In Our Time - The Knights Templar

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the military order founded around 1119, twenty years after the Crusaders captured Jerusalem. For almost 200 years the Knights Templar were a notable fighting force and financial power in the Crusader States and Western Europe. Their mission was to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land, and they became extremely wealthy yet, as the crusader grip on Jerusalem slipped, their political fortune declined steeply. They were to be persecuted out of existence, with their last grand master burned at the stake in Paris in 1314, and that sudden end has contributed to the strength of the legends that have grown up around them.WithHelen Nicholson Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff UniversityMike Carr Lecturer in Late Medieval History at the University of EdinburghAnd Jonathan Phillips Professor of Crusading History at Royal Holloway, University of LondonProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programs. Hello, for 200 years, the Knights Templar were a major fighting at financial power in the Crusader states and in Western Europe. They were founded around 1119, 20 years after the Crusaders captured Jerusalem,

with a mission to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land. They became extremely wealthy, yet as the crusaded grip on Jerusalem slipped, their political fortune declined, and they were persecuted out of existence. Their last grandmaster burnt at the stake in parish in 1314, surviving only in legend. With me to discuss the Knights Templar are

Helen Nicholson, Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University, Mike Carr, a lecturer in late medieval history at the University of Edinburgh, and Jonathan Phillips, of crusading history at Royal Holloway University of London. Jonathan. What was his status of the Holy Land in 1119? How secure was the crusaders hold on it? The First Crusade had captured Jerusalem in 1099 and succeeded in establishing what we call the crusader states in the Near East. But those first 20 years were very difficult. They were incredibly short of manpower, a very tenuous hold really on the coastal strip of the Near East. And what that

meant is that when Western Europeans were coming over to the Holy Land to fulfil their spiritual vows, and in a sense to fulfil the whole raison d'etre of the First Crusade, to be able to visit the holy places, they were quite vulnerable. So people in Jerusalem looking, for example, to go to the River Jordan were being attacked by Muslims from, say, Damascus and the general vicinity, and also attacked by wild animals as well. So it's a dangerous, dangerous environment to be in. The figure of Hugh Dupan emerges here. Who was he? And what was the problem he set out to solve? Hugh was a nobleman from Champagne and he's in the Holy Land

and he can see that there's this real difficulty. Pilgrims are being killed in hundreds on occasion. There's one 300 times 300 of massacres. Yeah, and that prompts a reaction. How can we do this? In a sense, it's bad publicity for the Christian hold of the Holy Land. Come and fulfil your spiritual interests, but you'll be killed. So he wants to protect these people

And with a group of fellow knights They go and talk to the patriarch of Jerusalem And the King of Jerusalem, Baldwin the 2nd And they say we would like to form an association And start protecting these pilgrims The interesting thing is how quickly Was it quickly? They became a band of men

Why did he recruit from and how big was the band? Early on in the Holy Land Their numbers are pretty small Such as? Maybe between six or 30 I mean really sort of quite small numbers Although some Western visitors, they've obviously got some prestige. You find that Cantor's Champagne comes over in 1125,

and he spends a year or so with them. So they've got some cachet. But to take off, they need to go to Western Europe and to recruit some supporters, and they also need to get some approval from the religious authorities to be a sworn association, a religious group. So that takes us to you, Helen Nicholson. Why are they called the Templars?

Because they were given the Akska Mosque, which the Crusaders identified as the Temple of Solomon. And so they became the knights of the Temple of Solomon, which is shortened to the Templars. It seems a big gift, isn't it, to get the Temple of Solomon. It was a royal palace. If you're on the Muslim side, the Al-Axam Mosque is, of course, terribly important. It's in the Quran. And so when the counter-crusay, the anti-Franchish jihad, is picking up momentum, you've got these groups who are occupying, polluting, if you like,

one of Islam's very holy places. So while they are also very much in the frame because they are sworn enemies of Islam, the fact that they are based in that particular site, I think is something that is occasionally picked up by the religious classes. Bernard of Clairfaux was very important in the early days, a mighty man in the church in Europe.

Why was he persuaded that he should lend his authority, which he did, and his influence to them. Bernard was a local man for the Templars, at least for Hugh de Pange, because he was from Burgundy, from Dijon, not that far away from Toir and Pang, but he was Abbott of Clairville,

a new Abbey of the Cistercian Order, which in fact Bernard had been instrumental in setting up, which is very close to Tois and therefore very close to Pange. He may have been related to Hugh, he was certainly his neighbour, and in fact, Bernard's uncle, Andrew of Montbard had joined the order of the temple, so he had personal connections with the Templars as well.

