Tales of the Knights Templar

by Katherine Kurtz

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Literary Fiction; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

The Knights Templar was a military order founded during the time of the crusades to protect pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. Legend endows the Templars with magical powers with which they are said to have altered the course of history. "The Temple and the Crown" picks up in 1306 with the crowning of Robert Bruce in Scotland. Bruce immediately faces a challenge to his throne, and Pope Clement and King Philip of France, jealous of the Knights' magical powers, wealth, and charm, have them arrested on trumped-up charges of black magic, blasphemy, and consorting with the Devil. The Templars' only hope is to flee as fugitives and seek a new home...and a safe haven for the mystical treasures they guard.

Release date: May 1, 2009

Publisher: Aspect

Print pages: 323

Sample

Introduction

In 1118, a French crusader called Hugues de Payens and eight fellow knights founded the Military Order most commonly known as the Knights Templar. During the two centuries that followed, the Templars established a well-deserved reputation as (among other things) superb fighting men and incomparable financiers. In the less than two hundred years the Order formally existed, they also achieved a notoriety unprecedented among other religious or chivalric bodies anywhere in the world.

On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars—knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren—in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and homosexual practices. None of these charges was ever proven, even in France—and the Order was found innocent elsewhere—but in the seven years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating tortures intended to force “confessions,” and more than a hundred died under torture or were executed by burning at the stake.

The ostensible reason for suppressing the Order of the Temple had been to eradicate heresy; a more pragmatic motive had to do with seizing the vast wealth of the Templars for the King of France—and eliminating a too-powerful Order that answered only to the pope. (The Templars had denied Philip admission to the Order as an honorary lay knight, so personal pique may have been a motive as well.) Neither the Order’s champions nor its detractors failed to note that both Philip and the pope, who had abandoned the Order to Philip’s avarice, were to die within a year of being cursed by the last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, as he and his Preceptor for Normandy were burned at the stake on March 14, 1314.

The preceding is a bare-bones synopsis of the Order’s rise and fall, but a more detailed look at the Templars’ history suggests more complicated circumstances that all added to the legendary stature the Order enjoys today. Historical perspective places the birth of the Order in the immediate aftermath of the Christian capture of Jerusalem in 1099, which led to increasing numbers of pilgrims journeying to the Holy Land to visit Jerusalem and other holy places. Despite the establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, with a royal line of Western kings, travel in the area remained dangerous. Defense of the Christian-held lands was difficult, and men could seldom be spared to patrol the travel routes and protect pilgrims.

The Hospitaller Order, later to become the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, had been founded in 1113 to house and minister to sick and injured pilgrims, but they did not immediately expand their role to include the protection of these pilgrims. Into this void came a French nobleman from Champagne called Hugues de Payens, kin to the counts of Troyes, to found a second crusading Order initially calling themselves the Poor Knights of Christ. Tradition preserves the names of the founding nine in a list that probably vacillates between the factual and the mythic: Hugues de Payens, Geoffroy de Saint-Omer, Andre de Montbard, Andre de Gondemare, Payen (or Nivard) de Montdidier, Archambault de Saint-Aignan, Godefroy Bissor, Roffal (or Rossal or Roland), and Hugh Comte de Champagne—though the latter is known to have joined later. Undertaking to guard the pilgrimage routes and live as a religious community of warrior-monks (and under guidance from canons of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem), they adopted a religious rule based on that of St. Augustine and made vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience before the Patriarch of Jerusalem.

Their offer of assistance was welcomed by King Baldwin II of Jerusalem, who granted them accommodation on the site of King Solomon’s Temple, the cellars of which were said to have housed King Solomon’s stables. Thus derived their eventual name: Pauperes Commilitones Christi Templique Salomonis—the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, later known as the Knights of the Temple, or Knights Templar.

For men vowed to protect pilgrims and holy sites, these first Templars do not seem to have done a great deal of protecting during the first few years of their existence, or to have attracted much interest in East or West. They recruited few, if any, new members. They lived in real poverty, without any distinctive attire or significant military presence. An early seal of the Order shows two knights riding on the same horse, said to be symbolic of their shared poverty and brotherhood. (This does not reflect later reality, for while individual Templars owned nothing, each knight would have required at least two or three horses in order to function in any military capacity—and sergeants and other lay retainers to support him.)

