Oh, Jerusalem! The Ultimate Medieval Pilgrimage

by Helena P. Schrader

Church of the Holy Sepulcher as it is Today*

Throughout the medieval period, the city in which Christ had been crucified and resurrected remained the holiest of cities and so the ultimate pilgrimage site. Particularly during the 88 years in which the city was in Christian hands, tens of thousands of Christian pilgrims flocked to the Holy Land each year to pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and visit the other sites associated with the life of Jesus. Thousands of Englishmen and women made that pilgrimage, whether as “armed pilgrims” (i.e. crusaders) or as simple pilgrims (religious tourists.)  What would they have found? What follows is a description of Jerusalem as it would have been just before it was captured by Saladin.

The Countryside to the East of Jerusalem Today

The Holy City of Jerusalem crowns a hill in semi-arid, hilly countryside and was in crusader times encircled by tall, white-stone walls punctuated with square towers, seven gates and at least three, possibly more, posterns.  To the east, south and west the slope fell away sharply, but to the north the land was fairly level. There were olive orchards dating back to the time of Christ to the East, and in the crusader period the city was probably surrounded by other kinds of orchards as well. Common at this time were citrus orchards, but figs, dates, and almonds were also cultivated to serve the urban population. Almost certainly, there were also vineyards surrounding Jerusalem during the Christian period as wine was an important product of the kingdom, necessary for the liturgy and consumed in large quantities locally.

Picture of Jerusalem’s Walls

Life within crusader Jerusalem would have been exceptionally pleasant for the period. When the first crusaders took the city by storm in 1099 they carried out a massacre of the garrison and population that — while not as apocalyptic as often portrayed — left the city largely depopulated. The policy of not allowing any Muslims or Jews to live in the Holy City further reduced the population. The early kings of Jerusalem were compelled to invite Christian settlers not just from the West but from Syria as well.  Still the population never fully recovered and is estimated to have been no more than ca. 20,000 people in the second half of the 12^th century. In consequence, Jerusalem was not densely populated and there were gardens and open spaces inside the walled city.

A Roof-top Garden in Jerusalem Today

Starting with life at the top, the religious and secular authorities both maintained palaces in Jerusalem. The patriarch’s palace was located beside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and unfortunately nothing is now left of it.  The royal family initially occupied the powerful citadel, whose oldest tower allegedly dated back to the reign of the biblical King David. However, they began construction of a “modern” palace in the first quarter of the 12^th century. Although this too has been lost to us, contemporary accounts mention that the royal palace had extensive gardens. Since it was started by King Fulk of Anjou, it was probably inspired by similar to the palaces he was familiar with in France in this period — think of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s magnificent residence in Poitiers, for example, but it would have had “Eastern” elements of design and landscaping as well.

Citadel of David — the “Old Palace”

The gardens, for example, would have included palms, citrus fruits, pomegranates and other distinctive Mediterranean vegetation, such as oleander and hibiscus. More important, this palace (like the Patriarch's) was not a fortress intended for defense (as castles in Western Europe), but rather had a purely residential and representational character. There was no need for narrow, “arrow-slit” windows or massive walls. On the contrary, the crusader states had major glass-making centers, notably at Beirut and Tyre, and glazed windows were quite common, certainly among the upper classes. So the royal and patriarchal palaces would not have been dark, dingy and smoky, as in the castles depicted in Hollywood, but rather sunny, well-lit and designed with cross-ventilation for cooling in the summers. The use of mosaic and tile floors would, furthermore, have been inherited from their predecessors (and most of the houses in Jerusalem were taken over in-tact after the Christians seized control), as was the use of slender columns, often dating from the Roman period.  

A description of John d’Ibein’s palace in Beirut dating from 1212, for example, mentions mosaic floors so lifelike the observer was afraid of leaving his foot-print in the “sand” and polychrome marble walls as well as fountains and gardens. It offered splendid views of the sea as well — so large windows.  While John’s residence was built half a century later, it was also the home of a mere nobleman rather than a king. I think we can assume the royal palace of the Jerusalem and also the Patriarch’s palace were both very luxurious indeed.