Hugh wrote to Bernard, or perhaps he asked him face-to-face, and asked him to write in support of the Templars. And Bernard hesitated for a while, he said. He had written widely on spiritual matters, but now he was being asked to write in support of this new military religious order, which although the church had approved Christian warriors in the form of the Crusade, this was now a permanent order where members were joining for life. So it was slightly different from crusading.

But what Bern had produced was a letter in praise of the new knighthood, which provided a spiritual justification for what the Templinus were doing, describing them as being both monks and knights, emphasising that they followed the life of monks in their homes, living an austere life, simple food, simple clothing, spending their time constructively and in prayer. and yet also fighting bravely on the battlefield, not, says Bernard, like secular knights

with all their ostentation and their magnificent clothes and their lovely hair. No, the Templars don't wash, their hair is cut short, imagine them with half-beards and rusty armour, and they don't spend all their time paying attention to appearances. These are real knights fighting for Christ, defending Christians. Can you give a list as an outline of the rule of the order that it was meant to live by

because it's part monastic and part warrior, wasn't it? It was, and it was drawn up at the Council of Trois, so here we are again in Champagne in 1129, and Bernard was one of the people at that council who helped to put it together. So the rule is indeed partly monastic,

that some of the clauses are straight out of the rule of St. Benedict. Such as? Well, for example, a very simple example, nobody is allowed to write a letter without permission of the abbot. And the usual thing is chastity, and that sort of Yes, the brothers of the order will also have to take the three monastic vows of no personal property, poverty, and, yes, chastity, no sex at all. And obedience to, if it was a monastic order, it would be the abbot within the order of the temple.

It's to the grandmaster, but in fact to the master of their house wherever they are. But then they pick up their swords, whenever they got time to get them de-rusted and get going? They follow the monastic day, but there are certain periods within that day where there is nothing set. down for them to do apart from reading and study. And whereas monks would be expected to study or write, the Templars would be out. We presume training, although the rule doesn't say as much, looking after their equipment, talking to their assistance, checking their horses and making sure that all is well so that if they are called on, and of course the original Templars in Jerusalem might be called on at any

moment to go out and join battle, they're ready to go. We see of them in robes which are called their armour with a distinctive red cross there. Where did that come from? That didn't originate in the rule. The rule laid down that the knights would wear a white mantle or a white covering on their armour.

We assume that this is what's assumed. And non-nights wore black or brown. The red cross was given to them later by the Pope before the Second Crusade and was placed on the left breast of the mantle. Thank you very much. My car. We see them as soldiers, or we know who they're soldiers,

but they also capture, get hold of the biggest ship in the Mediterranean. They have to shift goods from Western Europe to the Holy Lands going east. They become sailors. And how did that happen? In the 12th century, they expand their possessions in the West very dramatically. And one of the challenges they face is how do they link up their Western properties and their Western houses with the East? How do they supply the Crusader states with men and money?

provisions, horses, war materials, weapons, things like that, that they need to sort of sustain their military activities in the Crusade Estates. And originally they rely on the Italian merchants to do this in the 12th century. But in the 13th century, the Templars developed their own kind of maritime arm. They have their own ships by around 1207 that were operating in the Mediterranean. And then by the midpoint of the century, they have small fleets of galleys, which are participating in crusades and providing logistical support for the Crusades in the East.

And then also later on in that century, they're helping shipping pilgrims from west to east, from Apulia, from Marseilles, places like that, and even have ships operating in the North Sea in the Bay of Biscay, the Channel and places like that too. Why didn't they get the money for all this? Well, really from their Western houses,

so from donations of property, also land, valuable items and things like that. And that's really where they get their wealth from. Because they combine this monastic ideal with the defence of the faith and protection of pilgrims, they're sort of a really popular order for people, especially knights who are interested in crusading and defence of the faith to donate their money

and donate their lands too. And we've talked about, alluded to the ships, we're going to get on to their fighting. But they became bankers as well on a very big scale. How did that crop up? So this is sort of connected with the maritime side and communication networks that they established. So if you're going on Crusade, you'll need to do two things probably. First of all, you want to leave your possessions in a safe place before you go.

The Templar houses are very well suited to that, so they become safe deposits for valuable items. Templar houses were? In the West. Yeah, so in the point of departure. And in addition to this, if you're going to go on Crusade, it's probably going to be very expensive. So you might need to borrow money. You could borrow money off the Templars. and also they can transfer it long distances overseas.

So instead of carrying money with you across the Mediterranean, which is risky for many reasons, you could get a credit note from the Templars like a medieval travellers check, go to Aker or wherever it is that you land in the Levant, cash that credit note in the local currency there and spend it. So they develop this form of international monetary transfer because of the networks that they have stretching around Europe in the Mediterranean.

