Templars_ History and Myth Part 3

Following the death of Hugh of Payns in 1136, his successor Robert of Craon, the second Grand Master, consolidated the gains made at Troyes by securing for the Templars a string of Papal bulls (from bullum bullum, the Latin for seal, and so meaning an official decree). In 1139 Pope Innocent II issued Omne Datum Optimum Omne Datum Optimum, which had the effect of establishing the Templars as an independent and permanent order within the Catholic Church answerable to no one but the Pope and sanctioned their role as defenders of the Church and attackers of the enemies of Christ. The Grand Master was to be chosen from among the ranks of the Templar knights free from outside interference. The Templars were also given their own priesthood answerable to the Grand Master even though he was not ordained, which made the order independent of the diocesian bishops in Outremer and the West, and they were allowed their own oratories and cemeteries. The Templars were exempted from all t.i.thes, but they were free to collect t.i.thes on their own properties; all spoils of battle against the infidel were theirs by right; and donations made to the Templars were put under the protection of the Holy See.

These privileges were confirmed and extended by two further bulls, Milites Templi Milites Templi, issued by Pope Celestine II in 1144, and Militia Dei Militia Dei issued by Pope Eugenius III in 1145, which taken together with issued by Pope Eugenius III in 1145, which taken together with Omne Datum Optimum Omne Datum Optimum put the Templars beyond reproach and formed the foundation for their future wealth and success. It was also under Eugenius III that the Templars were granted the right to wear their famous habit of a red cross over a white tunic, symbolising their readiness to suffer martyrdom in the defence of the Holy Land. put the Templars beyond reproach and formed the foundation for their future wealth and success. It was also under Eugenius III that the Templars were granted the right to wear their famous habit of a red cross over a white tunic, symbolising their readiness to suffer martyrdom in the defence of the Holy Land.

Yet for all the powerful backing the Templars received from the West, it comes as a surprise that there is so little on record to show for their activities in Outremer for the first three decades after their founding in 1119. This is in contrast to their evident importance in the Iberian peninsula.

In Spain King Alfonso I of Aragon had reconquered large territories from the Muslims and was attracted to the concept of military orders as a means to safeguard them. When he died childless in 1134 he willed his entire kingdom to the Templars, the Hospitallers and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in equal measures. But though the will was contested and adjusted, a settlement was reached with the Templars in 1143 which gave them six major castles in Aragon, a tenth of royal revenues and a fifth of any lands in future conquered from the Muslims, turning the Templars into a major force in the Reconquista against the forces of Islam. The Templars were the first; the Hospitallers followed them into the Iberian peninsula around 1150.

Christian rulers of the Iberian peninsula could call on greater numbers of local Christian troops than their counterparts in Outremer where so much of the population had been converted to Islam or driven out by Muslims. And so the Templars played a less significant role in battle than in the Middle East. Instead the princ.i.p.al task of the Templars was to build castles along the frontiers to prevent Muslim incursions. The responsibility for defending Aragon and Catalonia rested largely on the Templars and the Hospitallers, but in the centre of the peninsula the kings of Castille and Leon relied on home-grown military orders established for the most part during the third quarter of the twelfth century. Nevertheless the Templars exercised considerable influence on these Spanish orders which had been founded in direct imitation of their own order. The kings of Castile and Leon also entrusted the Templars with the overlordship of great tracts of underpopulated territory that fell to the Reconquista.

The Templars played a similar role in the west of the Iberian peninsula where in the struggle against the Muslims a new nation was emerging, the independent kingdom of Portugal. The Templars' commitment to the cause of the crusade against Islam made them perfect allies; at no cost to existing Portuguese resources they were given antic.i.p.atory grants, so that as the frontier was extended against the Muslims during the 1130s and 1140s the Templars acquired a share in newly recovered lands and were given control of border castles.

Yet in Outremer, where the availability of local Christian troops was more limited than in Iberia, meaning that the military orders might have found a greater battle role, the Templars are reported in medieval sources to have been involved in only three military engagements between 1119 and the arrival of the Second Crusade in 1148. They were at a failed siege of Damascus in 1129, they took part in a campaign to defend an eastern outpost of the County of Tripoli which met with defeat in 1137, and they were worsted in a skirmish at Hebron in 1139. The Templars did take over responsibility for guarding the pa.s.ses into Antioch from Asia Minor through the Ama.n.u.s mountains where they were put in charge of Baghras castle in about 1136. Otherwise the surviving record is silent on the early decades of the Templars in the East, though the mystery is probably explained by the loss and destruction of sources than by a lack of Templar activity. Certainly a section of opinion in the West was convinced, according to the chronicler Richard of Poitou, a monk of Cluny writing in 1153, that the Franks would long since have lost Jerusalem had it not been for the Templars.

Templar Origins: Historical AgendasThe Knights Templar would in time become one of the wealthiest and most powerful financial and military organisations in the medieval world, yet there are holes in the historical record about their origins, and there are contradictions too. When were they founded? How many were there? What accounts for their meteoric rise? Part of the problem in finding the answers to these questions lies in the nature of the sources themselves.

The earliest chronicler of Templar history was William, archbishop of Tyre. Born into a French or Italian family at Jerusalem in about 1130, he studied Latin and probably Greek and Arabic there before continuing his education from about 1146 to 1165 in France and Italy. After returning to Outremer he wrote, among other works, a twenty-three volume history of the Middle East from the conquest of Jerusalem by Umar. This Historia Rerum in Partibus Transmarinis Gestarum Historia Rerum in Partibus Transmarinis Gestarum, or History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, was begun around 1175 and remained unfinished at the time of William of Tyre's death in about 1186. Most of it concentrated on the First Crusade and subsequent political events within the Kingdom of Jerusalemevents from which William was not entirely detached, for he was involved in the highest affairs of both the kingdom and the Church, and as archbishop and contender for the office of Patriarch of Jerusalem he was naturally jealous of any diminution of ecclesiastical authorityand so resentful of the Templars' independence and their rise to wealth and power.

