Knights Templar
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In 1119, nine knights arrived in Jerusalem with almost nothing but a vow to protect pilgrims on the road to the Holy City. Within two centuries they had become the most disciplined fighting force in Christendom and the inventors of an international banking system centuries ahead of its time. Yet it wasn't a rival army that ended them, it was a debt-ridden king and a fabricated set of charges, making the Knights Templar one of history's great stories of power built and power.
I present you 10 questions to fully understand this iconic warrior unit.
Who founded the Knights Templar?
The order began around 1119, when a French knight named Hugues de Payens and eight companions presented themselves to King Baldwin II of Jerusalem. They proposed a new kind of religious community, one that combined the vows of a monk with the sword of a soldier. Baldwin granted them quarters on the Temple Mount, on the site believed to be the ruins of Solomon's Temple, which gave the order its name: the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon.
What was their original purpose?
The roads to Jerusalem after the First Crusade were dangerous, and Christian pilgrims travelling from the coast were regularly robbed or killed. The first Templars styled themselves as armed protectors of these pilgrims, a small band living under vows of poverty with almost no resources of their own. Their founding mission was modest and practical rather than grand, a response to an immediate security problem rather than a plan for the vast institution the order would become.
How did they become an order of the Church?
Their transformation owed much to Bernard of Clairvaux, the most influential churchman of his generation, who championed their cause at the Council of Troyes in 1129. Bernard wrote In Praise of the New Knighthood, a text that reconciled the apparent contradiction of monks who killed by arguing that violence in defence of Christendom earned merit before God rather than sin. With papal backing secured soon after, the Templars became an official military religious order answerable directly to the pope.
What made them wealthy?
Donations of land, money, and privilege poured in from pious nobles across Europe eager to support the defence of the Holy Land. The order used this wealth to build an early banking network, holding deposits, issuing letters of credit, and moving funds securely between kingdoms through its network of preceptories. A pilgrim could deposit money with the Templars in Paris and withdraw the equivalent in Jerusalem, a service that made the order indispensable to monarchs and merchants alike.
What was daily life like within the order?
Full members lived under a strict rule modelled on Cistercian monastic practice, with fixed hours of prayer, communal meals, and vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Knights wore a white mantle marked with a red cross, while sergeants and other lower ranks wore black or brown. The order maintained its own internal hierarchy and discipline, with a Grand Master at its head answerable to a general chapter, and infractions of the rule carried defined penalties.
How did they fight on crusade?
Templar knights formed a disciplined core within crusader armies, trained to hold formation under pressure and charge only on command, a level of coordination that most feudal levies could not match. They garrisoned key fortresses across the Latin East, including Safed and the fortress of Chastel Blanc, and their presence often anchored the defence of the crusader states through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Their reputation for discipline made them feared opponents on the battlefield.
Why did King Philip IV turn against them?
By the early fourteenth century the crusader states had fallen and the order's original purpose had largely disappeared, leaving a wealthy, autonomous institution with no clear future role. Philip IV of France was deeply in debt, partly to the Templars themselves, and faced a papacy weakened enough to be pressured. Seizing the order's assets offered him an immediate financial solution, and he moved against the Templars with the same ruthlessness he had shown towards other perceived threats to his authority.
What charges were brought against them?
On Friday 13 October 1307, Philip had every Templar in France arrested in a single coordinated action. Under torture, many confessed to charges including heresy, idol worship, and obscene initiation rites, confessions that were later retracted by prisoners who insisted they had spoken only to end the pain. Historians today regard the substance of these charges as fabricated, though the confessions gave Philip the legal pretext he needed to proceed against the order.
How were they suppressed? Pope Clement V, under sustained pressure from Philip, formally dissolved the order at the Council of Vienne in 1312 rather than allow the scandal to continue unresolved. Templar properties across Europe were largely transferred to the rival Hospitaller order, though Philip retained a significant share of French assets for the crown. The suppression ended two centuries of institutional continuity in a matter of a few years, dismantling a network that had spanned the length of Christendom.
What happened to Jacques de Molay? Jacques de Molay, the order's last Grand Master, spent seven years in captivity before being burned at the stake in Paris in March 1314. According to tradition he retracted his earlier confession at the moment of execution and declared both king and pope would soon answer for their injustice before God. Philip IV died within the year and Clement V died within weeks, a coincidence that fed centuries of legend about a Templar curse.
Why do the Templars deserve a card?
The Templars embody a fusion that medieval Christendom rarely managed successfully: the discipline of the cloister bound to the discipline of the battlefield. They built an international financial system centuries ahead of its time, held the frontier of the crusader states for generations, and were destroyed not by their enemies in the field but by the debts and ambitions of a Christian king. Few orders compress so much power, faith, and betrayal into two centuries of history.
The Knights Templar are part of Volume III