The Knights Templar

During the First Crusade at the end of the 11th century, the Christian force conquered parts of the Middle East. After the victory, the pilgrims divided the territories and smaller states emerged, such as the county of Edessa in Armenia, the Principality of Antioch in Syren or the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Shortly thereafter, the city of Jerusalem developed as one of the most important places of pilgrimage of the Christian faith. Although the sea route was open, but the journey was expensive, so that only the land route was available to the poorer pilgrims. Of course, this attracted many robbers and also the horsemen of the defeated Seljuk Turks, who attacked, robbed and killed the pilgrims.

For this reason, and to protect the conquered territories was founded at the beginning of the 12th century, probably between 1118 and 1121, by the possible founding fathers Hugo of Payns, Godfrey of Saint-Omer and seven other French knights the Order of the Knights Templar.
The first name of the Order was Paupere Militie Christi (Poor Knights of Christ), only when the new King of Jerusalem Balduin II in 1119 the Order of the building of his former palace on the Temple Mount, was the Order in: Pauperes commilitones Christi templique Salomonici Hierosalemitanis (Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem).
Due to the accommodation on the Temple Mount, the common names Templar, Knights Templar, Templars and Knights Templar originated.

The Knights Templar were also the first order that combined the otherwise strictly separated ideals of noble chivalry with that of the monks. Thus, the Order was also directly subordinate to the Pope until its destruction in 1312.

 

Seal and slogan:

As with almost every organization, union or the like, the Knights Templar had their own symbolism and proverbs:

So was the motto of the Order:

The first seals bore the inscription:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Internal structure of the Order:

Although at the time of its founding it was conceived as an organization in which every free man could enter, a hierarchy soon developed which was oriented towards the medieval order of estates.

1. The chaplains were the religious chaplains who during the day distributed the five obligatory religious services for all members of the order and took the confession. This numerically very small group took the highest positions in the hierarchy of the Order below the Order's dignitaries and agents (eg, the territorial and domestic committees) and had certain privileges. A chaplain wore a white coat from the rank of a bishop, and chaplains below that rank wore black or brown coats.
2. The knights' brothers always came from the nobility and had to have received the knighthood before entering the Order. They were the only ones with the white cloak over the black or brown house skirt (besides the chaplains in the rank of a bishop or higher), and they had three horses (a warhorse, a riding horse and a packhorse). The dignitaries and officials were but four horses of selected breed available. The knights' brothers had to bring their complete and very expensive equipment (especially the chain kit and the horses) into the order. They committed themselves for life and, after a probationary period, made the vows of chastity, obedience, renunciation of personal possessions, and the protection of pilgrims in their ways.
3. The sergeants (sarjanz de mestier / servienten) or serving brothers divided into armed brothers who fought as light cavalry and working brothers who did the necessary work (forge, saddler, agriculture). They wore a dark coat (black, if regionally available, otherwise dark brown) and had a horse.
4. The miners supported the knights in battle. They wore a dark coat (black, if regionally available, otherwise dark brown).

In the lands of the Orient and Spain, the chaplains and the fighting brothers were numerous, but rather rare in the Western Commandia.

In addition, one could belong or belong to the Order in other forms:

1. milites ad terminum were knights assigned to the Order as temporary fighting brothers
2. Turkopolen served the Templars as mercenaries. These were Christians from the Holy Land who fought in the manner of the Saracens (that is, as a light cavalry with a bow and arrow or as an infantry)
3. fratres ad succurendum were lay people who joined the Order only on their deathbed because of their salvation
4. Donates gave away themselves (and part of their possessions) to the Order. The donation usually came into force only in old age, so that it can be seen as a kind of provision, also for the salvation of the soul
5. Confratres were material patrons of the Order, who profited above all from the reputation of the Order. This could also be women

 

The order was led by grandmasters, who were chosen by the brothers:

• the Grand Commander, who had the supervision of the treasury, the defense and administration of a religious establishment, the so-called Kommende (also Commandery) had
• the Grand Marshal, who was overseeing the weapons and the warfare
• the Great Spitter, whose area of responsibility was the Order's hospitals
• the company doctor who was responsible for the nursing
• the Grand Tapir, who was responsible for the clothes
• the drapery, head of administration
• the Tressler for the finance

 

List of Grandmasters:

Nr.	Name:	Beginning of the term:	End of term:	Annotation:
1	Hugues de Payns	1118/19	24. Mai 1136	Deceased
2	Robert de Craon	Juni 1136	13. Januar 1147	Deceased
3	Everard des Barres	Januar 1147	Herbst 1152	resignation
4	Bernard de Tronelai	1152	16. August 1153	Deceased
5	André de Montbard	14. August 1153	17. Januar 1156	Deceased
6	Bertrand de Blanquefort	Oktober 1156	2. Januar 1169	Deceased
7	Philippe de Milly	27. Januar 1169	Anfang 1171	resignation
8	Eudes de Saint-Amand	April 1171	19. Oktober 1179	Deceased
9	Arnaud de Toroge	1179	30. September 1184	Deceased
10	Gérard de Ridefort	Oktober 1184	1. Oktober 1189	Deceased
11	Robert de Sablé	Ende 1189	13. Januar 1193	Deceased
12	Gilbert Hérail	Februar 1193	20. Dezember 1200	Deceased
13	Philippe du Plessiez	Anfang 1201	12. November 1209	Deceased
14	Guillaume de Chartres	1210	26. August 1218	Deceased
15	Pedro de Montaigu	1219	1232	Deceased
16	Armand de Périgord	1232	20. Oktober 1244	captivity
17	Richard de Bures	1244	1247	Deceased
18	Guillaume de Sonnac	1247	April 1250	Deceased
19	Renaud de Vichiers	Juli 1250	1256	Deceased
20	Thomas Bérard	1256	25. März 1273	Deceased
21	Guillaume de Beaujeu	13. März 1273	18. Mai 1291	Deceased
22	Thibaud Gaudin	August 1291	16. April 1292	Deceased
23	Jacques de Molay	Mai 1292	18. März 1314	executed

 

 

 

Order Rules and Code of Conduct:

The first 72 rules are based on a transcript of the Benedict of Nursia from the 6th century. These were translated early from Latin into French, since by no means all the Knights Templar of the Latin language were powerful.
Until 1260, the rules were extended to a total of 686 rules, but mainly concerned the military sector.

The 72 Order Rules are listed here in short form:

1. How the brothers should attend the service
2. How many fathers our brothers should pray if they can not attend the service
3. What to do after the death of a religious brother
4. Chaplains and clerics receive nothing except maintenance and clothing
5. What to do after the death of a temporary servant
6. Brothers should not make vows
7. When to stand or sit at the service
8. From the common meal
9. At lunchtime and dinner a sacred reading should be presented
10. Three times a week, there should be meat for the healthy
11. About the order at meals
12. On the remaining days should be enough 2 or 3 vegetables or other dishes
13. Which dishes should be served on Friday
14. After the meal, they should always give a prayer of thanksgiving to God
15. The tithing of each bread should always be given to the almsman
16. It is at the discretion of the master to pour out a glass of wine or water to the brothers before the Compline
17. After completeness silence should be kept. It can only be broken if it is absolutely necessary
18. Exhausted people do not need to get up for matins, but may lie down with the permission of the master
19. Knights and the other brothers receive the same food
20. How and how the knights and the others should be dressed in the monastery
21. Servant brothers should not wear white coats
22. Only the Knights of the Order have the white cloak
23. How to distribute the old clothes to the miners, the serving brothers and the poor
24. They should only have sheepskins
25. If you want better, you should get something simpler
26. How clothes and shoes should be and how many should be
27. The clothes manager should pay attention to the equality of clothing
28. About the excess of hair, cheekbread and mustache
29. Of beak shoes and shoe loops and the length of the garments in the non-permanent serving
30. From the number of horses and squires
31. Nobody should pretend to beat his squire, who serves for love
32. How the temporary brothers are received
33. No one should go out according to his own will, but rather (only) at the order of the master
34. Nobody should ask for a horse or weapons personally
35. Of the reins, stirrups and spurs
36. Coatings over lances, skewers and shields are not permitted
37. How the feed bags of the horses should be
38. From the authority of the Master to give one thing to another
39. No brother is allowed to trade his things without Master's orders
40. One should not demand anything from the other, except insignificant things and only the brother of the brother
41. From the lock on the riding bag and suitcase without the permission of the master
42. Whether a friar may write or receive letters without permission
43. It is not allowed to chat with someone else about his or her other mistakes
44. Nobody should catch another bird with the bird
45. They should beware of hunting at every opportunity
46. There are no rules regarding the lion
47. Hear the verdict on every matter demanded of you (erg. Of the court)
48. Similarly should be taken over all things taken you
49. It is allowed to all profession knights to have land and people
50. Of the sick knights and other brothers
51. How their carers should be
52. No one should irritate the other to anger
53. In what form you should deal with married people
54. It is not allowed to continue to have sisters
55. It is not good to deal with excommunicated people
56. How to pick up the brothers who are newly entering
57. When all the brothers are called to the council
58. How to pray
59. Whether it is evil to accept the oath of a servant
60. How to take boys
61. How the old men should be honored
62. Whether it is useful to give food and clothing to everyone equally
63. Of brothers who travel through different provinces
64. Tithing to be raised
65. Of light and serious offenses
66. By which guilt a brother is no longer accepted (that is, expelled)
67. From Easter to the feast of All Saints, a brother should, if he wants, have only a linen shirt
68. How many and which sheets are needed in the beds
69. Murmurs to be avoided
70. They should not focus their attention on women
71. Nobody should be godfather
72. From the regulations

 

The three main branches of the Order:

1. Protection of the pilgrims

Since the poorer pilgrims could not afford sea travel, they had to rely on land. Due to the constant raids of robbers and Seljuk Turks, the real reason for founding the Order was the escort of pilgrims arriving.

 

2. Military area

The second area of the Order dealt with the military security of the conquered territories, defense against enemies as well as with some attacks. The first real military deployment of the Order in 1148 at the siege of Damascus, however, ended in disaster as most Templars fell. After refreshing the troops, the Templars participated in all further military actions. After the Outremer's last Christian capital fell on May 18, 1291, the Templars were able to hold another ten days in their citadel until undermining and overthrowing the Mameluk Sultan's force.

The last two bases in the Middle East Tortosa and Athlit were vacated in August and the then island of Ruad on 28 September 1302 due to the hopeless situation and the Order retreated to Cyprus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Economic area

In addition to pilgrim escort and military operations in the Middle East, the third important area of the Temple Order was devoted to financial activities. Thus, at the beginning, only the revenues of the Commanderies (ecclesiastical or conventual property) should be transported from Europe to the small states and lands in the Middle East. So the Templer locations filled the purpose as safes and treasure chambers in addition to the military use. At the end of the twelfth century, borrowing money became an official branch of the Templar activities, where the Order earned a great reputation. Incidentally, a separate type of letter of credit, the forerunner of today's traveler's checks, as well as an advanced accounting technique has been developed.

