The Knight in History (20 page)

SYRIA AND PALESTINE

The Orders’ military power inevitably involved them in the politics of the Crusader states. They took sides in the successional disputes of the Holy Land and in political conflicts imported from Europe. Usually the Hospitalers and Templars were ranged on opposite sides. In the early thirteenth century, when the Guelf-Ghibelline (papal-imperial) quarrel manifested itself in Syria, the Templars were Guelf, the Hospitalers Ghibelline. Sometimes the quarrel went beyond words, as in the 1240s when the Orders battled alongside members of the Italian merchant communes, the Templars on the side of the Guelf Genoese and Venetians, the Hospitalers on that of the Ghibelline Pisans.

THE KRAK DES CHEVALIERS, MOST FAMOUS OF THE CRUSADER CASTLES, GARRISONED BY THE HOSPITALERS.
(FROM
A HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES,
EDITED BY KENNETH M. SETTON, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS)

The Templars’ fund-raising activities led them into an incongruous enterprise: banking.
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They began by lending money to finance pilgrims and Crusaders. The first record of a Templar loan is in 1135, to a couple who turned over their property in Saragossa, “houses, lands, vineyards, gardens, and all that we possess,” against a loan that would allow them to make their pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre. The land was to be returned when the debt was repaid, the Templars realizing the revenues of the property in the meantime.
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Thus despite the Church’s prohibition of usury, the Order received disguised interest. From this modest beginning, it was only a decade to a huge loan to Louis VII for the Second Crusade. Besides lending money to clients, the Templars guarded and transported money and valuables. Monasteries had traditionally filled these roles of moneylender and safety deposit, but the Templars, with their estates and alms, their commandery-fortresses and military strength, soon preempted the business, contributing, in the view of some historians, to the development of modern credit practices.

In Europe, both Templars and Hospitalers served as advisers, messengers, envoys, and sometimes arbiters for the kings of France, England, and Germany. In the Holy Land they practiced diplomacy not only among the Christian states, but with the Muslim powers, for others and on their own behalf. As permanent residents in Asia Minor, the Military Orders had an interest in the balance-of-power politics of strong Muslim states such as Damascus and Egypt, and did not scruple to form alliances with one or another. Consequently, despite their undisputed military skill and valor, they were often regarded with suspicion in Europe. A chronicler reported French prince Robert of Artois exclaiming, “See the ancient treachery of the Templars! The long-known sedition of the Hospitalers!”
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The Orders’ advice in councils of war often conflicted with the very aims of the Crusaders. In the Third Crusade they actually dissuaded Richard Lionheart from attempting to retake Jerusalem, and when German emperor Frederick II successfully treatied with Egypt in 1229 for the peaceful return of the Holy City, Templars and Hospitalers opposed the move. The recovery of Jerusalem was actually undesirable to them because the city, no longer fortified, was difficult to defend. Their position was somewhat vindicated when on the expiration of a truce in 1239 the Muslims easily took back the city, but in Europe the Orders were widely perceived as having “gone native.”

Some Templars and Hospitalers indeed had learned Arabic, and both Orders maintained friendly relations with Arab informants. The Syrian writer Usama (1095–1188) recounted an incident: “Whenever I went into [the al-Aqsa Mosque], which was in the hands of Templars who were friends of mine, they would put [a little chapel] at my disposal, so that I could say my prayers there. One day I had gone in, said the Allah akhbar, and risen to begin my prayers, when a Frank [Crusader] threw himself on me from behind, lifted me up, and turned me so that I was facing east. ‘That is the way to pray!’ he said. Some Templars at once intervened, seized the man, and took him out of my way, while I resumed my prayer. But the moment they stopped watching him he seized me again and forced me to face east, repeating that this was the way to pray. Again the Templars intervened and took him away. They apologized to me and said: ‘He is a foreigner who has just arrived today from his homeland in the north, and he has never seen anyone pray facing any other direction than east.’ ‘I have finished my prayers,’ I said, and left, stupefied by the fanatic who had been so perturbed and upset to see someone praying facing [Mecca]!”
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Individual members of the Military Orders passed their lives in obscurity if not anonymity. The Orders absorbed their personalities and in many cases even their names. The names of masters and many other officers of both Templars and Hospitalers, however, have been preserved, and chronicles and other records give us glimpses of their careers and sometimes of their characters. Where the family origins of Masters and other important officers can be identified, they are typically of high status, sometimes connected to royalty. Occasionally a single family produced several officers. The Milly family, from Picardy, lords of territories in the Holy Land, numbered among its members Masters of both Temple and Hospital. Another family, the Montaigus, from the Auvergne, also contributed Masters of both Orders as well as many magnates of the Church.
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In some cases it is possible to trace a career from simple brother-knight, either in Europe or Syria, to preceptor (commander) of a local unit, to more important officer—governor of one of the Order’s castles or Master of a province—to one of the major officials in the Holy Land, Seneschal, Marshal, Commander of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, or Commander of Tripoli and Antioch, and finally to Master of the Order.

As an outlet for surplus sons of knightly families, the Military Orders combined the attraction of knight-errantry with the advantages of membership in the clergy. Just as Crusading gave knights the opportunity of simultaneously exercising their profession and earning salvation, the Temple, Hospital, and Teutonic Order offered the spiritual advantages of the monastery together with the pleasures of warfare, the promise of adventure, and the charm of foreign travel. Unlike a single Crusade, the Order provided a lifelong career, with membership in an institution of great prestige.