Tiles Walls Today

Besides these two main palaces, Jerusalem housed the headquarters of the Knights Templar on the Temple Mount and the headquarters of the Knight’s Hospitaller, a huge establishment that took up a large city block and enclosed four churches, wards for over two thousand patients, a hospice for pilgrims, administrative buildings, barracks, kitchens etc. These complexes were large, multi-story stone buildings, again with glazed windows, courtyards, and sanitation. The accommodation for the Master and senior officers of these powerful orders would hardly have been less luxurious than for the king and patriarch.

Temple Mount Today: 

The hexagonal building on the left was a Baptistry from Crusader Times. On the right: The "Dome of the Rock" which in Crusader Jerusalem was converted into a church and known as the Temple of God

There were also lesser palaces for nobles and wealthy merchants.  The foundations of these houses in some cases dated back to the Roman period, and many were Byzantine or Fatimid since the capture of Jerusalem had not entailed whole scale destruction of the architectural substance. Arab sources stress that even when they re-took Jerusalem in 1187 (after a siege that did entail the use of stone throwers and mining), they still found many beautiful residences with “superb columns of marble and slabs of marble and mosaics in large quantities.” (Ibn al-Athir) Much of this ornamentation would have pre-dated the Christian period, but not all of it. Certainly, many churches were built and/or re-decorated in the crusader period and many of the craftsmen came from or were trained in Constantinople or by Byzantine masters. Undoubtedly some of these craftsmen also found employment on secular as well as sacred building projects.

   Houses with Medieval Features in Jerusalem Today

Life in any medieval Christian city was, of course, characterized by the pervasive presence of the Church and nowhere — except possibly in Rome — was the Church more important than in Jerusalem. There was not just the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Calvary Chapel, but dozens of churches catering to different Christian communities, Syrian and Armenian, Greek and Maronite, as well as the Latins. There were also the two great mosques on the Temple Mount which had been converted into churches, as well as the austere but lovely Church of St. Anne (below) and many more. 

As for the bulk of the population, while accommodation would have ranged from the comfortable to the squalid as in any city in the world, nevertheless, this being an ancient, eastern city, it was well supplied with public cisterns, reservoirs, and baths. Indeed, most of the buildings in Jerusalem at this time had rain-fed cisterns to supplement the municipal water supply.  There was also a network of open and covered markets. The covered markets are particularly intriguing and parts are still standing today. They were like tunnels, often running almost the entire width of the city, with vaulted ceilings and flanked by shop after shop. The paved walkway between the shops had steps to accommodate the slope and were not suitable for horses.

Covered Market in Jerusalem

Due to the annual pilgrim traffic, Jerusalem was also a city with many hostels and taverns, and the shops of the city would have catered to pilgrims by selling all the "exotic" things pilgrims sought from relics to silk and Turkish carpets. They would have sold all the necessities for everyday living  as well: shoes, textiles, candles and soap, for example. The city had separate markets for grain, pigs, poultry, fish, herbs and spices. It had quarters for the jewelers, gold and silver smiths, for textile goods, leather goods, glass, and weapons. My favorite is the “street of bad cooking,” which was apparently a medieval precursor of “food courts” for “fast food.”

Another Street Scene in Modern Jerusalem

Last but not least, the streets must have been a veritable “tower of Babel” with the native population speaking Arabic, Greek, Armenian and French, while pilgrims came from the far corners of the earth speaking Norse, English, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, German and more.

* All photos in this entry were taken by the author in 2014.

Jerusalem is the setting for many key scenes in the first two books in Helena Schrader’s three part biography of Balian d’Ibelin, Knight of Jerusalem and Defender of Jerusalem. You can find out more about Crusader Jerusalem at http://defenderofjerusalem.com and about Helena Schrader’s books at: http://helenapschrader.com.

On the Holy Places - Jerusalem in the Early Medieval Imagination

By Mark Patton

On a recent visit to York, I found myself looking into the eyes of a (modern) bronze statue of the Roman Emperor, Constantine I, who acceded to the purple at York on the death of his father in 306 AD. He appeared to be gazing straight through me at a stone pillar that he must have known in life since it stood in the military headquarters building in which he probably gave his first imperial speech.

