The Poor
Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, mainly known as the
Knights Templar, was a military
order of the Catholic faith, and one of the wealthiest and most popular
military orders in Western Christianity. They were founded c. 1119,
headquartered on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and existed for nearly two
centuries during the Middle Ages.
Officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church by such
decrees as the papal bull Omne datum optimum of Pope Innocent II, the Templars
became a favored charity throughout Christendom and grew rapidly in membership
and power. The Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red
cross, were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades. They were
prominent in Christian finance; non-combatant members of the order, who made up
as much as 90% of their members, managed a large economic infrastructure
throughout Christendom. They developed innovative financial techniques that
were an early form of banking, building a network of nearly 1,000 commanderies
and fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land, and arguably forming one of
the world's earliest multinational corporations.
The Templars were closely tied to the Crusades. As they
became unable to secure their holdings in the Holy Land, support for the order
faded. Rumors about the Templars' secret initiation ceremony created distrust,
and King Philip IV of France, while being deeply in debt to the order, used
this distrust to take advantage of the situation. In 1307, he pressured Pope
Clement V to have many of the order's members in France arrested, tortured into
giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake. Under further pressure,
Pope Clement V disbanded the order in 1312. The abrupt disappearance of a major
part of the medieval European infrastructure gave rise to speculation and
legends, which have kept the "Templar"
name alive into the present day.
Names
The Poor
Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Latin: Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique
Salomonici) are also known as the Order
of Solomon's Temple, and mainly the Knights
Templar, or simply the Templars.
The Temple Mount where they had their headquarters had a
mystique because it was above what was believed to be the ruins of the Temple
of Solomon. The Crusaders therefore referred to the Al-Aqsa Mosque as Solomon's
Temple, and from this location, the new order took the name of Poor Knights of
Christ and the Temple of Solomon, or "Templar"
knights.
History
Rise
After the Franks in the First Crusade captured Jerusalem
from the Fatimid Caliphate in 1099 AD, many Christians made pilgrimages to
various sacred sites in the Holy Land. Although the city of Jerusalem was
relatively secure under Christian control, the rest of Outremer was not.
Bandits and marauding highwaymen preyed upon these Christian pilgrims, who were
routinely slaughtered, sometimes by the hundreds, as they attempted to make the
journey from the coastline at Jaffa through to the interior of the Holy Land.
In 1119, the French knight Hugues de Payens approached King
Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and proposed
creating a Catholic monastic religious order for the protection of these
pilgrims. King Baldwin and Patriarch Warmund agreed to the request, probably at
the Council of Nablus in January 1120, and the king granted the Templars a
headquarters in a wing of the royal palace on the Temple Mount in the captured
Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The order, with about nine knights including Godfrey de
Saint-Omer and André de Montbard, had few financial resources and relied on
donations to survive. Their emblem was of two knights riding on a single horse,
emphasizing the order's poverty.
The impoverished status of the Templars did not last long.
They had a powerful advocate in Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a leading Church
figure, the French abbot primarily responsible for the founding of the
Cistercian Order of monks and a nephew of André de Montbard, one of the
founding knights. Bernard put his weight behind them and wrote persuasively on
their behalf in the letter "In
Praise of the New Knighthood", and in 1129, at the Council of Troyes,
he led a group of leading churchmen to officially approve and endorse the order
on behalf of the church. With this formal blessing, the Templars became a favored
charity throughout Christendom, receiving money, land, businesses, and
noble-born sons from families who were eager to help with the fight in the Holy
Land. At the Council of Pisa in 1135, Pope Innocent II initiated the first
papal monetary donation to the Order. Another major benefit came in 1139, when
Innocent II's papal bull Omne Datum Optimum exempted the order from obedience
to local laws. This ruling meant that the Templars could pass freely through
all borders, were not required to pay any taxes and were exempt from all authority
except that of the pope.
With its clear mission and ample resources, the order grew
rapidly. Templars were often the advance shock troops in key battles of the
Crusades, as the heavily armored knights on their warhorses would set out to
charge at the enemy, ahead of the main army bodies, in an attempt to break
opposition lines. One of their most famous victories was in 1177 during the
Battle of Montgisard, where some 500 Templar knights helped several thousand
infantry to defeat Saladin's army of more than 26,000 soldiers.