Jonathan, can we talk in a bit more detail now about what they are warriors in battle and extraordinarily powerful and formidable? So can you just talk about them as warriors and what they did and how they did it? They are highly regarded as warriors. As an organisation, they're very wealthy, which means they've got castles. They've also got access to the best kit. It means that they're well supplied, well organised, they've got lots of horses, they've got good chain mail, They've got good support staff, if I could put it like that. So they have the background and the capability to be highly effective.

But also they've got their motivation. These men are sworn to the defence of the Holy Land. So they are very, very motivated as warriors. They're not afraid of dying. They're comfortable with the idea of martyrdom. But also from the rule, we know that they are highly, in theory, highly disciplined. So in a battle, they will break into squadrons of 10, They're very well organised. You don't go until you're told to go.

And when you go onto the field of battle, you try and stay in these squadrons. And that all sounds, you know, easy, that happens to be easier said than done. But if you're a group of secular knights in the West, that's not something that comes easily. I mean, a lot of them are looking to impress or they're not used to working together as a group. It's the coherence of the Templars that makes them dangerous. And Saladin found that out very particularly in Eleleine. In the Great Saladin, yes. In 1177 he's beginning to flex his muscles and draw together parts of the Muslim Near East. And he tries to attack the Franks, the Crusaders, at a place called Montges-Zard.

And he comes badly unstuck. He's not very well organised, and the Templars and a commentator writes, as one man smashed into Saladin's troops and fairly nearly killed him. Pretty early on in his story. and that was really a demonstration of their strength and their ability. That said, it doesn't always work as neatly and as nicely, and there are occasions when sometimes through perhaps the rashness of an individual leader or the miscalculation of a grandmaster, they get things wrong. Ten years later, there's a battle at a place called Cresson.

There's only about a hundred-odd templars there and almost 7,000 Muslims. and the marshal of the Templar says, I think we should probably leave, but the Grandmaster Gerard de Rieffel refuses. And it's interesting that he effectively commits them to a near suicidal conflict. But he's doing that because of his own sense of honour. He taunts the man who suggests they should leave.

We do not do this. And so they engage in this battle. Almost all of them are killed, ironically, except Gerard. And what effect does that have on them? Are they, because they lose in such a foolish, it will seem, way. Does their prestige go down? It's a yes and no answer. In some ways, yes, clearly they've made a mistake in those instances,

but some people would see them as heroes and martyrs for fighting so nobly in that way. It's a little more, just a little more about the fighting. You've talked about formation, and in close formation, they rode 300 of them as worn man, as worn horse and mine. Was that an advance for the time? Was anybody else doing that? The mounted charge is something that Western Europe is familiar with

and it's the main way that Western Europeans fought. But to be able to pull it off is an incredibly difficult thing to have that relationship between those different groups. But because they are a single organisation, it means that they do have the opportunity to practice and to obey a leader. and to have these structures that make them much more coherent. The catch is that when you're in the Near East,

the Muslims there, are not necessarily going to fight in the same way as Western Europeans. So you have to learn to adapt a little bit to the local conditions. If you want your big charge to work, your opponents have got to be there waiting for you to hit. And fairly quickly they realise that it's not a good idea. So they do need to have some more lightly armoured troops to be a bit more flexible. Thank you, Helen, Helen, Eglinson. They were run by the masters, grandmasters.

What part did they play? Well, the master or grandmasters, they become known, as the order became bigger, were the chief executives of the order. So they represented the order at royal courts, before the Pope, to the general culture, public. And they held authority over the order under God. So when the master was elected, he was through the electoral procedure was deemed to have been appointed by God and not just by the order. So in theory, therefore, all authority in the order comes from the master and it's a very top-down organisation, which for a military group is a good idea because you want somebody who's clearly in command.

Now, obviously the master is not always there, so he has to delegate authority and there are other people within the order who he has to work with who also hold. authority. And unlike the hospitalers who did have some very severe arguments between the high officials within the order, the Templars and their officials generally got on. The grandmasters also led the order in battle if they were present. So, for example, at Cresson, as Jonathan was explaining, it was the Grandmaster, Gerard de Riddford, who had to make the final decision on the charge. From looking at contemporary reports, which is not the one that Jonathan was just using, It would appear that the Templars and the hospitalers were more or less taken by surprise, so the decision had to be made very quickly.

And obviously afterwards, there was criticism of that decision, but they didn't really have a choice because if they hadn't charged at that point, they would probably be being killed anyway. What was, Tony Q, Mike, was there a public view about the Templars at this stage when they're winning and losing battles, back in Europe, in France particularly, but in Europe, let's say Western Europe, did they say we've got the Templars? The Templars are doing that. Have you heard the news about the Templars? So the perception of the Templars in the West is an interesting one.