Two other early chroniclers were Michael the Syrian, Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, who died in 1199, and Walter Map, archdeacon of Oxford, who died in about 1209. But Michael was weak on matters outside his own experience and times, while Walter preferred a good story to sound historical inquiry, and moreover his prejudice against the Templars was fundamental, for he objected to the entire concept of an order of fighting monks. Despite his own bias against the Templars, William of Tyre is considered the most reliable of the three; he diligently sifted through sources to glean the facts about events that occurred before his time, and he made a point of interviewing surviving first-hand witnesses.

All the same, William of Tyre did not even begin writing his history until the mid-1170s, that is fifty-five years after the founding of the Templars, and there is no earlier source. The chroniclers of the First Crusade, men like Fulcher of Chartres, Baldric of Dol, Robert the Monk and Guibert de Nogent, had all completed their works within a decade of the reconquest of Jerusalem in 1099 and long before the foundation of the Templars in 1119or was it 1118? According to William of Tyre it was the latter, but he was notoriously poor on dates even if careful in other things, and the balance of scholarly opinion has the Templars established in 1119. In whatever year it was, it does not seem to have occurred to anyone to write a first-hand account of the founding ceremony of the Templars in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Christmas Dayat the time it did not register as a significant event.We do not even know how many founding members there really were. William of Tyre says that there were nine and names the two most prominent as Hugh of Payns and G.o.dfrey of Saint-Omer. Other sources also name Archambaud of Saint-Aignan, Payen of Montdidier, Andre of Montbard, Geoffrey Bissot, a knight called Rossal or possibly Roland, another called Gondemar, and two more whose names have not survived. Moreover, William of Tyre maintains that even as late as the Council of Troyes in 1129 there were still only nine Knights Templar. But why would only nine men command such attention from the Council and the Pope, and why would Bernard of Clairvaux devote so much effort to praising their worth and propagating their fame? Indeed in this case Michael the Syrian seems to be more reliable, for he says there were thirty founding Templar knights, and most likely there were very many more a decade later.

Just as we owe it to William of Tyre that the Templars comprised only nine members right up to 1129, so we also owe to him the claim that they were a poor and simple order throughout the early decades of their foundation. Certainly the Templars looked back on themselves in this idealistic way, so that in 1167 when they were very rich indeed they adopted as their seal the two knights astride one horse, a self-image perhaps also derived from their ascetic Cistercian promoter in the West, Bernard of Clairvaux. Yet however humble the lives of the individual knights, the order itself was never indigent, not even at the start when already it was receiving an income from the canons of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as well as significant donations from powerful French barons.

But to portray the Templars as poor and humble and few in numbers in their early years gave William of Tyre a handy stick with which to beat them in his critical history. By the 1170s, according to William of Tyre, the Templars 'are said to have immense possessions both here and overseas, so that there is now not a province in the Christian world which has not bestowed upon the aforesaid brothers a portion of its goods. It is said today that their wealth is equal to the treasures of kings.' William contrasts this state of affairs with the Templars' earlier simplicity, suggesting they have somehow betrayed themselves. But it seems that his real complaint is that their support in the West made them independent of any power in Outremer, particularly that of the Church as represented by William, the archbishop of Tyre, and would-be Patriarch of Jerusalem: 'Although they maintained their establishment honourably for a long time and fulfiled their vocation with sufficient prudence, later, because of the neglect of humility, they withdrew from the Patriarch of Jerusalem, by whom their order was founded and from whom they received their first benefices and to whom they denied the obedience which their predecessors rendered. They have also taken away t.i.thes and first fruits from G.o.d's churches, have disturbed their possessions, and have made themselves exceedingly troublesome.'

This was the beginning of the criticism the Templars would receive from sources whose interests they crossed. Some would call them saviours of the East and defenders of all Christendom, others would find them 'troublesome' and accuse them of arrogance, greed, secrecy and deceit. Their destruction lay in their beginning; when there was no more East to save, the Templars would be doomed.

The Second Crusade The Templars Emerge from the Margins of History The Christian states of Outremer enjoyed nearly half a century of security after the First Crusade thanks to the divisions among their Muslim neighbours, the Fatimids in Egypt and the numerous Turkish-controlled statelets in Syria and Iraq, who often fought against one another. Occasionally there were clashes between the Franks and Muslims but these were minor affairs and did not threaten the existence of Outremer; indeed Muslim princes made alliances with the Christians against their common enemies.

The most important of these enemies was Zengi, a Seljuk Turk, who began his career in 1127 when on behalf of the moribund Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad he made himself atabeg atabeg, or governor, of Mosul in northern Iraq. By means of war and intimidation, Zengi soon extended his authority over much of Muslim Syria, and he would have taken Damascus too but for an alliance between its Turkish ruler and King Fulk of Jerusalem.

In the event Zengi's greatest victory was his conquest of the County of Edessa in 1144. The first state founded by the Crusaders, Edessa was the first to fall, and Arab chroniclers later looked back on this triumph as the start of the jihad that would drive the Franks from the East. In the West the loss of Edessa touched off the Second Crusade, a huge campaign by sea and land, this time led by two European kings. But the crusade may never have reached the Holy Land at all had it not been for the Templars, and when unexpectedly it failed they became convenient scapegoats. Yet against the gathering forces of the Muslim jihad Outremer could not have survived as it did for another one hundred and fifty years without the religious conviction and military prowess of the brotherhoods of Christian warriors.

