by Alwin Templar

Created on: March 18, 2008

* The Foundation of the Order

Around the year 1119 Jerusalem was an underpopulated and impoverished city. It had been captured twenty years before by the forces of the First Crusade and a Christian king ruled over the Latin Kingdom (one of four crusader states), but its only real lifeblood was the pilgrim trade and there were relatively few pilgrims owing to the dangers posed by bandits and thieves on the road from the coast.

Deliverance (of a sort) was on hand when the King, Baldwin II, was approached by a French knight called Hugues de Payen. The King was told that Hugues and a group of fellow knights (between nine and thirty; accounts vary) had each made a perpetual vow to renounce worldly concerns and defend the Christian kingdom. Baldwin was delighted and offered them a portion of his palace adjoining the temple of the city. Consequently the knights called themselves the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon, or the Knights Templars.

Little could realistically be achieved by such a small band of brothers so in 1126 Hugues traveled to France in order to gain recruits and seek papal approval. It was there that he joined up with the man who would become the spiritual light and patron saint of the Order, (Saint) Bernard of Clairvaux, head of the Order of Cistercians (the White Monks) and a hugely influential theologian.

Bernard organized the Council of Troyes (in Champagne) in 1128 to consider the needs of the Templars. The Council gave Hugues everything he wanted: Papal approval was granted and a Rule was drawn up (most probably by Hugues AND Bernard). The Order was now legitimized and Hugues set out on a recruiting drive, traveling throughout France, England, Spain, even as far north as Scotland. He was granted lands and bequests wherever he went and recruits flocked to join him.

The Latin Rule consisted of seventy two paragraphs (more were added throughout the life of the Order) and was heavily influenced by the Rule of Saint Benedict, which Bernard's Cistercian Order followed strictly. The Templars would essentially be a fusion of chivalry and monasticism: they would be fighting monks. The Rule opens with a plea for knights to renounce dissolute ways, embrace Christ and put their swords in his hand. The rest outlines a framework for how the brothers should live and behave. The Templar knights also imitated the Cistercians by wearing a white habit at all times.

Hugues de Payen died in 1136 and it would be under the stewardship of his successor, the second Master,

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