"A Templar Knight
is truly a fearless knight, and secure on every side, for his soul is protected
by the armour of faith, just as his body is protected by the armour of steel.
He is thus doubly armed, and need fear neither demons nor men."
―Bernard of Clairvaux, c. 1135, De Laude Novae Militae – In Praise of
the New Knighthood
Although the primary mission of the order was militaristic,
relatively few members were combatants. The majority acted in support positions
to assist the knights and manage the financial infrastructure. The Templar
Order, though its members were sworn to individual poverty, was given control
of wealth beyond direct donations. A nobleman who was interested in
participating in the Crusades might place all his assets under Templar
management while he was away. Accumulating wealth in this manner throughout Christendom
and the Outremer, the order in 1150 began generating letters of credit for
pilgrims journeying to the Holy Land: pilgrims deposited their valuables with a
local Templar preceptory before embarking, received a document indicating the
value of their deposit, then used that document upon arrival in the Holy Land
to retrieve their funds in an amount of treasure of equal value. This
innovative arrangement was an early form of banking and may have been the first
formal system to support the use of cheques; it improved the safety of pilgrims
by making them less attractive targets for thieves, and also contributed to the
Templar coffers.
Based on this mix of donations and business dealing, the
Templars established financial networks across the whole of Christendom. They
acquired large tracts of land, both in Europe and the Middle East; they bought
and managed farms and vineyards; they built massive stone cathedrals and
castles; they were involved in manufacturing, import and export; they had their
own fleet of ships; and at one point they even owned the entire island of
Cyprus. The Order of the Knights Templar arguably qualifies as the world's
first multinational corporation.
From the mid-12th century on, the Templars were forced
(jointly with the Knights Hospitaller) to actively involve themselves in
anti-Muslim military activities in the Iberian Peninsula. Prior to this time,
human resources were exclusively dedicated towards the extraction of resources
to send to the Latin East. In the kingdoms of Castile and León, they obtained
some major strongholds (such as Calatrava la Vieja or Coria), but the fragility
of their positions along the border was exposed upon Almohad offensive. In
Aragon, the Templars seized the possessions of the Order of Mountjoy in the
late 12th century, becoming an important vanguard force in the border, while in
Portugal they were charged with operating some castles along the Tagus line.
One of these was Tomar, which was unsuccessfully sieged by the Almohad Caliphate
in 1190.
Due to the economic drain caused by sending a third of their
revenues to the East, Templar and Hospitaller activities in the Iberian
Peninsula were nonetheless at a disadvantage with respect to the Hispanic
military orders, which were able to entirely devote their resources to the
region.
Decline
In the mid-12th century, the tide began to turn in the
Crusades. The Islamic world had become more united under effective leaders such
as Saladin, and the reborn Sunni regime in Egypt. Dissension arose among
Christian factions in and concerning the Holy Land. The Knights Templar were
occasionally at odds with the two other Christian military orders, the Knights
Hospitaller and the Teutonic Knights, and decades of internecine feuds weakened
Christian positions, both politically and militarily. After the Templars were
involved in several unsuccessful campaigns, including the pivotal Battle of
Hattin, Jerusalem was recaptured by Muslim forces under Saladin in 1187. The
Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II reclaimed the city for Christians in the Sixth
Crusade of 1229, without Templar aid, but only held it for a little more than a
decade. In 1244, the Ayyubid dynasty together with Khwarezmi mercenaries
recaptured Jerusalem, and the city did not return to Western control until 1917
when, during World War I, the British captured it from the Ottoman Empire.
The Templars were forced to relocate their headquarters to
other cities in the north, such as the seaport of Acre, which they held for the
next century. It was lost in 1291, followed by their last mainland strongholds,
Tortosa (Tartus in present-day Syria) and Atlit (in present-day Israel). Their
headquarters then moved to Limassol on the island of Cyprus, and they also
attempted to maintain a garrison on tiny Arwad Island, just off the coast from
Tortosa. In 1300, there was some attempt to engage in coordinated military
efforts with the Mongols via a new invasion force at Arwad. In 1302 or 1303,
however, the Templars lost the island to the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate in the
siege of Arwad. With the island gone, the Crusaders lost their last foothold in
the Holy Land.