Muslim Friends and Allies In 1138 the Arab diplomat and chronicler Usamah ibn Munqidh was sent by the Turkish governor of Damascus, Muin al-Din Unur, to Jerusalem to discuss with King Fulk the possibility of an alliance against Zengi, the atabeg of Mosul. The Christian chronicler William of Tyre called Zengi 'a vicious man', and the Muslim inhabitants of Damascus agreed: they had learnt something of his brutality during his unsuccessful siege of their city in 1135, and the mission to Jerusalem was sent with popular support. For two years Usamah travelled back and forth, negotiating an alliance and making friends. Zengi threatened Damascus again in 1140, but his fear of being caught in a pincer movement forced him to withdraw, an event celebrated later that year when Usamah accompanied Muin al-Din Unur on a state visit to the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

During the times he spent in Jerusalem Usamah became a close observer of the Franks and their ways and wrote about them in his chronicle. He regarded the Franks as the enemies of G.o.d and attached to almost every account of them some imprecation like 'May Allah's curse be upon them!', but that was more a doctrinaire reaction to their faith than a true expression of his att.i.tude towards them as a people. Of one knight in the army of King Fulk whom Usamah got to know well, he wrote, 'He was of my intimate fellowship and kept such constant company with me that he began to call me "my brother". Between us were mutual bonds of amity and friendship.' He admired Western medicine, and he was struck by the lack of restriction placed on their women by Frankish men: 'The Franks are void of all zeal and jealousy. One of them may be walking along with his wife. He meets another man who takes his wife by the hand and steps aside to converse with her while the husband is standing on one side waiting for his wife to conclude the conversation. If she lingers too long for him, he leaves her alone with the conversant and goes away'.

Usamah came to know the Templars particularly well and tells how they made a point of providing him with a place to pray. 'When I was visiting Jerusalem, I used to go to the al-Aqsa mosque where my Templar friends were staying. Along one side of the building was a small oratory in which the Franks had set up a church. The Templars placed this spot at my disposal that I might say my prayers.' Of course Usamah arranged himself to pray towards Mecca, which is south of Jerusalem, whereas Christian churches, wherever they may be, are oriented to the east. A Frank noticed Usamah's direction of prayer and roughly pointed him towards the east, saying 'Thus do we pray.' Usamah's Templar friends rushed forward and led the man away, but when their attention was diverted the man accosted Usamah again, repeating 'Thus do we pray.' Again the Templars intervened and led the Frank away, apologising to their Muslim friend, saying the man had just arrived from the West and had never seen anyone pray as Usamah had done. Usamah concluded that 'everyone who is a fresh emigrant from the Frankish lands is ruder in character than those who have become acclimatised and have held long a.s.sociation with the Muslims'.

The Fall of Edessa Unfortunately for the Franks they were often engaged in petty quarrels among themselves, and when Zengi's large and powerful army turned its unwelcome attention upon Edessa in 1144 Outremer was divided. The count of Edessa, Joscelyn II, was at odds with the prince of Antioch; the count of Tripoli was only vaguely interested in events so far to the east; and in Jerusalem King Fulk had just died, leaving the government in the hands of Queen Melisende as regent for Baldwin III, their thirteen-year-old son. Consequently, Zengi found his attack opposed only by the negligible forces of Edessa itself.

The other Crusader states fringed the Mediterranean, but Edessa was landlocked; it lay beyond the Euphrates, a day's ride east of the river. Its population was made up of Christians of the East, Chaldeans and Armenians, who were more devoted to trade than skilled in the use of arms; Westerners rarely visited the city and those Franks who lived there had mostly married the local Christians, so that its defence was entrusted largely to mercenaries. When Zengi laid siege to the city he came up against its formidable walls, but in the words of William of Tyre, 'All these defences could be of use against the enemy only if there were men willing to fight for their freedom, men who would resist the foe valiantly. The defences would be useless, however, if there were none among the besieged who were willing to serve as defenders. Towers, walls, and earthworks are of little value to a city unless there are defenders to man them. Zengi found the town bereft of defenders and was much encouraged.' Help was sent too late from Jerusalem and Tripoli, while Antioch sent no help at all. On Christmas Eve 1144 Zengi's forces breached the walls and rushed into the streets and houses of the city. 'They slew with their swords the citizens whom they encountered, sparing neither age, condition nor s.e.x', wrote William of Tyre, and they enslaved any who survived.

Bernard Launches the Second Crusade At first the West was slow to react to the fall of Edessa. In autumn 1145 Pope Eugenius III wrote to King Louis VII of France asking him to undertake a new crusade to the East. At Christmas Louis summoned his barons and told them that he was taking the cross and invited them to do the same, but their response was poor. Louis was young, only twenty-five; he was seen as impetuous, weak and greedy; and he had angered his barons by recently seizing land from the count of Champagne. But the barons did agree to convene again at Easter 1146 at Vezelay in Burgundy.

Meanwhile Louis arranged that Bernard of Clairvaux should speak at Vezelay. Not only was Bernard the friend of Popes and kings (Eugenius had been a monk at Clairvaux and the king's brother had recently joined the Cistercians there), but his asceticism, conviction and eloquence combined to make him the most formidable spiritual figure of the age. At word that Bernard would speak, such a crowd of aristocrats and admirers from all over France were drawn to Vezelay that, as at Clermont when Pope Urban called for the First Crusade, the cathedral was not big enough to contain the throng and a platform was erected in the fields outside the town.

This was an age like no other, Bernard told the crowd. G.o.d had found new ways to save the faithful. The fall of Edessa was a gift from G.o.d. It was an opportunity created by G.o.d to save men's souls. 'Look at the skill he is using to save you. Consider the depth of his love and be astonished, sinners. This is a plan not made by man, but proceeding from the heart of divine love.' Amid the roars of 'Deus le volt!' 'Deus le volt!', so many came forward to take the cross that Bernard had to tear his own habit into strips. King Louis was the first among them, followed by his barons, many of whom were the sons and grandsons of original Crusaders. Bernard was able to write a few days later to the Pope: 'You ordered; I obeyed. I opened my mouth; I spoke; and at once the Crusaders have multiplied to infinity. Villages and towns are now deserted. You will scarcely find one man for every seven women. Everywhere you see widows whose husbands are still alive.'

