The Templars appeared to have been warned in advance because there was an organized flight of Templars, the treasure of the Temple in Paris and almost all their documents disappeared. Rumors were that the Templar treasure had been taken to their naval base at La Rochelle, loaded into galleys which were never heard from again. Some of them may have fled to Portugal, Scotland, and maybe even to America.
Many French Templars found a refuge in Scotland. Others soon followed. The Templars also found refuge in Lorraine, which was then part of Germany, and in Germany with the Teutonic Knights and the Hospitalliers of Saint John. In Portugal the order was cleared by inquiry and modified its name to become the Knights of Christ, devoting themselves to maritime activities.
The Scottish faction of the Templars
The mystery of the missing Templar fleet - At least 18 ships vanished from the French Atlantic coast port of La Rochelle, and an unknown number from the Templars' Mediterranean fleet. On the grounds that these vessels must eventually have put ashore somewhere, several people reviewed the the options and found that the west coast of Scotland was an ideal destination. Not only were there plenty of isolated places where a large number of ships could find safe haven, but also by sailing around the western coast of Ireland, they could be reached without passing through other shipping lanes and being spotted.
Scotland was an ideal place for the Templars to go to ground. Its King, Robert Bruce had been excommunicated the year before the Order's suppression, so the Pope's order to the kings of Europe to arrest the Templars simply didn't have any force there. Neither did his decree of 1312 officially abolishing the Order and ordering that its land and possessions be handed over to the Knights Hospitaller.
This was the period of the bitter conflict over Scotland's sovereignty between The King of England and Robert the Bruce. At the time of the Templar roundup in France of 1307, The English King was in the stronger position - but with much more important things to worry about than the Scottish Templars. Robert the Bruce, who, because of their fighting skills, eagerly accepted the Templars. But by the time of the abolition of the Order five years later, Robert the Bruce was in the ascendancy. His position was secured by his victory at the Battle of Bannockburn on 24 June 1314.
Known Templars of Skye
Jacques Armand is a short, chubby man, in his forties, with a noticeable paunch and rounded, almost boyish looking features. He wears his hair cut to a medium length, brushed back from his face to settle in neat, oiled waves. It has also been noticeably dyed to a near black, with his arching, delicate eyebrows being slightly different in color. He has close set, dark blue eyes and a small, somewhat flattened nose. Chubby jowls frame his wide, pouting mouth, and his rounded, pudgy chin has a scar that runs to his throat. His hands are marred by both scars and callus. This man has a secret past known only to a special few. He spends not the wealth of a Templar but is a fine businessman.
William Sable, mid-40s, is a tall, wiry man with long dark hair graying at the temples. William is one of Teangue's most beloved men. He is famed for having a quiet nature and suitable disposition, as well as his long-standing professional and romantic relationship with Sheila MacLeod. Of course, the relationship is only mentioned in whispers, as well as the stories of his bravery in combat as a Templar.
Richard Burns is in his late 40s, with salt-and-pepper hair, shorter than usual and a bit heavier than most men. Richard is a kind-faced man with a dry and incisive wit. He is one of Ardvasar’s most beloved residents. Its is rumored that he and William Sable have vied many times over the years to win Sheila MacLeod’s hand in marriage, yet she continues to choose one over the other. About he too, are the rumors of Knight Templar.
Robert Frail is an imposing figure, with a large muscular frame of a man in his mid forties. Something about him disheartens people. His movements are slow and calculated, and his eyes are always scanning the area, even when he speaks to you. When his eyes fall upon you, you feel as if he is seeing through you to what you hide, and that he knows just what it is. His clothes are made of dark dyed wool, and his sword is stuck into a leather belt. He continues his prayers of a Templar in secrecy. His wealth is not advertised as many would suspect. He is a strong goodhearted person with a dark past.
Philip Ridgeford, an average sized man, who is the committed, moralistic leader of Isle Raasay with a peculiar lack of affinity for the occult. The nimble, nurturing man in his fifties who had a near-death experience that changed him significantly. About he too, are the rumors of Knight Templar. He is married to Elana of clan Macsween.