The statue of Constantine in Deansgate, York,
commissioned from Philip Jackson RA in 1998.
Photo: York Minster (licensed under CCA).

The Roman column at Deansgate, York,
discovered in 1969 beneath a transept of the Minster.
Photo: Stanley Howe (licensed under CCA).

Constantine would go on to make two of the decisions that shaped the world in which we live. The first, made almost certainly under the influence of his mother, Helena, was to end discrimination against the Christian Church and ultimately adopt it as the religion of the Empire. The second was to relocate the capital of the Empire from Rome to Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople. His new empire was to be an eastward-facing, rather than a westward-facing, empire, and for a Christian Emperor, this meant that it would face towards Jerusalem, the centre of the Biblical world.

Helena lost no time in travelling there and soon wrote to her son, declaring that she had discovered not only the tomb of Christ but also the fragments of the True Cross, the socket in which it had stood, and the nails by which Christ had been affixed to it. In doing so, she inaugurated and invented the institutions of pilgrimage and of the veneration of relics, which were to hold such sway over the Medieval imagination in Europe. Constantine ordered the construction of a church on the site, replacing a temple to Venus that had been built by his predecessor, Hadrian.

Saint Helena discovering the True Cross,
Italian manuscript of c825 AD,
Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS CLXV.

An early pilgrim was the 7th Century Frankish Bishop, Arculf, who, having visited Jerusalem and Egypt, was, on his return voyage, shipwrecked off the coast of Iona (one may well question the judgement of his ship's captain), and taken in by Saint Adomnan, the head of the island's monastic community, who wrote a treatise "On the Holy Places," based on Arculf's account.

Constantine's Church of the Holy Sepulchre had been badly damaged in 614 AD during a Persian invasion under Khosrau II, so the building seen by Arculf was a reconstruction. It is reasonably clear, however, that there were three elements to the original construction: a circular shrine centred on the tomb of Christ; a rectangular basilica on the site of the crucifixion; and a courtyard separating the two. Early copies of Adomnan's description, including, probably, the one that he himself gave to King Aldfrith of Northumbria, contained illustrations based on a drawing that Arculf himself had drawn on "a tablet covered with wax."

The Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem,
as described by Arculf to Admonan.
9th Century copy, Vienne, Osterreichisches
National Bibliothek, Codex 458, f4v 

The 7th Century Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 

as interpreted by James Rose in 1895, 

based on Adomnan's account and the 

archaeological evidence.

The number of western Europeans in the early middle ages who were able actually to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem was tiny. Arculf mentioned the presence, in Jerusalem, of many Christian pilgrims, but most are likely to have been Orthodox Greeks and Syriacs or Egyptian Copts, the journey being both too expensive and too dangerous for most Catholics in the west to contemplate.

Descriptions such as Arculf's, therefore, became the basis for a Jerusalem of the mind, a spiritually important, if physically inaccessible, place for most Christians in the west. This Jerusalem of the mind lies at the centre of the imagined world of the Medieval Mappa Mundi, produced not as an aid to navigation, but as a physical expression of a theological world view.

The Cotton map of c1040.
Britain and Ireland are at bottom left,
emphasising their peripheral status,
whilst Sri Lanka ("Taprabanea") is at the top.

According to this world view, the journey to Jerusalem was one that every Christian must make eventually, but not necessarily in this life, for it was at Jerusalem, and not anywhere else, that Christ would make the Last Judgement between the saved and the damned.

The Last Judgement,
from a manuscript of c1050,
British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius CVI.

The Valley of Gehenna, Jerusalem,
believed to be the gate of Hell.
Photo: Deror Avi (licensed under CCA).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mark Patton blogs regularly on aspects of history and historical fiction at http://mark-patton.blogspot.co.uk. His novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications and can be purchased from Amazon.