Bernard broadcast his message farther, travelling into the north of France and to Flanders, and addressing a letter to the people of England, explaining that Jesus, the Son of G.o.d, was losing the land in which he had walked among men for more than thirty years. 'Your land', Bernard told the English, 'is well known to be rich in young and vigorous men. The world is full of their praises, and the renown of their courage is on the lips of all. Do not miss this opportunity. Take the sign of the cross. At once you will have indulgence for all the sins which you confess with a contrite heart. It does not cost you much to buy and if you wear it with humility you will find that it is the kingdom of heaven.'

News of the crusade had also reached Germany where it touched off anti-Semitic pogroms along the Rhine. Bernard hastened to Germany to condemn the atrocities on the spot. 'The Jews', he said, 'are not to be persecuted, killed or even put to flight. The Jews are for us the living words of Scripture, for they remind us always what the Lord suffered.' And then to control and give direction to the popular feeling, Bernard preached the crusade to the reluctant King Conrad III of Germany himself, finally persuading him to take the cross at Christmas 1146.

The following spring, Pope Eugenius gave his blessing to the campaign of Alfonso VII of Castile against the Muslim occupation of Spain, declaring it a crusade, and that autumn a Crusader fleet from northern Europe helped the Portuguese capture Lisbon from the Arabs. Largely through the energy of Bernard, the Second Crusade had rapidly become an international campaign against the forces of Islam on both the eastern and western fronts.

Mary Magdalene at VezelayVezelay was a particularly potent spot from which to launch the Second Crusade for it possessed the bones of Mary Magdalene. The claim was first made by the great abbey church at Vezelay in the 1050s, an a.s.sertion quickly supported by a Papal doc.u.ment dated 27 April 1058. The Muslim occupiers in the Middle East had recently been making it difficult for Europeans to undertake pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and this encouraged the development of pilgrimage sites within Europe itself. Various well-known New Testament figures were suddenly discovered to have travelled to the West and died there, their bones unearthed by enterprising churches. Glas...o...b..ry had already laid claim to Joseph of Arimathea in this way; in Paris they announced the discovery of the bones of Saint Denis, a convert and student of Saint Paul; while Saint James had turned up in Spain at Compostela to aid the reconquest, and Saint Mark had arrived at Venice. Unfortunately the great ninth-century Romanesque church at Vezelay had been dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and as she had bodily risen to heaven at her a.s.sumption, there was no question of finding her relics. But Vezelay lay along the profitable pilgrimage route from Germany to Compostela, and the profits to be gleaned from the pa.s.sing trade, not to mention the prestige and the protection to be had, made the happy discovery of some suitable remains all but unavoidable, and who better than Mary Magdalene.

In the Gospels Mary Magdalene is present at the most important moments of the Jesus storyhis death and his resurrection. At the crucifixion of Jesus his disciples have gone into fearful hiding, but Mary Magdalene is at both the Cross and the tomb, and it is she who carries the news to the disbelieving disciples that Jesus has arisen. Her appearances in the Gospels are brief but telling. It is as if she fulfils the role of those ancient G.o.ddesses whose lives embraced the deaths and rebirths of their men.

The shrine of Mary Magdalene at Vezelay became immensely popular, but how, the faithful wondered, had her bones come to Burgundy? A pious fiction was circulated saying that her relics had first been in Provence but were threatened by Saracen raiders, and so they were removed and brought to Vezelay for safekeeping. But how had the bones come to Provence in the first place? Another legend was invented to conveniently explain that Mary Magdalene and her companions had escaped from the Holy Land by sea and landed, some say, at Ma.r.s.eilles, or according to others at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, from where she made her way inland and died at St-Maximin-la-Ste-Baume. It was from there that a monk from Vezelay had dug up her bones and taken them back to Burgundy.

Meanwhile Mary Magdalene's bones were performing miracles; she was a.s.sociated with the liberation of prisoners, a.s.sistance with fertility and childbirth, spectacular cures and even the raising of the dead. Such wonderful stories demanded yet wider circulation, a challenge taken up in the thirteenth century by the Dominican writer Jacobus de Voragine. To his account of Mary Magdalene in his compendium of saints' lives called the Legenda Aurea Legenda Aurea (the (the Golden Legend Golden Legend), he added the plethora of new miracles put about by Vezelay and produced what very quickly became a medieval bestseller that was soon translated from Latin into nearly every European language, including Dutch and Czech.However, King Charles of Anjou (122685) was establishing a Mediterranean empire based on Naples, Sicily and his newly acquired territory of Provence. Learning from the Legenda Aurea Legenda Aurea that Mary Magdalene's bones had been a.s.sociated with St-Maximin-la-Ste-Baume, he went to have a look for himself. And what did he find? The bones of Mary Magdalene. Clearly the church at Vezelay had been mistaken. Charles installed the Dominican Order as caretakers of Mary's shrine, and they in turn proudly broadcast the importance of their mission by fabricating the that Mary Magdalene's bones had been a.s.sociated with St-Maximin-la-Ste-Baume, he went to have a look for himself. And what did he find? The bones of Mary Magdalene. Clearly the church at Vezelay had been mistaken. Charles installed the Dominican Order as caretakers of Mary's shrine, and they in turn proudly broadcast the importance of their mission by fabricating the Book of Miracles of Saint Mary Magdalene Book of Miracles of Saint Mary Magdalene, doc.u.menting all the miraculous intercessions and cures the saint had wrought at her Provencal sanctuary. The publication's success was measured by the fact that Vezelay as a centre for the miraculous soon went into decline. Indeed, pilgrims still come to Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer to see where Mary Magdalene came ash.o.r.e and visit St-Maximin-la-Ste-Baume to kneel before her bones.