With the order's military mission now less important,
support for the organization began to dwindle. The situation was complex,
however, since during the two hundred years of their existence, the Templars
had become a part of daily life throughout Christendom. The organization’s
Templar Houses, hundreds of which were dotted throughout Europe and the Near
East, 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, such as by working at a Templar farm or vineyard, or using the order
as a bank in which to store personal valuables. The order was still not subject
to local government, making it everywhere a "state
within a state" – its standing army, although it no longer had a
well-defined mission, could pass freely through all borders. 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 Baltic and the Knights Hospitaller
were doing in Rhodes.
Arrests, charges and
dissolution
In 1305, the new Pope Clement V, based in Avignon, 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 criminal charges that had
been made two years earlier by an ousted Templar and were being discussed by
King Philip IV of France and his ministers. It was generally agreed that the
charges were false, but Clement sent King Philip a written request for
assistance in the investigation. According to some historians, Philip, who was
already deeply in debt to the Templars from his war against England, decided to
seize upon the rumours for his own purposes. He began pressuring the church to
take action against the order, as a way of freeing himself from his debts.
At dawn on Friday, 13 October 1307 – a date, that helped
influence the superstition, but not necessarily the origin, of the popular
stories about Friday the 13th – King Philip IV ordered de Molay and scores of
other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The arrest warrant started
with the words: "Dieu n'est pas
content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume" ("God is
not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom").
Claims were made that during Templar admissions ceremonies,
recruits were forced to spit on the Cross, deny Christ, and engage in indecent
kissing; brethren were also accused of worshipping idols, and the order was
said to have encouraged homosexual practices. Many of these allegations contain
tropes that bear similarities to accusations made against other persecuted
groups such as Jews, heretics, and accused witches. These allegations, though,
were highly politicized without any real evidence. Still, the Templars were
charged with numerous other offences such as financial corruption, fraud, and
secrecy. Many of the accused confessed to these charges under torture (even
though the Templars denied being tortured in their written confessions), and
their confessions, even though obtained under duress, caused a scandal in
Paris. The prisoners were coerced to confess that they had spat on the Cross.
One said: "Moi, Raymond de La Fère,
21 ans, reconnais que [j'ai] craché trois fois sur la Croix, mais de bouche et
pas de cœur" ("I, Raymond de La Fère, 21 years old, admit that I have
spat three times on the Cross, but only from my mouth and not from my
heart"). The Templars were accused of idolatry and were charged with
worshipping either a figure known as Baphomet or a mummified severed head they
recovered, amongst other artefacts, at their original headquarters on the
Temple Mount. Some have theorized that this head might have been believed to be
that of John the Baptist, among other things.
Relenting to King Phillip's demands, Pope Clement then
issued the papal bull Pastoralis praeeminentiae on 22 November 1307, which
instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize
their assets. 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, having appointed the archbishop of Sens,
Philippe de Marigny, to lead the investigation, 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, 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.
Templars being burned
at the stake
As for the leaders of the order, the elderly Grand Master
Jacques de Molay, who had confessed under torture, retracted his confession.
Geoffroi de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, also retracted his confession and
insisted on his innocence. Both men, under pressure from the king, were
declared guilty of being relapsed heretics and sentenced to burn alive at the
stake in Paris on 18 March 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 legend, he called
out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him
before God. His actual words were recorded on the parchment as follows: "Dieu sait qui a tort et a péché. Il va
bientôt arriver malheur à ceux qui nous ont condamnés à mort" ("God
knows who is wrong and has sinned. Soon a calamity will occur to those who have
condemned us to death"). Clement died only a month later, and Philip
died while hunting within the same year.
The remaining Templars around Europe were arrested and tried
under the Papal investigation (with virtually none convicted), absorbed into
other Catholic military orders, or pensioned off and allowed to live out their
days peacefully. By papal decree, the property of the Templars was transferred
to the Knights Hospitaller except in the Kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and
Portugal. Portugal was the first country in Europe where they had settled,
occurring only two or three years after the order's foundation in Jerusalem and
even having a presence during Portugal's conception.