On the one hand, they're sort of seen as fulfilling their objectives and achieving these great military victories. However, they are also criticised, as Jonathan and Helen alluded to, for example, at the Battle of Crescent. And then similarly, at the Battle of Hatten, a few months after that, Gerard de Riddifor is sort of blamed for giving bad advice to the king at the time, which leads to the Frankish defeat. I suppose the reputation of the Templars and the perception of them in the West does deteriorate as a consequence of that. There's lots of debates, and Helen will probably confirm this, about when exactly the perception of the Templars changes in the West,

whether it's sort of contemporary or if it's sort of later on in the 13th century that people start to see them in a more negative manner. Helen, has you been referred to? I've been referred to, yes. And that, again, at Hattin, the question is, is it Gerald who's giving bad advice out of malice? Or is it because the other advice? Why out of malice? Well, because there was an argument going on as to who effectively was king of the kingdom of Jerusalem.

Is it Gai of Lusignan, who is king crowned, or the count of Tripoli, Raymond, who had an alliance with Saladin and may have wanted to be king, and that's who's being accused of by people in the West. So Guy was asking for advice. Gerald de Riddford told Guy that he couldn't trust Raymond to Tripoli because Raymond was a traitor. And therefore anything that Raymond said must be a lie. So when Raymond said that we should stop and not advance further towards Tiberius, which was under siege from Saladin,

it's my castle, he says, but I can afford to lose it and my wife is defending it. And Gerald says, don't believe this man, you can't trust him. He's a traitor. And Guy was left trapped between these two conflicting views. so eventually he made the decision to advance and it's been pointed out that in fact a few years earlier he had failed to advance and at fact at that point Saladin had to withdraw

but he had been severely criticised for that in 1187 he advanced and they lost the battle so Guy of Luselang could have said he couldn't win whatever he did but in the West at that point there was considerable debate over whose fault the loss to Saladin was and we could argue that in fact if they hadn't been beaten by Saladin

in Hattin. They would have been beaten a few months later. This was a battle Saladin needed to win. So he was going to come back. Jonathan. But I broaden it out from beyond just decisions and individual commanders at individual battles. I make the point that in the 12th century, and most of the 13th century, this is a group who is widely supported across Western Europe. Donations are coming in. They have huge land holdings across the medieval West. and those continue to receive support. So it's regardless of individual errors, should we say, as a concept, Western Europe very much continues to buy into the Templars

and other military orders as well. Is this partly because of family relations as well? I'm not being second right of, I mean, because their sons are there, their cousins are there, it's becoming international concern. It absolutely isn't. It's a multinational. But you're right to indicate that there are,

There are family traditions, there are what you might call Templar families, emerge in the course of the history of the 12th and the 13th century. So you get used to providing support for an institution. Or there's a Templar house next to your lands that you start growing more comfortable with and affiliated with in different ways. So I think when we think of the Templars, we very much, I suppose the first thing that comes to people's mind are the battles and the castles and things like that. but I think it's important to remind ourselves

that that's really the sort of the tip of the iceberg and they are a very, very big, highly visual concern across Western Europe. Who did they answer to these Templars? The Templars ultimately answer to the Pope. And that, because they're a religious order. And that starts creating tensions. Isn't it complicated the fact that they're killing people? The fact that they're killing people is being accepted in the existence.

of the rule. The rubicon of Christian holy violence has been crossed with the First Crusade and with the acceptance of the rule of the temple, the idea of a monastic organisation doing that has also been crossed. But their ultimate authority is the Pope. Yet you've got the tension that's beginning to emerge that in, say, the crusade estates, they've been given important castles and the lands around them. They are effectively independent and wealthy, actors out there. If the King of Jerusalem makes a deal with, say, Saladin, they don't need to keep it. It's up to them. So it's one of these, the emerging tensions that will eventually play out in their downfall in the 14th century, their relationship with sovereign authorities

who like to have ultimate power, and yet you've got this wealthy, strong group of, rather potentially very independently minded. And they're wheeling around the, let's call it, the Holy Land all the time. How successful are they in helping the pilgrims, in shielding the pilgrims? In the Holy Land, the Templars are pretty successful at what they achieve. They do look after pilgrims. They do enable them to visit the holy places. But they're also important in holding castles and territories, particularly perhaps say on the more what you might call border regions of the Frankish possessions. And there's an instance in 1178 when the King of Jerusalem is building a castle, just on the river Jordan, threatening Saladin's hold of Damascus,

and he gives it to the Templars because they're strong and they are going to be able to really worry the Muslims. How are the numbers of the Templars kept up, Helen? Well, as Jonathan's been talking about their reputation in the West, they're very widely admired, and the Templars also send regular news reports to the West to their supporters and kings, popes, bishops. So in the West, potential recruits are kept informed

of what the Templars are doing, If you had a religious vocation, then you could go into a monastery and spend your life in prayer and contemplation. But if you had an active turn of mind, if you were a warrior and used to serving with your sword, then the Templars will be a more obvious religious order to join. And for those who there was no inheritance, third and fourth sons, you might be sent into the church. Why not go and join the Templars? You can use your sword in God's service. and indeed you might find yourself a very nice position at the papal court or to royal court

because of the Templar's widespread influence, there are possibilities to be working as an ambassador or indeed as a treasurer. I think the Templars just look exciting to people in the West. So they don't hear so much of the West about people being massacred on the battlefield and it's only after the final fall of Acre in 1291 that in the West the Templar families start to worry about the fact that the people, young men are going out to the east and not coming back. Clearly, it would appear the Templars were not that good at informing people what had happened to their relatives.