The Templars' Role in the Crusade The growing importance of the Templars can be measured by the fact that on 27 April 1147 King Louis VII and Pope Eugenius III came to the Paris Templewhich had become the European headquarters of the orderto discuss plans for the Second Crusade. Also in attendance were four archbishops and 130 Templar knights, with at least as many sergeants and squires.

Here, it was agreed that the Templars would accompany the French army to the East, and it was probably on this occasion that the Pope conferred on the Templars the right to emblazon their white robes with the red cross, symbolising their willingness to die in defence of the Holy Land. The Pope also appointed the Templar treasurer to receive the tax that had been imposed on all Church goods to finance the crusade. It was the start of a fateful relationship, that would last for over a century and a half, with the Paris Temple serving in effect as the treasury of France.

Everard des Barres, the master of the Temple in France, was sent ahead to Constantinople by the king to negotiate with the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus for the pa.s.sage of the French and German armies; this time they had not been invited, and in Constantinople the prospect of their approach was regarded with some scepticism and alarm. Moreover, the Byzantines were at war with Roger II, the Norman king of Sicily, and to cover their backs had recently agreed a treaty with the Seljuks. To the minds of those in the West this accommodation with the infidel seemed treacherous, an att.i.tude that deepened suspicions on both sides.

Nevertheless, everything seemed set fair in September 1147 when Conrad's army arrived in Constantinople and was ferried across the Bosphorus, to be followed by Louis' army a month later. The Second Crusade had two armies marching through Byzantine territory, and a large northern European fleet was heading into the Mediterranean after capturing Lisbon from the Muslims.

The first disaster struck in late October. Conrad led his army on the direct route across Asia Minor and straight up against the border of Seljuk territory where at Dorylaeum on 25 October the Germans were heavily defeated by the Turks. The survivors, including Conrad himself, retreated to Nicaea where they joined the French who were following the safer coastal route. At Ephesus Conrad fell ill and returned with his forces to Constantinople, while the French, inadequately provisioned by the Byzantines, marched up the Maeander valley and eastwards against the advancing winter. Toiling through the narrow defiles of the Cadmus mountains in early January 1148 the heavily armoured French knights were easy prey for the Seljuks' light cavalry with their talent for firing off arrows at full gallop.

With his army on the verge of disintegration, King Louis surrendered his responsibilities to Everard des Barres, the Templar master, who divided the force into units, each under the command of a Templar knight whom they swore to obey absolutely. Thanks to the boldness and organisational skills of the Templars, the army was led to safety at Attalia (modern Antalya) on the Mediterranean. But their ordeal was not yet over, for the expected Byzantine fleet was too small to take them all to the Holy Land, so only Louis and part of his army sailed east. The rest attempted to march overland through Seljuk lands, and most of them died on the way.

By the time Louis arrived at Antioch early in March the cost of supplies and shipping had been so great that he needed to borrow if he was to continue with the crusade. Abandoning his intention of retaking Edessa, Louis instead led his army southwards via Tripoli to Jerusalem where he fulfiled his pilgrim's vow, meanwhile despatching Everard des Barres to Acre where he raised enough money from Templar resources to cover the cost of the French expeditiona sum that was more than half the annual tax revenue of the French state.

Fiasco at Damascus Despite the French losses in Asia Minor, the crusading forces that finally arrived in the Holy Land were far from negligible, and added to these were the survivors of the German army which had arrived by sea from Constantinople with Conrad. On 24 June 1148 the lords and military leaders then in Outremer attended a great council at Acre; Baldwin III, the seventeen-year-old King of Jerusalem presided over the gathering, which included the Hospitallers and the Templars and the kings of Germany and France.

Zengi was dead but his son Nur al-Din controlled Aleppo in northern Syria astride the route to Edessa, and Raymond of Antioch wanted to strike in that direction. Others spoke of Egypt, but the road south was blocked by Ascalon, a powerfully fortfied city still in the hands of the Fatimids. The third possibility was Damascus, the one Muslim power in the region willing to ally with the Franks against Nur al-Din, a fact that might have deterred some in Outremer but meant nothing to the new arrivals from the West. In any case, for the Frankish states of Outremer, perilously clinging to the Mediterranean seaboard, it was always a strategic necessity to extend their depth, to conquer Aleppo, Damascus or Cairo. Damascus was a venerable and wealthy city whose capture would give the Franks control over the crossroads of commerce and communications in the East. After vigorous discussion of these various plans of action the a.s.sembly finally decided to concentrate all the available forces of the crusade against Damascus.

The Second Crusade marched out from Galilee for Damascus in late July 1148. The army camped in a well-supplied position amid orchards and fresh-flowing water in front of the western walls and prepared for the siege. But the orchards also served detachments of Damascenes who used their cover to make repeated sorties against the Crusaders. Louis and Conrad responded by switching their attack to the eastern walls where there was open ground and they could deploy their heavy cavalry to greater effect. But the city walls were higher on this waterless desert side, and when the siege dragged on the Crusaders had no choice but to withdraw. Without even fighting a battle the Second Crusade was defeated, ending in a whimpering fiasco. Six years later Damascus fell to Nur al-Din, and the encirclement of Outremer by a united Muslim power began.

The Strategic Importance of DamascusIf the Second Crusade proved a calamity for its failure to capture Damascus, the great error had already been committed half a century before when Damascus was not seized by the First Crusade. Then the momentum was with the Franks, who had the men to do the job, but their ideological fixation on Jerusalem obscured the strategic reality. As it was, the Crusader states formed a long thin line along the Mediterranean coast from the Ama.n.u.s mountains in the north to the Gulf of Aqaba in the south, but they had no depth: the Crusaders never controlled the hinterland to the east where Damascus sits on the desert fringe. Eastwards of this hinterland lay nothing but barren desert, not easily traversed by large armies. If the First Crusade had taken Damascus it would have cut the Muslim world in two; instead this hinterland became a highway for Muslim forces moving between Baghdad, Aleppo, Damascus and eventually Cairo, who freely hara.s.sed Outremer all along its desert flank and kept the Christian forces permanently stretched.