The Portuguese king, Denis I, refused to pursue and
persecute the former knights, as had occurred in some other states under the
influence of Philip & the crown. Under his protection, Templar
organizations simply changed their name, from "Knights Templar" to the reconstituted Order of Christ
and also a parallel Supreme Order of Christ of the Holy See; both are
considered successors to the Knights Templar.
Chinon Parchment
In September 2001, a document known as the Chinon Parchment
dated 17–20 August 1308 was discovered in the Vatican Archives by Barbara
Frale, apparently after having been filed in the wrong place in 1628. It is a
record of the trial of the Templars and shows that Clement absolved the
Templars of all heresies in 1308 before formally disbanding the order in 1312,
as did another Chinon Parchment dated 20 August 1308 addressed to Philip IV of
France, also mentioning that all Templars that had confessed to heresy were "restored to the Sacraments and to the
unity of the Church". This other Chinon Parchment has been well known
to historians, having been published by Étienne Baluze in 1693 and by Pierre
Dupuy in 1751.
The current position of the Roman Catholic Church is that
the medieval persecution of the Knights Templar was unjust, that nothing was
inherently wrong with the order or its rule, and that Pope Clement was pressed
into his actions by the magnitude of the public scandal and by the dominating
influence of King Philip IV, who was Clement's relative.
Organization
The Templars were organized as a monastic order similar to
Bernard's Cistercian Order, which was considered the first effective international
organization in Europe. The organizational structure had a strong chain of
authority. Each country with a major Templar presence (France, Poitou, Anjou,
Jerusalem, England, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Tripoli, Antioch, Hungary, and
Croatia) 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 in the East and their
financial holdings in the West. The Grand Master exercised his authority via
the visitors-general of the order, who were knights specially appointed by the
Grand Master and convent of Jerusalem to visit the different provinces, correct
malpractices, introduce new regulations, and resolve important disputes. The
visitors-general had the power to remove knights from office and to suspend the
Master of the province concerned.
No precise numbers exist, but it is estimated that at the
order's peak, there were between 15,000 and 20,000 Templars, of who about a tenth
were actual knights.
Ranks within the
order
Three main ranks
There was a threefold division of the ranks of the Templars:
the noble knights, the non-noble sergeants, and the chaplains. The Templars did
not perform knighting ceremonies, so any knight wishing to become a Knight
Templar had to be a knight already. They were the most visible branch of the
order, and wore the famous white mantles to symbolize their purity and
chastity. 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 non-noble families were the sergeants. They brought
vital skills and trades from blacksmiths and builders, including administration
of many of the order's European properties. In the Crusader States, they fought
alongside the knights as light cavalry with a single horse. Several of the
order's most senior positions were reserved for sergeants, including the post
of Commander of the Vault of Acre, who was the de facto Admiral of the Templar
fleet. The sergeants wore black or brown. From 1139, chaplains constituted a
third Templar class. They were ordained priests who cared for the Templars'
spiritual needs. All three classes of brothers wore the order's Red Cross.
Grand Masters
Starting with founder Hugues de Payens, the order's highest
office was that of Grand Master, a position which was held for life, though
considering the martial nature of the order, this could mean a very short
tenure. All but two of the Grand Masters died in office, and several died
during military campaigns. For example, during the Siege of Ascalon in 1153,
Grand Master Bernard de Tremelay led a group of 40 Templars through a breach in
the city walls. When the rest of the Crusader army did not follow, the
Templars, including their Grand Master, were surrounded and beheaded. Grand
Master Gérard de Ridefort was beheaded by Saladin in 1189 at the Siege of Acre.
The Grand Master oversaw all of the operations of the order,
including both the military operations in the Holy Land and Eastern Europe and
the Templars' financial and business dealings in Western Europe. Some Grand
Masters also served as battlefield commanders, though this was not always wise:
several blunders in de Ridefort's combat leadership contributed to the
devastating defeat at the Battle of Hattin. The last Grand Master was Jacques de
Molay, burned at the stake in Paris in 1314 by order of King Philip IV.