The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem

by Helena P. Schrader

The roots of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem go back before the founding of the Knights Templar, and indeed before the First Crusade. In about 1070, a hospice for pilgrims was established near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher with funds from Italian merchants and staffed by Benedictine monks and nuns. Although the Benedictines were expelled from Jerusalem before the arrival of the first crusaders, they returned after Jerusalem was in Christian hands, and with help from the Christian secular authorities, re-established a hospital. Soon, further grants of money and land from the Christian lords enabled the monks to establish a chain of hospitals throughout the Holy Land and to set up hospices at the embarkation ports for pilgrims setting out from Europe or returning from Outremer. The monks and nuns running these hospitals and hospices soon became known as the “Hospitallers.”

Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem

In 1113, the monks of the Hospital (also referred to as the Brothers of St. John and the Brothers of the Holy Sepulcher) requested and received from the Pope the right to become an order in their own right. This new order, as with the Templars a decade later, was made directly subordinate to the Pope, and in or about 1130 it adopted the Augustine Rule. Meanwhile this new order was rapidly acquiring significant donations in land and treasure in both the West and in the Holy Land, a reflection of the undiminished support for a Christian-controlled Holy Land.

Nevertheless, the Hospital of St. John remained a traditional monastic order. Although it had been granted the explicit right to defend its properties and pilgrims, members of the Order were prohibited from bearing arms. As a result, throughout the 12th century the Hospital was dependent for its protection on knights who owed feudal duty to the Hospital via their landholdings, voluntarily offered their services, or were hired mercenaries. These defensive forces, whatever their source, must have been substantial, however, because the Hospital was given very powerful fortresses, notably the most impressive crusader castle of them all: Krak des Chevaliers.

Krak de Cheveliers in Syria

It would have been pointless to turn over such vitally important military resources to an order incapable of maintaining and defending them, but the exact status of the Hospital’s fighting men remains obscure until 1206, when the Hospitaller Rule was changed to allow for fighting monks. Thereafter, the Hospitallers began to recruit fighting men, probably starting with those who were already associated with it in some way, and like the Templars they had both knights (men of noble birth) and sergeants. Within a very short time, the knights dominated the Order. The Hospitallers, however, continued to have priests, monks, and nuns devoted solely to the care of the sick, and the network of hospitals was not abandoned. At about this time, the entire Order adopted black robes (reminiscent of their Benedictine origins) adorned with a white cross. One notable difference with the Templars, however, was that there was no distinction in dress between the knights and the sergeants of the Hospital.

The Hospitallers, like the Templars, warned new recruits that “… when you desire to eat, it will be necessary for you to fast, and when you would wish to fast, you will have to eat. And when you would desire to sleep, it will be necessary for you to keep watch, and when you would like to stand on watch, you will have to sleep. And you will be sent this side of the sea and beyond, into places which will not please you, and you will have to go there. It will be necessary for you, therefore, to abandon all your desires to fulfill those of another and to endure other hardships in the Order, more than I can describe to you.” (Barber, Malcolm, The Knight and Chivalry, p. 275) Like the Templars, the Hospitallers vowed poverty and chastity as well as obedience.

The similarity between the two powerful militant orders led to open rivalry between them for recruits, resources, and power in the first half of the 13th century. This led on occasion to open fighting between members of the orders on the streets of Acre and Tripoli, but more often to subtle maneuvering behind the scenes. For decades, the Hospitallers and Templars consistently backed rival claimants to the throne of Jerusalem and rival Italian trading communities. As the end of Christian Palestine neared, however, the Hospitallers and Templars put aside their differences and jealousies to rally to the now lost cause. In the last decades of Christian Palestine, Hospitallers and Templars fought side by side, ferociously and futilely, at Antioch, Tripoli, and finally Acre.

Hospitaller HQ at Acre, Photo by HSchrader

After the fall of Acre, the Hospital also relocated its headquarters to Cyprus, but conflict with the King of Cyprus convinced the leadership of the Hospital (evidently more flexible, imaginative, and analytical than the tragic Jacques de Molay of the Knights Templar) of the necessity for independence from secular authority. The Hospitallers undertook the capture of the island of Rhodes from Turkish forces in 1306, finally seizing the capital city in 1309. With this move the Hospitallers removed themselves, and the bulk of their movable treasure, from the grasp of Philip IV – or any king inclined to follow his example. Even more important, however, from this island base the Hospitallers built up a powerful fleet capable of challenging the naval power of the Turks and of launching hit-and-run raids into Saracen territory. The Hospitallers had “reinvented” themselves and had found a new justification for their existence.