The Bitter Aftertaste The withdrawal from Damascus caused a bitterness in relations between Outremer and the West that lasted for a generation. Seen from the perspective of the East, Kings Louis and Conrad had neither recovered Edessa nor offset its loss by taking Damascus or anything else; indeed their bungling placed Outremer in greater peril than before the crusade began.

In the West the failure of the crusade came as a shock because it had been led by the powerful kings of Germany and France and had been preached by Bernard of Clairvaux, the greatest spiritual figure of the age. Some blamed the Franks of the East, who had previously been in alliance with the ruler of Damascus; some German chroniclers, anxious to protect Conrad, blamed the Templars, saying that they had deliberately engineered the retreat; the anonymous Wurzburg chronicler wrote of Templar greed, and of betrayal by taking a ma.s.sive bribe. The French did not make the same accusations, having been supported by the Templars throughout. And in fact there is no evidence of Templar treachery, but it is significant that they were blamedit was the first indication that the long history of ambiguous feelings about the foundation of an order of monks who also fought for G.o.d might be translated into open and specific complaints.

The problem was that the more the Franks of Outremer relied on Western subsidy and military aid, the more critical the West became if things went wrong; the enthusiasm was there, but only for victories that came easily and cheap. From now on, the defence of the Holy Land would depend on its network of castles, largely built and commanded by the knights of the military orders.

Part 3

The Power 11501291

Crusader Castles The Defence of the Holy Land.

From the moment that the First Crusade arrived in the Middle East, the Crusaders started building castles. As in Europe, they served as residences and administrative centres, as well as having a military function. But after the Second Crusade the Franks in Outremer found themselves on the defensive and the military nature of castles became more important. Often large and elaborate, and continuously improved by the latest innovations in military science, the Franks built over fifty castles in Outremer. Geography, manpower and the feudal system all explain this considerable investment in stone.

The Crusader states were long and narrow, lacking defence in depth. The Princ.i.p.ality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli and the Kingdom of Jerusalem stretched 450 miles from north to south, yet rarely were they more than 50 to 75 miles broad, the County of Tripoli perilously constricting to the width of the coastal plain, only a few miles broad, between Tortosa (present-day Tartus) and Jeble. The inland cities of Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus all remained in Muslim hands, while Mesopotamia and Egypt were recruiting grounds for any Muslim counterthrust, as the campaigns of Saladin and the Mamelukes would show. For the Crusaders the natural defensive line was the mountains, and they built castles to secure the pa.s.ses.

Stones more than soldiers were pressed to this purpose as Outremer was chronically short of men. After the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 most of the Crusaders returned to Europe; the Kingdom of Jerusalem was thereafter defended by 300 mounted knights. Despite successive crusades, at no time during the entire history of the Crusader states were they able to put more than 2600 horse in the field. Moreover, though there was still a large local Christian population, these were Orthodox while the Crusaders were a Latin minority.

Outnumbered and insecure, the Franks of necessity housed themselves in fortified towns or in castles. Nevertheless, if the Crusader states were to survive they had to be a going concern, and the Franks set about organising their possessions along familiar European feudal lines. Castles were as much centres of production and administration as they were military outpostsbattlemented country houses, containing corn mills and olive presses, and surrounded by gardens, vineyards, orchards and fields. Their lands in some cases encompa.s.sed hundreds of villages and a peasantry numbering tens of thousands. Wood to Egypt, herbs, spices and sugar to Europe, were important exports; indeed throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Europe's entire supply of sugar came from the Latin East.

But in times of war, agriculture was always the first victim. Were it not for Western subvention and the taxes imposed on trade between the Muslim East and Europe as it pa.s.sed through the Crusader states, they would have collapsed sooner than they did. The Latin rulers were always strapped for cash, the bulk of their revenues going towards the upkeep of mercenaries, knights and castles. It was a vicious circle; insufficient land and manpower making castles a necessity; the cost of knights and castles greater than the productivity of the land could justify.

In this situation the military orders came into their own. They had the resources, the independence, the dedicationthe elements of their growing power.

Structure of the TemplarsTHE TOP FIVE OFFICIALS of the Knights Templar were the Grand Master, the Seneschal, the Marshal, the Commander of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the Draper. Ultimately, the Order owed its allegiance to the Popeand to no other authority, spiritual or temporal. of the Knights Templar were the Grand Master, the Seneschal, the Marshal, the Commander of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the Draper. Ultimately, the Order owed its allegiance to the Popeand to no other authority, spiritual or temporal.

THE G GRAND M MASTER Ruler of the order, the Grand Master was elected by twelve senior Templar members, the number representing the twelve apostles, plus a chaplain who took the place of Jesus Christ. The master had considerable but not autocratic powers. Ruler of the order, the Grand Master was elected by twelve senior Templar members, the number representing the twelve apostles, plus a chaplain who took the place of Jesus Christ. The master had considerable but not autocratic powers.

GRAND C CHAPTER Comprised of senior officials. All major decisions by the Grand Mastersuch as whether to go to war, agree a truce, alienate lands, or acquire a castlerequired that he consult with the chapter. Comprised of senior officials. All major decisions by the Grand Mastersuch as whether to go to war, agree a truce, alienate lands, or acquire a castlerequired that he consult with the chapter.

SENESCHAL Deputy and advisor to the Grand Master. Deputy and advisor to the Grand Master.

MARSHAL Responsible for military decisions such as purchase of equipment and horses; he also exercised authority over the regional commanders. Responsible for military decisions such as purchase of equipment and horses; he also exercised authority over the regional commanders.