In any case, the Templars continued to recruit right up to after the arrests in France, because at least one of the brothers in England, who was interrogated during the proceedings against the Templars, had joined around Christmas 307, whereas the Templars in France had been arrested in October 307. So the Templar's international reputation capped whatever might be happening to them locally. As Jonathan was talking about Templar families, these, yes, families have a tradition of people entering the order. But then people might also be told to enter

because they'd committed some crime in the West and that would be their punishment to join the Templars, go overseas, fight for God, and pay back for your crime that way. It would also appear from comments in the admission ceremony that some people join to travel because the admission ceremony warns potential members

that they might not get to go where they wanted to go. They might not go to Jerusalem. We might send you to Armenia. My car, and in 1291, the temple is relocated to Cyprus. What was going on with the King of France at this time and the Pope that could have a bearing on this?

Yeah, so at the turn of the century, the 14th century, the big conflict emerges between Philip the 4th of France and Pope 1.5th, is the 8th. And the origins of this are fairly mundane. It's about clerical taxation, essentially. But this really... It's about money, very essentially, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. I mean, the temples of lent Philip, an enormous amount of money. And then he wants it back. Or he doesn't want it back. He doesn't want... He wants their possessions. He wants to keep their money.

And the conflict with the papacy. So yes, it's connected as money, but also just over who has authority over the church in France, essentially. And anyway, this comes to a head around, in 1303, when the French king and his advisers accused the Pope of heresy and send a small army to arrest him with the intention of deposing him at a Nanyanyi in the papal states where the Pope is residing. The army reached the Pope. They rough him up a bit. He manages to escape, but two weeks later he dies of shock.

The French, for their part, are excommunicated for this, but they don't back down. And what they do is they draw up a dossier of crimes which the Pope had committed during his lifetime, including sodomy and various acts of sexual impropriety, idol worship. Are these true or not? Well, some people believe them to be true, and these accusations of heresy were quite widespread at the time. But I think there's obviously other things are going on there,

demon worship, sorcery, things like that. And what the king does is he uses this dossier as a sort of threat to subsequent popes, and especially Clement V, during the trial, that, look, I have not been able to. been afraid to use physical violence against the previous Pope or to accuse him of heresy. And it's this sort of, this shadow which hangs over papal French relations during the trial, which is really important to consider. Jonathan, the Templars had amassed an enormous mother wealth. Didn't that help to protect them when they were being attacked?

What did they do with it? What did they do with their money generally is to amass themselves a very considerable land empire in Western Europe? Empires may be too strong a word, but series of land holdings, which they would then use to send money to the Holy Land. That's the purpose of them becoming wealthy. Obviously, they are personally poor, but as an institution, they're extremely rich. And from these donations and then acquiring more lands exchanging, they build up coherent bodies of territory, if you like, that become financially efficient. And they're meant to send one third of their profits to the Holy Land to keep it. going, either in cash or in kind. So that is what the money is useful. I mean, you can see it in England, for example. You've got the Temple Church in London, you go into Bristol on the train,

you go into Temple Meese Railway Station, you've got Temple Cloud on the edge of Bristol. It's not all corporately labelled, but there are quite a few places in England still with the name Temple. So you can see that they've got these holdings that enables them to keep their focus in the Holy Land going. So that is what the money's used for. The slippage is beginning to happen now, isn't it? They're not as powerful as they were about now. Can you give us a date? Well, the problem in a sense that they have is that their vocation is the defence of the Holy Land. And in 1291, the Mamluks defeat them and capture the city of Acre, which near enough

marks the end of the Crusader States, the Christian presence in the Near East. Acres that important, does it? It is, absolutely. It is. It is. an enormous city, effectively it's been the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem for decades, and it's the scene of a very, very dramatic last stand in 1291. Who's standing last? Well, the military orders are there at the end

in their great fortresses, the Templar fortress in Acre, and the hospital are compound in Acre, and there's very dramatic scenes as the Mamluks break into these places, and the survivors flee by ship to Cyprus and that is it. So the Templars, in a sense, having sort of said, well, you need to give us your men and your money

because we will look after the holy places have failed in that respect. Of course, it's much more complicated, the reasons why that's happened, many, many reasons. But in terms of their sort of headline task, they've not succeeded. And that is what makes them vulnerable. And then all the other things that you have around

of perhaps accusations of, excess wealth, of greed, of avarice, and you throw in the political things that Mike has been talking about, and they're in trouble. Helen, Helen Nicholson, did Philip V. Fourth have much to do with the end, the destruction of the Templars, as we have known them in this conversation? Arguably, it's Philip the Fourth who is to blame for the fall of the Templars, and it's not a great deal to do with the Templars, as in Philip had used the same charges against the Pope, as we were here.