The Hospitaller and Templar Churches in Famagusta, Cyprus, Photo by HSchrader

The Hospitaller fleet remained a significant force protecting Christian shipping and commerce throughout the next two and a half centuries, and the base of this fleet on Rhodes, so close to the Turkish coast, was a constant provocation to Turkish rulers. Numerous attempts were made to capture Rhodes, notably in 1440, 1444, 1480, and 1522. During the first 3 sieges, the Hospitallers withstood vastly superior numbers, in one case (1444) driving off the enemy with a daring sortie from within the city, and twice rescued by the timely arrival of a relieving fleet from the West. In 1522, an army allegedly 100,000 strong attacked a force of just 600 knights and 4,500 local auxiliaries. After 2 months of bombardment a breach in the landward wall was made, yet 3 assaults through the breach, carried out with complete disregard for casualties, failed. Sultan Suleiman called off the costly assaults and settled down for a long siege, cutting Rhodes off from all relief. Recognizing the hopelessness of their situation, the surviving Hospitallers, now more commonly called Knights of St. John, surrendered on honorable terms.

When the Hospitallers withdrew on their ships from Rhodes, they were effectively homeless, but Emperor Charles V offered them the island of Malta as their new headquarters. From here they continued to operate their fleet so effectively that Sultan Suleiman decided he had to dislodge them from their new home. In 1565 he again assembled a large siege force. The Knights of St. John had 500 knights of the Order and 10,000 other troops. The Turks launched their first attack in May and after a month of fighting captured an outlying fort, slaughtered the garrison, and floated their mutilated bodies across the harbor to the main fortress as a warning of what was to come. The Hospitallers replied by executing Turkish prisoners and catapulting their heads into the Turkish camp. A Turkish assault on the main fortifications was undertaken on July 15, and a breach in the walls effected by August 7. Yet two assaults through the breach, on August 19 and 23, both failed. On September 7 a Spanish fleet arrived from the West and scattered the demoralized Turkish forces. The defense of Malta had cost the Hospitallers half their knights and 6,000 of the other defenders.

Thereafter, the Knights of St. John focused again on making the seaways of the Mediterranean safe for Christian shipping, a task that became increasingly easy as Turkish naval power declined. But this victory, like the defeat in Acre 300 years earlier, robbed them of their raison d’être. The Knights of St. John, now commonly known as the Knights of Malta, slid into a slow decline. They became more involved in commerce than warfare, and their fortresses turned into palaces. When Napoleon laid siege to Malta in 1798, the last frail remnants of the once mighty Hospitaller Order surrendered in just two days.

Helena P. Schrader is the author of numerous works of history and historical.  She holds a PhD in History from the University of Hamburg.  The first book in her three-part biographical novel of Balian d’Ibelin, who defended Jerusalem against Saladin in 1187 and was later one of Richard I’s envoys to Saladin, was released this fall .  Read more at: http://helenapschrader.com or follow Helena’s blogs: Schrader’s Historical Fiction and Defending the Crusader Kingdoms.

A Biographical Novel of Balian d’Ibelin

Book I

A landless knight,

                A leper King

                                And the struggle for Jerusalem.

 Buy now in Paperback or Kindle format!

The Pilgrimage

~ Scott Higginbotham

The ideal of the medieval pilgrimage is nothing new, for it is a spiritual and physical journey that has deeper roots.  The physical site itself may be the object of veneration, because it may be where a saint was martyred or where certain relics are contained.  What better place to go than the very spot where history was made by way of a martyr’s death?
 
Along those same lines, there may have been reports that the site is a hub of spiritual blessings or the miraculous, thus drawing the throngs.  Or, the act may be the fulfillment of penance or perhaps a vow made to secure divine favor. 