DRAPER The keeper of the robes, the Draper issued clothes and bedlinen, removed items from knights who were thought to have too much, and distributed gifts made to the order. The keeper of the robes, the Draper issued clothes and bedlinen, removed items from knights who were thought to have too much, and distributed gifts made to the order.

REGIONAL C COMMANDERS These were the C These were the COMMANDER OF THE K KINGDOM OF J JERUSALEM, who acted as the order's treasurer and within the Kingdom had the same powers as the Grand Master; the C who acted as the order's treasurer and within the Kingdom had the same powers as the Grand Master; the COMMANDER OF J JERUSALEM, who within the city had the same powers as the Grand Master; and the COMMANDERS OF COMMANDERS OF A ACRE, TRIPOLI AND A ANTIOCH, each with the powers of the Grand Master within their domains.

PROVINCIAL M MASTERS France, England, Aragon, Poitou, Portugal, Apulia and Hungary each had a provincial master who was responsible to the Grand Master. France, England, Aragon, Poitou, Portugal, Apulia and Hungary each had a provincial master who was responsible to the Grand Master.

THE K KNIGHTS, SERGEANTS and other and other MEN AT ARMS MEN AT ARMS were subject to these various officers and their deputies. were subject to these various officers and their deputies.

A Power Unto Themselves After the Second Crusade both the Hospitallers and the Templars came to provide the backbone of resistance to the Muslims, but the military impetus came from the Templars. The Hospitallers were still an entirely pacific order when the armed order of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ came into being. But sometime in the 1120s the Hospitallers extended their role from caring for pilgrims to protecting them by force of arms if need be, becoming known as the Knights of the Hospital of Saint John, or Knights Hospitaller, with Saint John no longer the Almsgiver but replaced by the more imposing figure of Saint John the Baptist. The first recorded instance of Hospitallers in combat dates from 1128, eight years or so after the founding of the Templars; it was the example of the Templars that helped turn the Hospitallers into a military order.

In due course the military orders were put in possession of the great castles, a task for which they were perfectly suited. The frontier castles were remote, isolated and lonely places; they did not appeal to the secular knighthood of Outremer. But the monastic vows of the military orders suited them to the dour life of castles where the innermost fortifications served as monasteries for the brothers. Their members were celibate, which made them easy to control, and they had no outside private interests. Superbly trained and highly disciplined, the Hospitallers and the Templars were led by commanders of considerable military ability; the capabilities of the orders generally stood in marked contrast to those of the lay inst.i.tutions of Outremer.

The orders owed direct responsibility to the Papacy, placing them above not only local feudal quarrels but the antagonisms of nations and their kings. As corporate bodies, the orders were everlasting, their numbers undiminished by disease or death, and they were able to draw on an inexhaustible supply of young men of n.o.ble families in Europe seeking to fulfil the moral and religious obligations of knighthood. Also the Templars and the Hospitallers received donations of property in Europe which soon made them wealthy. Each order levied its own taxes, had its own diplomatic service and possessed its own fleet of ships. In effect the Hospitallers and the Templars were states within the state. Very quickly the under-manned and under-financed Crusader states were selling or giving frontier fortresses to the orders, and by 1166 there were only three castles in the Kingdom of Jerusalem which the military orders did not control.

Costing the Templa.r.s.every Templar was a highly trained and expensive mounted knight. Such a knight in the second half of twelfth-century France required 750 acres to equip and maintain himself as a mounted warrior, and a century later that cost had quintupled to 3750 acres.

For a Templar knight operating overseas in the Holy Land the costs were even greater, as much had to be imported, not least horses. Each Templar knight had three horses, and because they fell victim to warfare and disease, and had a lifespan of only twenty years, they needed to be renewed at a rate greater than local breeding allowed. The cost of horses rose sixfold from the twelfth to the thrteenth centuries. Moreover, horses consumed five or six times as much as a man, and required feeding whether or not they were in use. A bad harvest in the East, and urgent food supplies had to be shipped in for men and horses alike.

Each Templar also had a squire to help look after the horses. And in addition there were sergeants, more lightly armed than knights, who each had a horse but acted as their own squires. Sergeants were often locally recruited and wore a brown or black tunic instead of white. In fact for every Templar knight there were about nine others serving in support, whether as squires, sergeants or other forms of help. This is not much different from modern warfare in which every frontline soldier is backed up by four or five who never see combat, not to mention the many thousands of civilians producing weapons and equipment and providing clothing, food and transport.

Growing responsibilities increased Templar costs immensely. As secular lords found themselves unable to maintain and defend their castles and their fiefs, they handed these responsibilities over to the military orders. According to Benedict of Alignan, a Benedictine abbot visiting the Holy Land in the 1240s, the Templars spent 1,100,000 Saracen besants in two and a half years on rebuilding their castle of Saphet (Safad)this at a time when a knight in Acre could live well on 500 Saracen besants a yearand continued to spend 40,000 Saracen besants in each following year on the day-to-day running of the castle. Saphet had a complement of 50 Templar knights, 30 mounted sergeants, as well as 50 mounted archers, 300 crossbowmen, 820 engineers and other serving men, plus 400 slaves1650 people, which in wartime increased to 2200, all of whom had to be housed, fed, armed and kept supplied in various ways.

Only their vast holdings in Outremer and more especially in the West permitted the Templars to operate on such a scale and recover after losses and setbacks to continue the defence of the Holy Land.