At the end of the Order, the 15,000 members administered to the Order's nearly 9,000 estates, whose job it was to raise funds for the maintenance and development of the Order and its campaigns. The two headquarters Temple in Paris and the Temple Church in London are probably the best known. But remains in today's Germany are such. Tempelhof in Berlin, where the former Order settlement Tempelhoffe stood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of the former, countless Orden properties are now only the weir monastery Convento de Cristo in the Portuguese Tomar and the castle of Ponferrada in Spain left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The destruction of the Order:

A key role in the destruction of the Order in 1307 played the then French King Philip IV (Philip the Beautiful). On the one hand, at that time, the kings' indifference to the Order grew, as it had the largest and most experienced army in fighting; on the other, Philip was advised to lead a new crusade to the Holy Land after the fall of the Christian petty states in the Near East. The financial resources for this should be provided in the confiscation of the religious goods and at the same time pay off the high debts of Philipp. Philip was more than taken with the idea of a new crusade, but he did not think so.

So it came that in 1307 the Order was charged with heresy and sodomy (homosexual acts). Free hand formed the fact that the then Pope Clemens V. was too dependent on the French king and so no intervention on the part of the church was to be feared.
On September 14, 1307, the date of the Templar's important cross-festivals, the arrest warrant was issued without exception for all Templars.
The process should be the arrest, detention and judgment of the church. All your possessions and goods should be confiscated and placed under royally loyal administration.

This royal order was sent sealed to all departments in France with the express instruction not to open the document until 13 October 1307 and to execute the order immediately.
This was to prevent the Templars from warning and submerging each other. It was the first time in history conducted nationwide police commando.
In Paris alone, 138 Templars were arrested, and by 1309 the number had risen to 546.
On August 8, 1309, the papal investigations began and lasted until June 5, 1311. 54 Templars were then convicted of the charges and burned on 12 May 1310 near Paris.

On October 16, 1311 Pope Clement V opened the Council of Vienne, after its completion on 22 March 1311, the Order was dissolved and the majority of the property was assigned to the Knights of St. John.
The last burning took place on 18 March 1314 in Paris, where the last Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Teutonic Knight Geoffroy de Charnay were burned. In the rest of France almost no death sentences were carried out against the Templars. In other countries, such as Spain, the Templars remained completely unmolested.

 

 

The last Knights Templar:

Spared by the arrest warrant, but affected by the dissolution of the Order, founded the remaining Templar in Portugal in 1319, protected by the Portuguese king as successor to the Order of the Order of the Order of Christ.
The former possessions and goods of the temple order went, not as actually required by Pope Clement, to the Knights of St. John, but were made available to the new order. In addition, the Portuguese king indefinitely surrendered his castle in the Algarve of Castro Marum as the seat of the Order of Christ.

The liberal revolution of 1834 in Portugal, initiated by Mary I, dissolved, like all other orders, the Order of Christ.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can find the right literature here:

 

The Knights Templar: The Hidden History of the Knights Templar: The Church’s Oldest Conspiracy

The Knights Templar existed officially for less than 200 years. Founded to protect pilgrims who were travelling through the Holy Lands, their rise to power was sudden. They became some of the most feared warriors in the region, they had a mandate from God, they controlled perhaps the world’s first real banking system, and they waged war against anyone who tried to wrestle Christianity’s holiest grounds from the control of the Catholic Church. Within their short lifespan, they quickly became one of the most powerful societies in Europe, if not the world.But, just as they rose to power with relative speed, they fell from grace just as fast. Forged in the crucible of Middle Eastern conflict, their power was soon resented and feared. Before they could become even more powerful, the greatest nations in Europe and the Church turned on them. The once powerful Templars were hunted, caught, tortured, and eventually burned at the stake. According to their prosecutors, they were a devil-worshipping secret society who spat on the cross and plotted against the Pope. They were officially disbanded and their members treated with extreme contempt and prejudice.Or so goes the official story. In this book, we will not only look into the official history of the Knights Templar, but will examine the various ways their influence and ideas have tunnelled their way into the modern world. A group this powerful does not vanish overnight. Instead, their history has been linked to the Freemasons, to vicious curses, to the butchery of the Crusades, and even to Christian relics such as the Holy Grail. For many people, the Templars did not vanish and they did not relinquish their tight grip on the power structures of mediaeval Europe. Instead, they went underground. Read on to discover the dark and twisted secret history of the Knights Templar.