There were perceptions that spiritual blessings would only be conferred within a set of physical boundaries, which hearkens back to the gods being localized – think of river gods having power only in a certain area.  “For pilgrimages properly so called are made to the places where the gods or heroes were born or wrought some great action or died, or to the shrines where the deity had already signified it to be his pleasure to work wonders. Once theophanies are localized, pilgrimages necessarily follow.” [1]   

Whatever the motivations, pilgrimages and wandering hermits were popular, so much so, that they appeared in the works of medieval writers. William Langland writes in the Prologue to Piers Plowman:

In a summer season when the sun was mild
I clad myself in clothes as I'd become a sheep;
In the habit of a hermit unholy of works,
Walked wide in this world, watching for wonders.

An early English balled from Sir Isumbras gives readers a unique insight into the difficulties faced by wayfaring pilgrims, having nothing in their purse and having to beg for their food:

For they bare with hem nothynge
That longed to here spendynge,
   Nother golde nor fee,
But for to begge here mete
Where they myghte ony gete,
   For love of seynt charyté. [2]


Geoffrey Chaucer popularized and parodied the ideal of a pilgrimage in The Canterbury Tales and, it is through him that many have become familiar with pilgrimages.  The shrine of Canterbury was England’s most popular pilgrimage site, owing to Thomas Becket’s martyrdom in the northwest transept on December 29th, 1170.  Reports of healing miracles brought throngs of pilgrims, happy to share the contents of their purses. This surge in income allowed for many upgrades and improvements to the cathedral, but only to have Henry VIII enter the scene and confiscate its treasures.

Canterbury Cathedral - Public Domain from Wikimedia Commons

But is it only just the physical destination that draws pilgrims of old and even modern ones?  Or is it the physical act, the journey itself, which has the appeal?  Perhaps both?  Imagine the mystique and adventure of packing a few belongings, tying up loose ends, and grabbing a wooden staff for a long trek of self-discovery.  Spiritual journeys such as these are oftentimes turning points for real and imagined characters. 

Henry II was stricken with anguish over his ill-spoken words that resulted in Becket’s death - so much so that he made his own pilgrimage to the shrine and did his best to set affairs aright.  Simon de Montfort made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was overcome with emotion at his first view of Jerusalem’s sandstone walls.  These notables are what make the study of history and historical novels such a gem to read, for their deepest desires for redemption make them so much like us.

I made my own pilgrimage and received a Pilgrim’s Certificate at the conclusion of a tour of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.  I wore no floppy hat, nor held a weathered wooden staff in my hand; in fact, I was clean shaven in a military fashion.  But the moment I saw those same walls that countless others have gazed upon, I had the distinct sense that the raw emotion and overwhelming sense of belonging to some small part of history, as a result of pilgrimage, would never be forgotten.  History, historical novels, and even pilgrimages allow us travel to another time and place, but they also allow us to bring something back.

Jerusalem from the Garden of Gethsemane - by Scott Higginbotham

A Soul’s Ransom

Scott Higginbotham writes under the name Scott Howard and is the author of A Soul’s Ransom, a novel set in the fourteenth century where William de Courtenay’s mettle is tested, weighed, and refined, and For a Thousand Generations where Edward Leaver navigates a world where his purpose is defined with an eye to the future.  His new release, A Matter of Honor, is a direct sequel to For a Thousand Generations.  It is within Edward Leaver's well-worn boots that Scott travels the muddy tracks of medieval England.

Knights Templar - The Beginning

by Scott Higginbotham

The Knights Templar occupy a unique niche in the chronicles of history; those who write historical fiction have no shortage of fodder for their novels, as there is a wealth of information – sometimes conflicting.  The Templar order was feared, hated, respected, hailed, and coveted across a wide spectrum of medieval society, both in Europe and the Holy Land.  To be certain, this knightly order had few equals; they forged a new path and formed their bond upon a foundation like no other.  They were true originals.

In modern times they are speculated upon in countless ways - the Templars control the banking system, the stock market, are behind every uprising around the globe, wear strange hats and drive jalopies in parades, their secret symbols are on currency, and if a scapegoat is needed then look no further than the The Order of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon.

