The Knights Templar
by The Knights Templars were one of the earliest of the military orders and the one on which all others are based. As soon as the First Crusade (1095-1099) was over, the Crusaders, considering their vow fulfilled, left Jerusalem and returned home. This left Jerusalem defenceless against its Mohammedans neighbours.
In 1118, Hugues (Hugh) de Payens and eight other knights took a vow before the Patriarch of Jerusalem to defend the Christian kingdom for perpetuity. Their main task was to protect Christian pilgrims who wanted to travel between Jerusalem and the banks of the river Jordan and other places sacred to their faith.
Between the years of 1118 and 1120, King Baldwin II gave them quarters in the Royal Palace on the Temple Mount (the Al Aqsa Mosque). They were so poor they had to live on alms and this gave them the name “pauvres chevaliers du temple” (Poor Knights of the Temple). For the first nine years, the Templars, as they came to be known, had only nine members. It has been said that the Templars wanted to keep their numbers small to cover up their secret mission of digging for buried treasure on temple mount but it is more likely that they had difficulty recruiting members due to the lifestyle they had adopted.
In 1128, Hugues de Payens travelled to the West to gain the approval of the church and to recruit more members. The Templars still didn’t have a distinctive habit or rule, so at the Council of Troyes, at which he assisted and the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux was the leading spirit, the Rule of St Benedict as recently reformed by the Cistercians was adopted by the Knights Templars. This added the three perpetual vows to the crusader’s vow and austere rules for chapel, refectory and dormitory. The white habit of the Cistercians was also adopted to which they added a red cross. St Bernard did a great deal to promote the Templars.
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Despite the austerity of the monastic rule, the new order gained many new recruits. This was probably due to a letter written by St Bernard to Hugues de Payens with the title “De laude novae militae” (in praise of the new knighthood). The letter swept throughout Christian lands and caused men, many of whom were of noble birth, to join the order. If they couldn’t join, men would gift the Templars with land and other valuables. Although the individual Templars were forbidden personal wealth, the Order as a whole could accept these gifts, which were put to immediate use by the Templars who farmed the land adding more wealth.
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