During that first decade of existence, the greater part of the knights’ energy seems to have been focused on establishing their headquarters underneath the old Temple. Some later historians, searching for an explanation of the Templars’ great eventual wealth, would suggest that the proto-Templars found some fabulous treasure while digging in the old foundations. (At least one esoteric tradition maintains that the real task of Payens and his eight co-founders was to carry out research and excavations that would result in the recovery of certain relics and manuscripts said to preserve mystical and even magical secrets of Judaism and ancient Egypt. According to this tradition, the knowledge thus obtained was transmitted through oral tradition within a secret inner circle whose existence was not even suspected by rank-and-file members of the Order.)

Whatever the true purpose of the founding nine, Hugues de Payens seems to have been ready for the Templars’ next phase by 1127, when he embarked for Europe with five of his knights to seek official recognition by the church. Presenting himself and his companions before the Council of Troyes in 1128, he briefly recounted their history and mission, presented their proposed constitutions, and asked that they be given a rule of their own.

Their petition was successful. The future St. Bernard of Clairvaux gave the Templars a rule of seventy-two articles derived partially from his own Cistercian Rule (which had been based on the Rule of St. Benedict), partially from existing practices already adopted from the guidance of the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Rule of St. Augustine, and in part based on a rule of Essenian origin known as the Rule of the Master of Justice.

In addition, with Bernard’s concurrence, the knight brothers adopted the snow-white habit worn by the Cistercians and the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, symbolizing purity, and added to a white mantle the red cross of martyrdom, already long worn by crusaders. In all likelihood, the form of cross first used was a red patriarchal cross, with its double crossbar, since the knights had made their original vows to the Patriarch of Jerusalem and hence were his knights; but other forms became more common following papal recognition, including the more familiar Maltese cross, whose eight points symbolized the Beatitudes. Sergeants and squires wore the red cross on black or brown mantles.

A further distinction of appearance that proved an unexpected advantage in the Holy Land was the rule’s requirement that, contrary to European custom of the time, the knights were to crop their hair short but keep their beards long. Since facial hair represented masculinity and virility in Middle Eastern culture, the bearded Templars were regarded by their Muslim foes with far more respect than the long-haired and clean-shaven European crusaders, who were seen as feminine and disgraceful.

By the time of Hugues’ death in 1136, the Order was flourishing, with preceptories and commanderies in France, England, Scotland, and Ireland, ever-increasing grants and bequests of lands and revenues, and a growing reputation for ferocity in battle. Hugues had been a pious knight with determination and leadership abilities; his successor as Grand Master was Robert de Craon, or Robert the Burgundian, who brought administrative skills to the office.

By 1139, Robert had gained the unequivocal support of the papacy, when Innocent II created a new category of chaplain brothers for the Templars. Placing the Order under direct papal jurisdiction answerable only to him, Innocent further gave the knights the autonomy to act independently of the ecclesiastical and secular rulers. In addition, he extended their function beyond the mere protection of pilgrims, exhorting them to defend the Catholic church against all enemies of the Cross.

This broadening of their mandate enabled the Order to grow mightily in the decades that followed, rapidly establishing preceptories, commanderies, and other holdings in Spain, Portugal, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe. Fighting under the distinctive black and white battle standard called Beauceant, they soon presented a formidable military presence in the Holy Land.

Single-minded of purpose, their very motto proclaimed their allegiance: Non nobis, Domine, non nobis sed nomini tuo da gloriam—“Not to us, Lord, not to us but to Thy Name give the glory.” By their vows and their very rule, they must follow orders without question, might not retreat in battle unless outnumbered at least three to one and only then upon direct order, neither gave nor received quarter, could not be ransomed, must stand and die if so ordered. And many of them did.