hearing from Mike and against other groups or individuals within the Kingdom of France whose disappearance would be to his convenience. So, for example, against the Lombards, he's confiscated their wealth. Against the Jews, again, he confiscated their wealth. And then the Templars who had considerable properties and he needed the money, but also removing the Templars would show that he was in control of the church. and prove his piety, if he was removing them as heretics, he accuses them of heresy,

and we will abolish this terrible heretical group who is threatening France spiritually. In order to avoid God's wrath falling on our kingdom, we must get rid of these people. But this was basically to keep his money, wasn't it? It's to get the money. Some contemporaries also said that he had hopes of taking over the whole crusading movement

and making himself king of Jerusalem, or making one of his son's king of Jerusalem. That may just have been a malicious rumor, but it shows a sort of reaction among contemporaries that they could really comprehend what Philip was up to or thinking. Why attack the Templars? Okay, they had their faults. We've been hearing about them.

But overall, these are pious, brave men who are still trying to organise a new expedition to recover the holy places in the east. What is Philip doing? But Philip argues that these men are guilty, of blasphemy, spitting on the cross, sodomy, worshipping idols, described as a head during the course of a trial. As a matter of fact, the Templars did venerate heads. They were the heads of saints, as was common Catholic practice at the time, venerating saints' heads, which were sometimes in monstresses which had several faces, which again, when the temples were accused of worshipping a three-faced idol, the people who were describing this were probably thinking of a three-faced idol. reliquary. But the reason that these charges were successful was that he had the Templars arrested

and forced into confession through torture or the threat of torture, which the Templars were not able to stand up against. Well, I say they weren't, but actually of 138 Templars interrogated in Paris between October and November 307, contemporaries reported that 36 died rather than confessed to anything. So actually, that's probably 36 more than the 138. And the other two of whose testimoners we have didn't actually confess to anything much. So some Templars did resist, but they died. Can I switch over to Mike? How did this persecution develop?

The accusations against the Templars, the heretical accusations, they have a sort of a long history. And really, Philip, as Helen alluded to, has been accusing various groups of heresy throughout his reign. And one of the things was that they let them start. so that they could die without shedding Christian blood. Is that true? Yes, they were accused of that, and it may in fact be true, yes. True.

Because there is a case mentioned in the course of the regulations where Templars who were guilty of killing Christians were locked up in prison and left to die. And again, during the course of the trial, the former commander of Ireland had been accused of stealing from the order. he was brought back to London for trial by the order and the testimony is during the course of the trial in England.

Everybody denied that they knew anything about it, but at the same time nobody actually denied that he was starved to death because of what he'd done to the order. Jonathan. But I think the point, we're talking about the inquisition against the Templars in France, it's important to note that across Western Europe, this whole series of accusations is largely met with scorn, and disbelief.

They can see that Philip is doing it for financial reasons. The Templars are still regarded, notwithstanding the loss of ACA pretty positively, and we know what's going on here. And torture is not used in most other places. They're not even allowed to interrogate the Templars. So we have to draw that very, very clear distinction. What happened?

Let's come back to you, Mike. What about the land that they had, the properties they had, were they forced to return those or went to the state or the king or whatever it was? So in France, Philip is essentially after their land. But the papacy actually manages to resist this and the Pope instructs that the properties of the Templars will instead be transferred to the hospitlers. Not another, they're another outfit, really. Yes, yeah, exactly. And irrespective of this, the Crown still manages to maintain a hold of quite a lot of the of the temple of possessions, and it takes several years for these to be transferred across to

the hospitlers. In other regions outside of France, in England, in Spain, the monarchs do get hold of some of the temple of possessions. Also, other local military orders within Spain absorbed some of the possessions as well. So it's sort of a mixed bag, depending on where we're looking at. It seems that this grand, wonderful order, which had everything, as it were, the monastic, and the warrior defending the pilgrims of the Holy Land, just collapsing petty persecution. Well, not petty, but yeah, okay, petty persecution. Yes, very, very quickly.

Yes. Why did it do so very quickly? Well, taking out the Grandmaster was key. Yeah. Because Jacques de Moley as Grandmaster had ultimate authority in the order, once Philip's minions had forced him into a confession, the other brothers were left at a quandary. Do they follow the Grandmaster?