Conduct, costume and
beards
Bernard de Clairvaux and founder Hugues de Payens devised a
specific code of conduct for the Templar Order, known to modern historians as
the Latin Rule. Its 72 clauses laid down the details of the knights' way of
life, including the types of garments they were to wear and how many horses
they could have. Knights were to take their meals in silence, eat meat no more
than three times per week, and not have physical contact of any kind with
women, even members of their own family. A Master of the Order was assigned "4 horses, and one chaplain-brother and
one clerk with three horses and one sergeant brother with two horses, and one
gentleman valet to carry his shield and lance, with one horse". As the
order grew, more guidelines were added, and the original list of 72 clauses was
expanded to several hundred in its final form.
The knights wore a white surcoat with a red cross, and a
white mantle also with a red cross; the sergeants wore a black tunic with a red
cross on the front and a black or brown mantle. The white mantle was assigned
to the Templars at the Council of Troyes in 1129, and the cross was most
probably added to their robes at the launch of the Second Crusade in 1147, when
Pope Eugenius III, King Louis VII of France, and many other notables attended a
meeting of the French Templars at their headquarters near Paris. Under the
Rule, the knights were to wear the white mantle at all times: they were even
forbidden to eat or drink unless wearing it.
The red cross that the Templars wore on their robes was a
symbol of martyrdom, and to die in combat was considered a great honour that
assured a place in heaven. There was a cardinal rule that the warriors of the
order should never surrender unless the Templar flag had fallen, and even then
they were first to try to regroup with another of the Christian orders, such as
that of the Hospitallers. Only after all flags had fallen were they allowed to
leave the battlefield. This uncompromising principle, along with their
reputation for courage, excellent training, and heavy armament, made the
Templars one of the most feared combat forces in medieval times.
Although not prescribed by the Templar Rule, it later became
customary for members of the order to wear long and prominent beards. In about
1240, Alberic of Trois-Fontaines described the Templars as an "order of bearded brethren";
while during the interrogations by the papal commissioners in Paris in
1310–1311, out of nearly 230 knights and brothers questioned, 76 are described
as wearing a beard, in some cases specified as being "in the style of the Templars", and 133 are said to have
shaved off their beards, either in renunciation of the order or because they
had hoped to escape detection.
Initiation, known as Reception (receptio) into the order,
was a profound commitment and involved a solemn ceremony. Outsiders were
discouraged from attending the ceremony, which aroused the suspicions of
medieval inquisitors during the later trials. New members had to willingly sign
over all of their wealth and goods to the order and take vows of poverty, chastity,
piety, and obedience. Most brothers joined for life, although some were allowed
to join for a set period. Sometimes a married man was allowed to join if he had
his wife's permission, but he was not allowed to wear the white mantle.
Legacy
With their military mission and extensive financial
resources, the Knights Templar funded a large number of building projects
around Europe and the Holy Land. Many of these structures are still standing.
Many sites also maintain the name "Temple"
because of centuries-old association with the Templars. For example, some of
the Templars' lands in London were later rented to lawyers, which led to the
names of the Temple Bar gateway and the Temple Underground station. Two of the
four Inns of Court which may call members to act as barristers are the Inner
Temple and Middle Temple – the entire area known as Temple, London.
Distinctive architectural elements of Templar buildings
include the use of the image of "two
knights on a single horse", representing the Knights' poverty, and
round buildings designed to resemble the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in
Jerusalem.
Modern organizations
The Knights Templar was dismantled in the Rolls of the
Catholic Church in 1309. Following the suppression of the Order, a number of
Knights Templar joined the newly established Order of Christ, which effectively
reabsorbed the Knights Templar and its properties in AD 1319, especially in
Portugal. The story of the persecution and sudden dissolution of the secretive
yet powerful medieval Templars has drawn many other groups to use alleged
connections with them as a way of enhancing their own image and mystery. Apart
from the Order of Christ, there is no clear historical connection between the
Knights Templar and any other modern organization, the earliest of which
emerged publicly in the 18th century.
Following the dissolution of the Knights Templar, the Order of
Christ was erected in 1319 and absorbed many of the Knights Templar into its
ranks, along with Knights Templar properties in Portugal. Its headquarters
became a castle in Tomar, a former Knights Templar castle.