By the 1170s, the combined strength of the Temple and the Hospital would have made up close to half the effective Christian fighting force in the Holy Land, equally divided, with perhaps three hundred Knights Templar in the Kingdom of Jerusalem (along with their ancillary sergeants, squires, and other functionaries) and probably comparable numbers maintained in Antioch and Tripoli. And as the crusaders gained victories, both the Temple and the Hospital were given castles to garrison, forming a network of strongholds throughout the lands held by the Christians.

It was not to last. Though the Templars had become a powerful and indispensable part of the defense of the Holy Land, Jerusalem fell to the forces of Saladin in the summer of 1187, following the Frankish defeat at the Horns of Hittin.

Whereon hangs our first tale. One of the charges later made against the Templars was that they had consorted too freely with the Saracens, perhaps even taking on religious taints. One of the names ascribed to the idol supposedly worshiped by the Templars was Baphomet, a corruption of the name Muhammad—a particularly specious connection, since the Muslims abhorred physical representations of their Prophet. (Another interpretation renders Baphomet as Sophia, which could link with more esoteric connections.)

Speculations that the Templars allied themselves with the Order of Assassins probably spring, in part, from the fact that many Templars became fluent in Arabic—suspicious in itself, in some minds—and even more apocryphal claims that the Templars refused to let the Assassins convert to Christianity, because that would have ended their payment of tribute to the Temple. (The grain of truth here is that the Templars were extremely acquisitive, and jealous of their share of the spoils of war.) During their trial, one imaginative source even claimed that the Templars had done homage to Saladin himself, who later remarked that the Templars met with defeat because of their addiction to the vice of sodomy and their betrayal of their faith and law. (This particular charge seems to have been pure invention, so far as modern historians can ascertain. Small wonder that the Grand Master was said to have been “stupefied” by it.)

Nonetheless, it was inevitable that the Order did come into contact with Saracen influences, and it is certainly possible that individual knights did treat with the enemy. One might speculate whether there was more to this chapter in Templar history than ever came to the attention of the scholarly chroniclers.

The City of Brass

Deborah Turner Harris and Robert J. Harris

The killing began at noon.

As the desert sun approached its zenith, seven battered and bloodstained Templar knights were dragged forth from the back of the covered cart where they had been languishing in chains since their capture. Wrists bound behind them, they moved haltingly, weakened by heat and hunger and the debilitating pain of untended wounds. Last to emerge into the pitiless midday glare, the young knight known to his brothers as Thierry de Challon favored his Mamluk guards with a wordless snarl of defiance. Whatever fate might be in store for his fellow captives, he did not intend to go meekly like a lamb to the slaughter.

He and his six companions were the only survivors, as far as Thierry knew, of the engagement that had taken place two days ago at Cresson, a small natural spring half a day’s journey to the east of Nazareth in the sunbaked heart of the Holy Land. One hundred thirty Templar knights, riding out under the command of Gerard de Ridefort, had arrived at the oasis to find the surrounding terrain occupied by a Muslim host numbering several thousand. What insane impulse of vainglory had prompted de Ridefort to hurl his own relatively insignificant force against this mighty contingent of Saladin’s army, Thierry could not begin to guess. But de Ridefort was their Grand Master, and when he charged the Saracen lines, they had been compelled to follow.

The ensuing engagement had been a massacre. Many Mamluk warriors had died, cut down in the initial fury of the Frankish charge, but more had surged in to take their places, surrounding the embattled knights like a tide. Exposed to the arrows of the emir’s Turkish archers without the shielding support of their own infantry, the Templars had had their horses systematically shot out from under them. Once dismounted, each of them had continued to fight, on foot and in isolation, until the bitter, bloody end.

Thierry had been among the last left standing. He had fought his hardest, until at last his sword had been struck from his hand. Winded and bleeding, he had steeled himself to be hacked to pieces by the bloodstained scimitars of his swarming adversaries. Instead, to his fury and utter humiliation, they had thrown a net over his head, dragging him down into the dust as if he had been some brutish wild beast to be captured and caged for the decadent amusement of Saladin’s captains and their languishing concubines.