Or do they... What did he confess to? He confessed to some of the charges. He later said he'd been tortured. And at the very end, he went back on everything and said that he was innocent. He had not done any of the things they were accused of. And it was because they had been forced into confessions. But then if the rest of the brothers in the situation of, do they go along with the grandmaster,

or do they say that they're innocent? As a matter of fact, as Jonathan said, outside France, the brothers just said, we didn't do anything, this thing. We don't know nothing at all about this. And it's only in France where they were tortured that the inquisitors were able to get confessions. John? I mean, the other thing is that the King of France has got the Pope in his pocket.

He's bullying the Pope, so in a sense their great protector is not able to do his job. But, okay, as you rightly said, the Templars are broken very, very quickly. But alongside that, this concept of the warrior monk, the military order that the Templars represent, there are many other groups

that we haven't talked about, such as the Knights Hospitaller, and then there are military orders in Spain, the Teutonic Knights in the Baltic, and the hospitlers themselves survive for centuries. So the concept of the warrior monk is one that is very, very durable and very effective on the borders of Christendom

for centuries to come. So it's just the one organisation we need to be clear has been taken down. Why were the Templars picked out, we come to the end now, why were the Templars then picked out for destruction, as it were? It's financial. And it's all the, I mean, a lot of the things that Jonathan mentioned, that Philip needs their money. He's not afraid to oppose the Pope. He's already arrested and seized the goods of other minority groups within this kingdom. And the Templars are in the line of those groups. So it just makes sense to take them down, really, even though contemporaries are caught off guard by this. And they are particularly vulnerable because they had been set up to defend the holy places and they had lost acre, even though they had been.

in an impossible position, they arguably wasn't possible to hold it. And their parallel organisation, if you like, the hospitalers have another vocation. It's in the title, hospital. They have the medical vocation and that in a sense gives them a sort of rationale to keep going. And also in 1306, the hospitalers conquer roads. So at precisely the time where the temples are about to be arrested, the hospitalers get out of France, they take on a new military objective in the eastern Mediterranean and they're seen in the west to be doing things to be fighting for the faith, and the Templars aren't,

and essentially that is one of the reasons that makes them so vulnerable. What happened to the rag-tag and bobtail of the Templars when they were finally broken up? They got old and died. It's what you ask. Well, the ones who were in England were sent off to various monasteries, originally singly, but then eventually the Pope relented and allowed them to be pairs or a few of them together,

and they were supposed to do penance. We don't actually know how much penance they did, particularly as they denied all charges. In Ireland, they were allowed to go back to their own houses, and we don't know much more about them than that because the records haven't survived, but they were being paid pensions by the hospitlers. So the hospitals, as well as getting the land,

also got the obligation to paying the former Templars pensions for the rest of their lives. Some Templars in Italy seem to just gone home to their families. Did the idea of the Templars continue anywhere? Mike. You have the people who, writing in France, and taking the pro-Franco line who buy into this idea that they were heretical

and rightfully suppressed. But then you all, and this continues, you know, for several centuries. And then also you have those authors who are very critical of what's happened to them and see them as being unfairly suppressed order that, you know, is very honourable and so forth. But then in the 18th and 19th centuries,

you'd sort of have a third school of thoughts when the Freemasons get hold of the Templar history and co-opt it into their own myth-history. And this is when you have a weird sort of conflation of ideas of temperate guilt, that they were doing things that were unorthodox, for example, practicing magic. But this wasn't heretical. This was actually a good thing. And they were somehow shielding this special knowledge from the corrupt papacy and the French monarchy. And it's at that point that you start to see weird pseudo history woven into Templar history.

So you have this memory of the Templars. It's sort of completely manufactured, really, which is really. created in the 18th and 19th centuries and really persist to this day. Thank you all very much indeed. Thanks Helen Nicholson, Mike Carr, Jonathan Phillips, and our studio engineer Donald MacDonald. Next week, it's the French painter Bertin Moriso and her central role in the Impressionist Movement.

Thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. We could point out that as the templars had been abolished, There were no Templars there to defend their reputation. So for the other religious orders, anyone that came up with stories like this would probably find themselves on the courts,

but there's no one to defend the Templars. So you can weave what you like around them. Are they actually the Masons originally used the hospitalists, don't they? That's where the idea comes from. And then they realise, well, it's not going to work for the hospitalists because they can just disprove all this nonsense. So the Templars are chosen instead.