Though originally the rules of the Orders merely stipulated that a candidate had to be a free man and legitimate, as the class system hardened during the thirteenth century, enlistments came to be limited to the sons of knights or descendants of knights on the father’s side.
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An initiation ceremony, that of Gerard de Caux, a candidate for membership in the Knights Templars at the end of the thirteenth century, has been preserved in the records of the Templars’ trial. Gerard, along with two others, was received into the Order in “the house of the Temple at Cahors, in the morning, after high mass.” The preceptor of the province, Brother Guigo Adhémar, was supported by the preceptor of a neighboring commandery, Raymond Robert; the preceptor of Cahors, Brother Pierre; a brother priest, Raymond de la Costa; and two knights of the Order, names not given. The three young men had been knighted together five days before. As the candidates waited in a room next to the chapel of the Temple, Raymond Robert and another knight approached them and asked, “Do you seek the company of the Order of the Temple and the participation in the spiritual and temporal goods which are in it?” The three replied that they did.

“You seek what is a great thing,” the brother knights continued, “but you do not know the strong precepts of the Order; for you see us from the outside, well dressed, well mounted, and well equipped, but you cannot know the austerities of the Order…for when you wish to be on this side of the sea, you will be beyond it, and vice versa, and when you wish to sleep you must be awake, and when you wish to eat you must go hungry. Can you bear these things for the honor of God and the safety of your souls?”

When the young men assented, the Templars asked a series of questions: Did they believe in the Catholic faith? Were they in holy orders or married or promised to another Order, were they of the knightly class and legitimate, had they bribed anyone to gain entrance, did they have any secret infirmity that would inhibit their service, were they in debt? Their answers being satisfactory, the Templars instructed them to turn toward the chapel and pray that with God’s will their petition be granted; then the two Templars withdrew to make their report to Brother Guigo.

After a time the Templars returned, bade the candidates take off their “caps and coifs,” and led them into the presence of Brother Guigo. They knelt before the preceptor and with clasped hands asked him “for the companionship of the Order and participation in the spiritual and temporal goods which are in it,” promising to be “serving slaves” of the Order and “to put aside our will for that of another.” Brother Guigo administered the oath: they swore obedience to the Master of the Temple and to their other superiors in the Order, promised to “preserve chastity, the good usages, and the good customs of the Order,” to live without property, to help preserve the Kingdom of Jerusalem and conquer what was not yet acquired, never to allow “any Christian man or woman to be killed, or disinherited unjustly,” to give a good account of any property of the Temple that might be entrusted to them, and never to leave the Order without permission of their superiors.

Brother Guigo accepted them into the Order, invested them with their mantles, blessed them, raised them to their feet, and kissed them on the mouth. The other Templars also kissed them. Brother Guigo then seated himself, invited the new brothers to sit at his feet, and delivered a lengthy instruction, explaining the discipline and routine of conventual life, closing with the words: “Go, God make you worthy men.”
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The new knights were furnished with clothing and equipment. Each received two shirts, a narrow-sleeved tunic to be worn over them, two pairs each of shoes and underdrawers, a long jerkin divided below the waist, a long straight cape tied or hooked at the neck, a light summer mantle, a winter mantle lined with sheeps-or lambs-wool, a broad leather belt, a cotton cap, and a felt hat. They were furnished with two towels, one for the table, the other for washing, and with bedding, including a heavy blanket, white, black, or black-and-white striped, the Templar colors. The knight sometimes wrapped himself in the blanket while riding or used it to cover his horse at night.

Their armor was also given them: mail coat and leggings, helmet, shoes, and the “coat of arms,” a white surcoat with red crosses back and front to be worn over the armor. This garment, widely copied in Europe, was evidently a borrowing from the Saracens for protection against the sun, which on a sultry day could make chain mail or plate armor burning hot. Each new knight was given a sword, a lance, and a triangular shield of wood covered with leather, as well as three knives, one of them for eating. The Order supplied its members with horses, three for each brother knight, one for a sergeant, and specified numbers for the various officers.
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In the monastic tradition, the life of the brother knight was strictly regulated by the canonical offices. Exactly as in a monastery or convent, the bell rang at midnight for matins. The knight rose from his bed, put on a mantle over the shirt and underdrawers in which he slept, donned stockings, shoes, and a cap, and joined his brothers en route to the chapel. There the knights said thirteen Our Fathers. Leaving the service, they went to the stable to see that their horses were fed and watered, observing strict silence, then returned to their cells, saying another Our Father before going back to sleep. At prime (four
A.M.
in summer, six in winter), they rose once more, dressed, and returned to the chapel to hear Mass; the canonical services of prime, tierce, and sext were then said one after the other, “for this is the custom of the House.”
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After Mass the brothers busied themselves with individual tasks.

At dinner, the first meal of the day, knights and sergeants were served first, the squires and servants afterward; in the commanderies of the Holy Land, the native light horsemen known as Turcopoles ate at a separate table. On the ringing of a bell, the knights took their places; a second bell rang and the sergeants were seated. Unlike some monastic establishments where two men shared a bowl, each knight was given a bowl and cup. He provided his own knife and spoon. The meal was not spartan; there was often a choice of meats, so that a brother who did not like beef could eat mutton; when supplies were abundant three kinds of meat might be served. If a brother did not like the appearance or aroma of the meat, he could ask for a substitute. Portions were distributed equally, and those who chanced to receive better helpings were expected to share them. The Master had the privilege of sending dishes to any of the brothers, even those who were doing penance. The leftovers were given to the poor. During the meal, the brothers preserved silence while a priest read aloud. No one left until dinner was ended “unless he had a nosebleed, and then he must return when the bleeding was staunched.”
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