It was still not clear why he and his fellow captives had been denied the dignity of death on the battlefield. None of them possessed any special advantage of family wealth or influence to make them valuable as hostages, nor were any of them sufficiently highly placed within the Order to have incurred Saladin’s personal wrath. Nevertheless, there had to be a reason why their lives so far had been spared. As his guards chivied him along behind the others, Thierry grimly surmised that they would not have to speculate for very much longer.

The prisoners were hustled uphill toward a crescent-shaped formation of stones that rose up out of the midst of the Saracen encampment like an island from the sea. Waiting for them within this elevated amphitheater of stones was a strange deputation from the crowded encampment below. Foremost among them was an aged faqir, a spidery, shriveled figure wearing nothing but a filthy twist of rags wound around his leathery loins. Behind the faqir, like a mountain overshadowing a tree, loomed the towering figure of a Mamluk swordsman.

The swordsman was stripped to the waist, the knotty muscles of his arms and chest glistening with sweat in the sweltering heat. His head was bare, clean-shaven except for the obligatory scalplock of hair by which the Prophet would draw him up into heaven. The giant’s powerful hands grasped the hilt of a broad-bladed scimitar, its point resting lightly on the ground between his sandaled feet. The singular length and heaviness of the blade identified it as a weapon of execution.

First to face up to the weight of the sword was the English knight Robert of Shrewsbury. Hands tightly trussed behind his back, he was taken to the faqir, before whom he stood swaying dizzily in the heat. The faqir looked long and hard at the young Englishman for several minutes, searching his face as though looking for some secret, hidden sign. Then he muttered something aside to the headsman in Arabic and gave a curt nod.

A single whistling sweep of the great scimitar sent the Englishman’s head flying from his shoulders in a far-flung splatter of blood. The head struck the ground with a dull thud and rolled away among the rocks. As one set of guards heaved the headless trunk to one side, the faqir scanned the remaining Templars in search of another victim. This time the choice fell upon a young Burgundian, Reynald d’Arnaux.

Thierry held himself erect, even though his senses were swimming with the blistering heat and the sickly sweet stench of spilled blood. Five years ago, he had gone down on his knees before the wealthy and beautiful Isabeau Vilenoise, begging her to overlook his poverty and marry him. She had spurned him with the cruel reminder that he was only a younger son with no entitlements to his credit. Forced to swallow this bitter humiliation, Thierry had vowed afterward never again to bow his knee in servile petition to any other creature of the earth.

Instead, he had dedicated his life—the life that no one else cared for—to a purpose of his own choosing. Joining the Knights Templar had been a part of that choice, and since then he had lived and worked in expectation of reaping future benefits. If he died now, it would be without fulfilling his sworn promises. Likewise he would never have tasted the rewards of his service.

With this thought in mind, Thierry watched in stony silence as, one by one, the other knights were brought before the faqir to be examined and then beheaded. Beside him the Saxon knight Conrad of Bremen was praying in a harsh whisper for the salvation of his immortal soul. He was still praying when the guards hustled him forward, and he died with the words of the Paternoster on his lips.

Then it was Thierry’s turn. The faqir studied him closely, his black eyes alight with burning intensity, as if their owner were attempting to penetrate the uttermost depths of his soul. In a voice as hot and dry as the desert wind, he inquired, “Why do you not pray, infidel?”

The question was posed in Arabic. Thierry summoned a sneer. “I am not like these others,” he informed the faqir in the same language. “Give me a chance and I will prove it.”

The old man grinned malevolently. “If you are speaking the truth, the sword will prove it for you.”

Thierry’s guards dropped back. The executioner raised the scimitar high, its curved blade still dripping with the blood of its last victim. Thierry’s bound hands writhed behind his back, fighting the constraint of the ropes long enough for his fingers to trace an invisible symbol in the air.

Hear me, Master! he urged without speaking, as I have placed my soul in your hands, I charge you to deliver me from this untimely death.

With this injunction, he lifted his eyes toward the sky. His defiant, unblinking gaze was drawn through the near-blinding light to a point of darkness at the center of the sun. There was a scintillating flash and a shrill whistling hiss.

“Stop!” called the faqir.