Does it surprise you that Templars have retained such a romantic image over the centuries? Sometimes it's a negative image. Walter Scott, you know, if you look at things like Ivanhoe, they are very much the baddies in that. So it's certainly an image. I suppose because, you know, they died out in the 14th century, it allows you to paint on what you would like. And so you can use their memory and legacy

in all sorts of different ways. Did Scott have good resource documents? Scott was quite serious about his research, but in the sense he's writing in the 19th century and how he views crusading, chivalry is much more important to him. That in a sense is what appeals to him rather than sort of superstition as he might see it.

Was there anything like it sprung up again, more people who are monks and mores at the same time? Well, we've got to point to the Buddhist muckers. in Japan who would go out and fight or employ soldiers to fight on behalf of their monastery, which was happening at the same time as their military religious orders in Europe. But the military religious orders are a concept that is very durable, very popular. The Teutonic Knights basically rule parts of sort of the Baltic states in later centuries. They're crucial to the culture and the political and religious existence in the Iberian Peninsula for centuries.

So they are, as an idea, it works very well. I mean, you could argue that the Teutonic Knights and the hospital has become more powerful in the 14th and 15th centuries, if any things. Up to you. I was going to change direction, is that okay? We were talking about the Alaksam mosque and the fact that the Templars are based there. When we think of the Templars, I suppose we think of them as warriors

and as fighting Islam and a very sort of clash of civilisations view of them. and that may be true institutionally. But there are moments we find in some contemporary sources where that's not necessarily the case. There's an interesting story from the 1140s when again actually Jerusalem and Damascus are looking to make an alliance against another Muslim power. And there's a wonderful character called Osama Ibn Mukhid,

who is a poet and a scholar and a diplomat. And he comes to Jerusalem and he decides he would like to pray in the Alaksa. And a newly arrived crusader comes over and starts pushing him around. What are you doing here? You shouldn't be here, get out. And he says that his friends, the Templars, told him, told the Westerner to stop. And it's always the newcomers are the worst. They're the dangerous ones because, of course, they've come over, you know, fired up with Holy War.

And the reality is, even for these couple of Templars, that you have to coexist. And they're comfortable with the idea of giving Osama, who is at the... the time, as I say, a diplomat access to the Alaksa Mosque or their own headquarters. And I think that's a really interesting anecdote that we should always remember that it is not a simple clash of civilisations. And the complexities and the contradictions of human relations as against perhaps institutional conflicts or religious conflicts are more twisted than we'd like to think. Did the collapse of the Templars mean that the Muslims felt more in charge? I'm not sure how much notice the Mamluk took of the collapse of the order,

except there is a story that the Mamluk Sultan in Egypt had some Templars who were in his prisons brought out, and he asked them if they would now like to convert to Islam, because apparently the order was great heretics, and they replied, no. They were good Christians, and they were remaining Christians. But of course, they hadn't got rid of the hospitlers, who were now based on roads. will continue to be a headache for the Mamluks in the eastern Mediterranean for some centuries to come. So I think probably for the Mamluks of Egypt,

it didn't make a great deal of difference that the Templars as an order had gone, but they'd seen the back of them some years earlier, and they still had the hospitalists there. But earlier on, the Templars were very much seen as a terrible menace after the Battle of Hatene, Saladin has them rounded up. He will pay people 50 Egyptian dinars for bringing a Templar or a hospital a prisoner to him. And a couple of days after the battle, over 200 are executed in cold blood by his holy men.

And Saladin who we associate... And the heads chopped off. Yeah, they're slaughtered. Yeah, they're slaughtered. And we associate Saladin with mercy and his negotiating a peaceful surrender to Jerusalem him in 1187 in contrast to the horrors of the First Crusade in 1099. But in this instance, he's been building up the pressure of the need to take on the Christians, to defeat them, and he's built up this atmosphere of holy war,

that in a sense he has to then, I suppose, release that on this group who are seen to symbolise Christian strength and Christian militarism at its apex. They are, of course, Christendom's best soldiers as well, and one of his secretary says, we don't want to just put them in prison. We want to get rid of them. So there's two elements to that series of executions. Alan.

On that, that meant that he lost the ransoms he could possibly have got from these Templars and which eventually he would get a ransom for the Grandmaster because he had them executed. So it is a great gesture and also a sacrifice on his part that he had them executed and paid for them, paid their ransom himself. I was rather sorry that Saladin didn't play a bigger part in this story

he's always been a rather romantic figure, hasn't it Saladin? We could have a later story because later on during the Third Crusade he actually asked the Templars if they would guarantee an agreement between him and Richard the Lionheart and the Templars refused at which point Saladin said in that case I'm not going ahead with it. But he sees them as more reliable.

He says they are men of sincere religion so he has got a perception of them. Okay, they're a menace, but in a sense they're straight, if you see what I mean, I can trust them. And it's through their faith. So again, a sort of sense of admiration from his particular perspective. Well, thank you very much. And here comes the man. Does anyone want to your coffee?

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