Click here!

 

 

The Secret Dossier of a Knight Templar of the Sangreal

The wild breadth of information reaches from King Arthur in Cumbria, the marriage of Mary Magdalene & Jesus to new observations on Bernard de Clairvaux. The Man who put swords in the hands of Cistercian monks and created the most enigmatic chivalrous Order of all time - the Knights Templars, modeled on the Knights of Camelot.

The descendants of the Templars thrive in Cumbria, a landscape steeped in the mysteries of the Dragon Tradition found in the lore of Camelot. The ancient lost kingdom of Rheged in Cumbria is the historical setting for the Knights of the Round Table. Lake Windermere is the home of the Lady of the Lake.

Melusine is an early medieval elf maiden of fountains and springs with the ability to transform into a dragon. She is the inspiration for the Lady of the Lake of Arthurian tales. Noble houses of Western Europe counted her as their ancestor. I believe her to be an allusion to Mary Magdalene. Melusine was also the ancestor of the banking family so important to the Italian Renaissance, the Medici.

The Magdalene line of kings called the Merovingians, springs from the French King, Merovee 374 AD to 425 AD, whose dual fathers were King Clodio and also a magical aquatic beast reminiscent of Neptune.

Napoleon had a great interest in the Merovingian dynasty. He wore 300 golden bees on his coronation robe which had been excavated from the tomb of King Childebert II (570-95). Napoleon wove Templar symbolism into art and architecture, aligning himself with Templarism.

Click here!

 

 

The Templars: The History and the Myth: From Solomon's Temple to the Freemasons

Arguably one of the most provocative, puzzling, and misunderstood organizations of medieval times, the legendary Knights Templar have always been shrouded in a veil of mystery, while inspiring popular culture from Indiana Jones to Dan Brown. In The Templars, author Michael Haag offers a definitive history of these loyal Christian soldiers of the Crusades—sworn to defend the Holy Land and Jerusalem, but ultimately damned and destroyed by the Pope and his church. A bestseller in the United Kingdom—the first history of the enigmatic warriors to include findings from the Chinon Parchment, the long-lost Vatican document absolving the Knights of heresy—The Templars by Michael Haag is fascinating reading.

Click here!

 

 

Knights Templar Encyclopedia: The Essential Guide to the People, Places, Events, and Symbols of the Order of the Temple

This book presents the fascinating history behind the most famous military religious Order of the Crusades--the Knights Templar. Written by leading Templar authority and medieval historian Dr. Karen Ralls, this sourcebook of hundreds of entries features a wealth of information on the key Templar people, places, events, symbols, organization, daily life, beliefs, economic empire, and trial.

The Knights Templar Encyclopedia provides a comprehensive view of the facts about this powerful medieval Order,  A to Z.  Meticulously gleaned from scholarly sources over a period of sixteen years, the encyclopedia covers key areas about the medieval Order itself, and also, other major medieval topics of increasing interest today and how they specifically relate to the Knights Templar -- i.e.,  the Grail,  the Black Madonnas,  King Arthur, Templar sites, Rosslyn Chapel,  key Templar symbolism, seals, and relics, Gothic cathedrals,  Mary Magdalene,  the Jolly Roger flag, alchemy,  Freemasonry,  the Guilds, chivalry, stained glass, Bernard of Clairvaux,  the origins of the Order,  Templar archives,  Assets, Treasuries, Loans, Maritime trade and ports, Farms,  Feast days, to name but a few entries.  Several key Appendices are included:  a Templar Chronology of Events;  a list of Grand Masters; a list of Popes during the time of the medieval Order;  a list of the charges against the Templars;  key Templar Sites;  and  Illustrations.  In addition, a special 'Recommended Reading' section, from scholarly sources,  under specific subject headings to further aid the reader, is also included.

Click here!

 

 

 

 

 

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