The Rule Of The Templars laid out how brothers of the order had to live. In summary? No sex, no personal possessions, no fun — but a lot of praying, fasting, making money and fighting infidels.
The Rule was particularly obsessed with fashion. Templar uniforms were black or white robes with a red cross on the chest. Templars knights were legendarily tough soldiers, known for their iron discipline. This evening, though, he is Hugh de Payns, a French knight who died in after establishing a military order known as the Knights Templar.
It is Memorial Day weekend and we are in a hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, where about members of the autonomous Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem have gathered to mark the th birthday of the Knights Templar.
Members of the charitable organization, known by the unwieldy abbreviation SMOTJ, regard themselves as spiritual descendants of the original Templars. No matter. The original Knights Templar—shorthand for the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem—were founded to protect Christian pilgrims on the roads of Palestine following the First Crusade; the group was named for its original headquarters on the Temple Mount.
In their day, though, the Templar organization was rich. It owned property stretching from Britain to Syria, profits from which were used to fund military expeditions in the Holy Land and charitable deeds across the West.
The order boasted considerable financial acumen, providing international banking and credit-transfer services. It counted the pope and kings of France among its clients. Templar brothers across Europe were arrested, charged with crimes including sodomy, blasphemy and worshiping false idols; they were imprisoned, tortured and forced to make false confessions.
In March a church council formally abolished the order. Its property was confiscated and its members stripped of their rank. In the last Master, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake in Paris. That grisly demise has lent the Templars lasting notoriety and a thick shrouding of myth.
The Templars have also been widely revived and imitated for purposes both benign and sinister since at least , when the Scottish Freemason Andrew Michael Ramsey wrote a pseudo-history of Masonry that claimed ties to the medieval Templars. Today Templar revivalism remains strong. Templar iconography is popular with European neo-fascists: The Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik claimed to be a Templar, and Knights Templar International is an online network that connects far-right activists, particularly in Britain.
In Mexico, a drug cartel called Los Caballeros Templarios has borrowed from Templar symbolism to create its own brand and code of honor. Templar imitation is enduringly popular but seldom historically literate. Originally, the Grand Master was the title given to the head of the entire Templar Order and was considered the commander.
It helped the Templars strike fear in the hearts of normal citizens and only aided in them obtaining and retaining power.
As time went on and it spread across the globe with dozens of outposts, the title of Grand Master was then assigned to a person considered the leader of their own Rite, a name given to regional factions inside the Templar Order. Since the Templar Order was always headed by someone in a position of power , they tended to not be as secretive and in the shadows as the Brotherhood of Assassins. In the year , the existence of the Templars became public knowledge as a result of a military order used in an attempt to protect the holy city of Jerusalem from the Saracens.
Operating in the public eye only lent to their internal belief that it was the duty and responsibility of the Templar Order to bring the world together. It may seem contrary to what they wanted that they'd embrace a public persona, but the very existence and operation of Abstergo clearly showcases that this wasn't their perspective at all.
Both the Brotherhood of Assassins and the Templar Order both want humanity to reach a point of peace in a utopian world. The difference is that the Assassins believe in the good of humanity to naturally get there, whereas the Templars believe humans must be forced in that direction and herded like sheep.
The secret order often used espionage, guerrilla tactics and targeted assassinations to further their political and religious goals and keep their mostly Sunni and Christian opponents in check rather than engaging in risky open battles. Over the course of years, they successfully killed two caliphs and many viziers and sultans, as well as Christian Crusader leaders. While there is no evidence to suggest the Assassins continued their operations, the legend is said to be a continued motivation for insurgents seeing to replicate their methods and tactics.
The historical Knights Templar, like the Assassins, came to prominence during the Crusades, but their origin starts before that. They started as a charity set up to escort pilgrims to the Holy Land. When word spread of their good deeds, the order was officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church and gained special tax concessions from the pope.
These privileges gradually allowed the simple charity to transform itself into an elite military order and by the time of the Third Crusade, the order joined the fight for the Holy Land. Known for their distinctive white cloaks decorated with a red cross, the Templar Knights were recognised as some of the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades. Non-combatant members managed a significant financial infrastructure throughout Christendom, building fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land and developing new financial techniques including an early form of banking.
The Templars were closely associated with the Crusades and when the Holy Land was lost, support dwindled. Their secretive practices became a source of suspicion and in , Philip IV of France, who was heavily in their debt, took advantage of the public mistrust to have their leaders in France arrested, tortured into giving false confessions of sedition and burnt at the stake.
Pope Clement V disbanded the order in under pressure from Philip, but rumours of their continued underground existence persist to the current day.
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