There is much speculation, informed and otherwise, concerning the Knights Templar, but this piece will briefly touch upon their humble genesis and what facts are undisputed by historians.

After Jerusalem was captured during the First Crusade in 1099, religious zeal swelled as the news of the Crusaders’ victory spread across Europe.  Pious pilgrims trekked to the Holy City; however, they were beset on the perilous roads of Palestine, suffering the loss of their belongings and even their lives.  Nine knights later formed an armed brotherhood to protect the pilgrim roads of which Charles Addison puts it nicely:

To alleviate the dangers and distresses to which these pious enthusiasts were exposed, to guard the honour of the saintly virgins and matrons, and to protect the gray hairs of the venerable palmer, nine noble knights formed a holy brotherhood in arms, and entered into a solemn compact to aid one another in clearing the highways of infidels, and of robbers, and in protecting the pilgrims through the passes and defiles of the mountains to the Holy City.¹

Red Cross Pattée - Scott Higginbotham

Moreover, their brotherhood was unique and original owing to the fact that these knights were warriors, but ones that embraced the same vows as that of monks - poverty, chastity, and obedience.  The ideal of a dashing knight astride a pawing destrier, begging a lady’s favor to wear on his arm had taken an odd turn.  Troubadours and bards had lost a portion of the deep, chivalrous well upon which to draw their verse.  Addison writes further, “They renounced the world and its pleasures, and in the holy church of the Resurrection, in the presence of the patriarch of Jerusalem, they embraced vows of perpetual chastity, obedience, and poverty, after the manner of monks.”²

In 1118 these nine knights, led by Hugues de Payens the order’s first Grand Master, were granted usage of a portion of the King of Jerusalem’s quarters, which was part of the al-Aqsa Mosque, believed to be built over King Solomon’s temple.  “It was from this place that the Order took its name - the Order of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon (Ordo Pauperum Commilitonum Christi Templique Salominici); Templars for short.”³

Beauseant - Scott Higginbotham

Until they were officially recognized, the Knights Templar remained a small and obscure force for about the first decade of their existence.  They operated largely upon their own initiative, but with the blessing and support of the King of Jerusalem and its Patriarch.  They initially wore no distinctive devices that proclaimed this new order, but their actions piqued the interest of Bernard of Clairvaux, head of the Cistercian monks, for it was Bernard that organized the Council of Troyes in 1129 thus giving the order official papal recognition.  This council transformed this small band that simply protected pilgrims into the army of Christendom and the interests of the Church.⁴

Templar Cross Sword - Scott Higginbotham

The Order would soon grow to be one of the most formidable fighting forces in medieval Europe, transcending borders, and drawing some of the most skilled knights into their ranks.  They were fighting men, but they were also monks, adhering to a strict Benedictine rule.  The red cross pattée on their surcoats (with minor variances) and the black and white Beauseant shield and banner were soon adopted as part of their distinction - many knights during the crusading era had crosses etched into the pommel of their swords.

Future posts will expand upon their rise, their nuances, and their ultimate demise.  But their legacy lives on as an interesting footnote in history and fuels much conjecture for novelists, theorists, and the curious.  Be sure to watch the video that follows - approximately 6 minutes and delves into the psyche of the order's founder. 

¹Addison, Charles G. (2012-01-17). The History of the Knights Templars, the Temple Church, and the Temple (Kindle Locations 211-215). Kindle Edition.      

²Addison, Charles G. (2012-01-17). The History of the Knights Templars, the Temple Church, and the Temple (Kindle Locations 216-218). Kindle Edition.

³Temple of Mysteries (2010-12-01). The Knights Templar (Kindle Locations 116-118). Temple of Mysteries. Kindle Edition.    

⁴Temple of Mysteries (2010-12-01). The Knights Templar (Kindle Locations 148-149). Temple of Mysteries. Kindle Edition.

Scott Higginbotham is the author of A Soul’s Ransom, a novel set in the fourteenth century where William de Courtenay’s mettle is tested, weighed, and refined, and For A Thousand Generations, where Edward Leaver navigates a world where his purpose is defined with an eye to the future.