Templar Castles When the First Crusade marched into the Middle East it came over the Belen Pa.s.s, about sixteen miles north of Antioch, that same crossing over the Ama.n.u.s mountains that Alexander the Great had taken 1400 years before, after crushing the Persian army of Darius III at the battle of Issus. Known also as the Syrian Gates, the Belen Pa.s.s was the doorway into Syria and it was also the northern frontier of Outremer. Sometime in the 1130s the task of defending the pa.s.s was given to the Templars. Their key fortress was Baghras, built high above the pa.s.s itself, and the Templars built several others in the Ama.n.u.s mountains. These castles formed a screen across the northern frontier where the Templars ruled as virtually autonomous border lords, effectively independent of the Princ.i.p.ality of Antioch.

The Templars also took charge of the Kingdom of Jerusalem's southern frontier with Egypt when they were made responsible for Gaza during the winter of 114950. Gaza was uninhabited and ruinous at this time, but the Templars rebuilt a fortress atop a low hill and slowly the Franks revived the city around it. This was the first major castle in the Kingdom of Jerusalem that the Templars are recorded as receiving, and its purpose was to complete the blockade of Ascalon ten miles to the north, a small patch of territory on the Mediterranean coast still held by the Fatimids. Ascalon had long been the base for Muslim attacks on pilgrims coming up the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem or descending to the river Jordan, and in 1153 the city finally fell to Baldwin III, the king of Jerusalem. The Templars played a prominent part in this triumph, for they were first into the breach when a section of the walls came down, yet William of Tyre was predictable in turning this against them when he claimed in his chronicle that their eagerness was due to their greed for spoils. In fact the Templars lost forty or so knights in the attack, and their Grand Master lost his life.

Another vital strategic site as well as an important spot for pilgrims was Tortosa (present-day Tartus) on the Syrian coast. Said to be the place where the apostle Paul gave his first ma.s.s, a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary was built there in the third century, long before Christianity was officially tolerated within the Roman Empire, and it contained an icon of the Virgin said to have been painted by Saint Luke. To help the pilgrims who came to pray, the Crusaders built upon this history with the construction of Our Lady of Tortosa in 1123, an elegant cathedral which architecturally marks the transition from the Romanesque to the Gothic. But in 1152 Nur al-Din captured and burnt the city, leaving it deserted and destroyed; and as the County of Tripoli lacked the means for its restoration, Tortosa was placed in the care of the Templars, who greatly improved its defences, building a ma.s.sive keep and halls within a triple circuit of tower-studded walls, and with a postern in the seawall enabling the city to be supplied from sea.

The strategic significance of Tortosa was that it stood at the seaward end of an opening in the range of coastal mountains which runs back into the interior towards the Muslim city of Homs. Towards the eastern end of this Homs Gap, as it is called, and towering high above the route between the interior and the sea, is the great castle of Krak des Chevaliers gained by the Hospitallers in 1144, while in the mountains between Krak and Tortosa is the castle of Chastel Blanc, now known as Safita, already in the hands of the Templars some time before 1152. From the roof of the ma.s.sive keep at Chastel Blanc can be seen both Krak des Chevaliers to the east and the Templar castle of al-Arimah to the west on the Mediterranean coast just south of Tortosa. In short the Templars, together with the Hospitallers, entirely controlled the one important route between the interior of Syria and the sea. Moreover, they did so with sovereign rights within their territories, having been granted full lordship over the population of their estates, the right to share in the spoils of battle, and the freedom to have independent dealings with neighbouring Muslim powers.

In the 1160s the Templars took over further castles, this time across the Jordan river at Ahamant (present-day Amman) and in Galilee at Saphet (also called Safad) to which was added Chastellet in 1178. Gaza, Ahamant, Saphet and Chastellet were all within the Kingdom of Jerusalem but close to its borders where they served defensive purposes. Chastellet covered Jacob's Ford, the northernmost crossing point of the river Jordan, previously a weak point where Saladin came down out of Damascus and made easy raids against the Christians. So alarmed was Saladin when the Templars installed themselves at Chastellet that he immediately attacked, failing in his first attempt in June 1179 but two months later storming the castle and taking seven hundred prisoners whom he then slaughtered, although the Templar commander threw himself to his death to avoid capture.

More centrally placed was La Feve at the crossroads of the route between Jerusalem and Acre via Galilee. Acquired by the Templars in about 1170, it served as a major depot for arms, tools and food, and it housed a large garrison. It was later the launching point for the expedition that led to the disastrous defeat at the Springs of Cresson on 1 May 1187, a foreboding of the catastrophe at Hattin.

As well as fighting in the defence of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Templars continued to fulfil their original role of protecting pilgrims coming up to the holy sites at Jerusalem from the ports of Acre, Haifa and Jaffa, or going down from Jerusalem to the Jordan river. One of the duties of the Templar commander in Jerusalem was to keep ten knights in reserve to accompany pilgrims to the Jordan and to provide a string of pack animals to carry food and exhausted travellers. The Templars had a castle overlooking the site at the Jordan river where Jesus had been baptised, to protect not only pilgrims but also the local monks after six of them were gratuitously murdered by Zengi.

The acquisition of castles was accompanied by lands which helped to support them, especially around Baghras, Tortosa and Saphet. In these areas the Templars held many villages, mills and much agricultural land. The details are lacking because of the destruction of the Templar archives on Cyprus by the Ottoman Turks in the sixteenth century. But from what can be pieced together it seems that the orders between them, the Hospitallers and the Templars, may have held nearly a fifth of the lands in Outremer by the middle of the century, and by 1188, the year of the Battle of Hattin, something like a third.

Merchant Bankers Europe's Original Financiers The Templars became Europe's first bankers, a development unintended and unforeseen yet one that arose naturally out of their situation. From their inception the Templars were an international organisation. Their purpose was in the Holy Land but their support came from Europe where they held land, collected t.i.thes and received donations from the pious. They organised markets and fairs, managed their estates and traded in everything from wool and timber to olive oil and slaves. In time they built up their own formidable Mediterranean merchant fleet capable of transporting pilgrims, soldiers and supplies between Spain, France, Italy, Greece and Outremer.