The Military Order of Christ considers themselves the
successors of the former Knights Templar. After the Templars were abolished on
22 March 1312, the Order of Christ was founded in 1319 under the protection of
the Portuguese king Denis, who refused to persecute the former knights. Denis
revived the Templars of Tomar as the Order of Christ, grateful for their aid
during the Reconquista and in the reconstruction of Portugal after the wars.
Denis negotiated with Clement's successor John XXII for recognition of the new
order and its right to inherit Templar assets and property. This was granted in
the papal bull Ad ea ex quibus of 14 March 1319.
Temperance movement
Many temperance organizations named themselves after the Poor
Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, citing the belief that
the original Knights Templar "drank
sour milk, and also because they were fighting 'a great crusade' against 'this terrible
vice' of alcohol". The largest of these, the International Order of
Good Templars (IOGT), grew throughout the world after being started in the 19th
century and continues to advocate for the abstinence from alcohol and other
drugs; other Orders in this tradition include those of the Templars of Honor
and Temperance (Tempel Riddare Orden), which has a large presence in
Scandinavia.
Self-styled orders
The Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem
(French: Ordre Souverain et Militaire du Temple de Jérusalem, OSMTJ; Latin:
Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani, OSMTH) is a self-styled order
which was publicly disclosed in 1804 and "accredited
as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) by the UN in 2001". It is
ecumenical in that it admits Christians of many denominations in its ranks.
Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat, a Johannite, who refused to acknowledge the
authority of the Catholic Church, created the OSMTJ (modern-day schisms have led
to SMOTJ). Fabré-Palaprat made himself the Grand Master of the Templars and
Sovereign Pontiff of his own church. He produced the Larmenius Charter in 1804
with a claim of succession to the original Templar Order, however, there are
doubts to this claim.
On the other hand Templari Cattolici d'Italia traces their
roots back to the Italian Templars that separated from the French Templars that
followed Fabré-Palaprat. The Italian Templars continued their allegiance to
Catholicism. On March 1, 1815, the Grand Priory of Italy proclaimed its
independence from Fabré-Palaprat and his French Templars under the claims of
the French Priory's deviation from Templar tradition. From 1816 to 1866, the
Italian Temple found itself under the struggles for Italian independence in the
war between the Piedmonts and the Austrians in 1848-49. In 1867, after the
establishment of the Kingdom of Italy, the Italian Temple, taking into account
a new era, established its tradition amid a different world. However, there
were internal qualms within the Italian Temple, as certain figures like Gastone
Ventura, left the Catholic Church, and converted to Martinism.
Freemasonry
Freemasonry has incorporated the symbols and rituals of
several medieval military orders in a number of Masonic bodies since at least
the 18th century. This can be seen in the "Red
Cross of Constantine," inspired by the Military Constantinian Order;
the "Order of Malta,"
inspired by the Knights Hospitaller; and the "Order of the Temple", inspired by the Knights Templar.
The Orders of Malta and the Temple feature prominently in the York Rite. One
theory on the origin of Freemasonry claims direct descent from the historical
Knights Templar through its final fourteenth-century members who were thought
to have taken refuge in Scotland and aided Robert the Bruce in his victory at
Bannockburn. This theory is usually rejected both by Masonic authorities and
historians due to lack of evidence in regards to the connections.
Modern popular
culture
The Knights Templar has been associated with legends
circulated even during their time. Masonic writers added their own speculations
in the 18th century, and further fictional embellishments have been added in
popular novels such as Ivanhoe, Foucault's Pendulum, and The Da Vinci Code;
modern movies such as National Treasure, The Last Templar, Indiana Jones and
the Last Crusade; the television series Knightfall; as well as video games such
as Broken Sword, Deus Ex, Assassin's Creed and Dante's Inferno.
There have been speculative popular publications surrounding
the order's early occupation of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as well as
speculation about what relics the Templars may have found there. The
association of the Holy Grail with the Templars has precedents even in
12th-century fiction; Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival calls the knights
guarding the Grail Kingdom templeisen, apparently a conscious fictionalization of
the templarii.
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