by B. Stone

Created on: June 10, 2009   Last Updated: June 23, 2009

The Knights Templar were the greatest military order of the Crusades. Like their contemporaries, the Hospitallers, the Teutonic Knights, and other smaller orders, the Knights Templar existed during an era when the sword was used to defend Christendom. Christian Europe had an awakening when the Muslim invaders conquered Northern Africa and entered into Spain. Then when the Christian Byzantian Emperor asked for help against the invading Seljuk Turks, the crusading spirit was ignited. Europe believed they should rule the Holy Lands, where Christian pilgrims had been traveling for hundreds of years to visit the highly revered holy relics of Christendom. The lands of Palestine, Antioch and Tripoli, known as Outremer (the land beyond the seas) became the battle ground for the Holy Wars. This period, starting with the First Crusade, began in the waning years of the 11th century and ended with the close of the Seventh Crusade in 1291. The Templars came to an abrupt ending 23 years later when the last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the cross in France, charged with being a relapsed heretic.

The legendary military order, first called the Order of Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon, was started by the French nobleman Hugues de Payen around 1119 in Jerusalem to protect the Christian pilgrims that were coming in large numbers from Europe to the now-Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.

At the end of the First Crusade twenty years earlier, the Holy City fell under Christian ownership for the first time in centuries. Pilgrims would visit The Holy Places, such as Sepphoris, the place of the Virgin Mary's childhood, the Nativity site in Bethlehem, the River Jordan, where Christ was baptized by John the Baptist, and others. In medieval times, making a pilgrimage to Jeruselum, as difficult and costly a journey as it was, was a highly revered and noble task. It was a way to gain absolution and to prove devotion to Christ for the poor and nobles alike. The pilgrims became easy prey of bands of robbers in the lands of Outremer. Some were Saracens, but others were former crusaders. In 1119, a group of 700 pilgrims were attacked by Saracens. 300 were killed, and another 60 became slaves.

Hugues brought together a group of nine knights to counteract this aggression. Like the Hospitallers who were formed a few years earlier to take care of wounded pilgrims, their purpose was a benevolent and honorable one. They were the escorts of European Christianity, and protectors

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