Fire scored the underside of Thierry’s jaw. He gave an involuntary start, then realized that his head was still attached to his shoulders. He shut his eyes and swallowed, feeling the scimitar quiver against his throat where its edge had gashed the skin. Through a sudden haze of dizziness, he heard the faqir’s voice say, “He is the one who will serve. Remove his bonds and let him be taken to the Servant of the Prophet.”

Once his hands were free, Thierry was led down off the hill and taken to a tent in a neighboring part of the camp. Here he was provided with food and water and the services of an Arab physician, who bathed and tended his wounds. Thereafter, eased and refreshed, he was given fresh clothes and conducted back through the Saracen lines toward a flourishing grove of greenery which marked the presence of an oasis. Here beneath a cluster of date palms stood a pavilion of striped silk surmounted by the green silk banner of the Prophet.

While the guards stationed themselves on either side of the threshold, a soft-footed servant ushered Thierry into the tent. The abrupt change from light to shade momentarily confounded his sight. As he stood blinking, a steely voice addressed him in Frankish from the cool shadows.

“Welcome, sir knight. Come forward and be seated. You and I have matters of import to discuss.”

Thierry knuckled the lingering dazzle from his eyes. Before him, on a pile of variegated cushions, lounged a lean, hawk-faced man clad in the loose, lightweight robes of a desert prince. The dark, intelligent features, surmounted by a jeweled turban of yellow silk, were those of Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub himself.

Saladin!

Thierry squared his shoulders. Glaring down at his Order’s most formidable adversary, he said coldly, “I was not aware that we had anything to discuss.”

“That remains to be seen,” said Saladin. “The report of you I have had from my holy man suggests that you might be one to profit from what I have to tell you.”

He gestured toward an adjoining spread of rugs and cushions. Warily, Thierry sank down amid the opulent welter of soft fabrics and intricate embroideries. Saladin settled back, languid and feral as a resting lion. Surveying the young knight’s scowling, blond-bearded face, he asked, “Have you ever heard of a place called the City of Brass?”

Thierry mutely shook his head.

“Among the legends of my people,” Saladin informed him, “are tales concerning an ancient stronghold, built long ago by a race of sorcerers. These stories place that city—the City of Brass—somewhere in the midst of these lands that were once ruled by Solomon the Wise. It is said that in a palace at the heart of the city lies a marvelous relic, the possession of which confers wealth and power. Some claim it is the head of a sorcerer—or perhaps an afreet which can foretell the future. Many have gone out to look for this city, hoping to lay claim to its secrets, but none has ever yet returned. Certainly this mysterious relic of which we speak is still there for the finding.”

He paused. Thierry asked, “What has this to do with me?”

Saladin’s chiseled lips framed a thin smile. “It may have everything to do with you, Knight of the Temple. It would be no small help to me if I had the means to foretell the course of future events. What I require is someone to seek out the City of Brass on my behalf, find this head of prophecy, and bring it back to me. You have given indications that you might succeed where others before you have failed.”

“A strange compliment,” said Thierry with a mirthless grin. “Why do you not send one of the many thousand men under your command?”

“Because the legends assert that any man who enters the City of Brass will surely lose his soul,” said Saladin. “As a true servant of the Prophet, I cannot send a believer there. An unbeliever like yourself, however, is another matter. There are some, even among your own people, who claim that you Templars are servants of the demon Baphomet. Perhaps the loss of your soul is not something you have any reason to fear—”

An explosive exclamation from Thierry interrupted him. Blue eyes glittering, the young knight lurched to his feet, his right hand moving toward his hip where the hilt of his sword should have been. Saladin made a gesture of placation.

“Peace!” he exclaimed. “I spoke only in jest. I do not doubt the strength of the Templars’ faith, however misguided it may be. Your religious convictions are of less concern to me than your proven fortitude as a fighting man—unless, of course, you would be prepared to for-swear this false god of yours and embrace the true religion of the Prophet?”

Thierry subsided, still bristling. “I could not change my allegiance,” he informed Saladin, “even if I wanted to.”

The Saracen lord shrugged. “In that . . .