Warrior Monks: The Story of the Knights Templar (Encore)
13:42 Share

The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. In the early 12th century, a monastic military order developed in the Middle East with the express intent of protecting Christian pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land.

Despite its rather modest mission statement, over the next 200 years, this organization became one of the most powerful entities throughout the Middle East and Europe. However, its success and power eventually planted the seeds of its own destruction. Learn more about the Knights Templar, their rise and spectacular fall on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Hey there, Ryan Reynolds here. It's a new year and you know what that means. No, not the diet. Resolutions.

A way for us all to try and do a little bit better than we did last year. And my resolution, unlike big wireless, is to not be a raging a**hole and raise the price of wireless on you every chance I get. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited. See mintmobile.com for details.

You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney, or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at The New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

The Knights Templar are one of the groups from history that people have kept a fascination with for hundreds of years. There have been many stories, movies, TV shows, and computer games about the Knights Templar, and there are probably many more that will still be created. The story of the Knights Templar and how they rose to prominence began with the First Crusade in the year 1099. The Fatimid Caliphate controlled much of the Holy Land, particularly Jerusalem.

The Crusades and their causes will be the subject of a future episode, but suffice it to say for now, Pope Urban II answered the call from the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Kalmanos to send an armed pilgrimage to liberate the Holy Land from the Muslims. In 1099, they captured Jerusalem and the Crusaders set up a Western-style Christian kingdom. Now that Jerusalem was under Christian control, it became a popular destination for European pilgrims.

the trip to Jerusalem was a dangerous one for pilgrims. Once they arrived in the port city of Jaffa, the trip to Jerusalem was filled with danger even though the distance was rather short. There were constant threats from bandits, and there were cases of entire groups of pilgrims, numbering over 100 people who were all slaughtered.

To help remedy this situation, in 1119, a French knight by the name of Hugh de Payens petitioned King Baldwin II of Jerusalem, as well as the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Moirum, to create a monastic order with the mission of protecting pilgrims in the Holy Land. The next year in 1120, at the Council of Nablus, the king granted his petition and gave the new order a headquarters on the Temple Mount inside the captured Al-Asqa Mosque.

With their headquarters on the Temple Mount, the new order was named the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, or as they were commonly known, the Templars. The order began with only nine monks slash knights. They initially had no money and relied on donations. The Templars were unique in that they were both a monastic order and a military order. They were not cloistered monks who voluntarily separated themselves from society and devoted themselves to prayer.

The Templars had a very particular mission, and that mission often involved getting their hands dirty. They went out with pilgrims to guard them, which quickly earned them the respect and favor of those whom they protected. The order remained rather small for several years. Its big break occurred in the year 1128. A nephew of one of the knights was Bernard of Clairvaux, an abbot and high-ranking official in the church. He was a founder of the Cistercian Order and helped reform the Benedictine Order.

Bernard of Clairvaux and Hugh de Payens sat down a list of 72 rules for the Templars, which became known as the Latin Rules. The rules were based on the rules established by both St. Augustine and St. Benedict, but were modified for the special mission of the Templars. They were later expanded to well over 360 rules. It basically provided ground rules for the organization of the order and the conduct of its members.

With a formal system of rules in place, the next year in 1129, the order was given formal approval at the Council of Troyes, which was an assembly of French bishops. This was a huge public relations coup for the order. With the full blessing of the church, the Templars became a hugely popular organization to support. People began donating money to the knights-slash-monks that protected pilgrims, and wealthy families would encourage one of their younger sons to join the Templars.

As big as the approval from the Council of Troyes was, things were about to get even better for the Templars. In 1135 at the Council of Pisa, Pope Innocent II announced that he was going to make a large cash donation to the order. But the thing that really fundamentally charged the order took place in the year 1139. Pope Innocent II gave the Templars something far greater than cash.

He issued a papal bull titled Omne Datum Optimum, which roughly translates from Latin as Every Perfect Gift. Omne Datum Optimum gave the Knights Templar a host of privileges that were given to no other religious order. For starters, the spoils of war taken from any Muslim conquest were to be given to the order, and that by itself obviously changed the incentives and focus of the order.

The Templars would report directly to the Pope. That means that they wouldn't be subject to the jurisdiction of local bishops anywhere where the Catholic Church held sway. They could build churches on any land that they owned and appoint their own chaplains and priests. Moreover, they were exempt from any local taxes and tithes to local churches. And they were able to travel freely between any Catholic country without permission.

These privileges may not seem like much, but collectively, they allowed the Templars to do things that no one else could do. The Templars were still nominally a military order. In fact, they developed a reputation as having some of the finest soldiers in the world. However, very few of the Templars were actually front-line soldiers. Most of the order was designed to support the monks slash knights who fought on the front lines.

At the Battle of Montguissard in 1177, a small group of 500 Templars managed to defeat a much larger army led by the great Muslim general Saladin. What changed was the services that they provided to pilgrims and crusaders. They no longer just protected pilgrims in the Holy Land. They sort of provided a full package of services. For example, it was extremely dangerous to transport money long distances. You literally had to carry a bag of gold or silver, which was a prime target for thieves.

The Templars solved this problem by issuing letters of credit. You would deposit your money at a local Templar house, and they would issue you a note indicating the amount deposited. You would then take the note with you to Jerusalem, where they would then issue the same amount of money. It was an early form of banking, and one of the earliest forms of checks. When aristocratic men went off to fight in the Crusades, they would often put their fortunes under the control of the Templars for safekeeping until they returned.

Their exemption from local taxes and the ability to travel freely between countries gave them the legal foundation to become perhaps the world's first multinational corporation. While the individual members of the order were required to take an oath of poverty, the order itself grew fantastically wealthy. They purchased large tracts of land, including productive farmland. They funded the construction of cathedrals and built fortified castles. And they funded artisans and owned manufacturing centers.

They developed their own distinctive dress of a white tunic with a red cross on it. They built their own fleet of ships and were involved in the transportation of goods around the Mediterranean. In 1191, they literally purchased the island of Cyprus from King Richard I of England, who captured it during the Crusades.

There was also one other thing that they did with their money. They lent it to various kings who needed money to fund their wars. And they did so charging interest, which was usually taboo under medieval church usury laws. The Templars reached the peak of their power in the late 12th century. Then they were sucked into a war in Spain to fight the Moors, and the Muslims began to unify under General Saladin, which the Templars had previously defeated.

Saladin managed to recapture Jerusalem in 1187, subsequently expelling the Templars from their headquarters and reverting the Al-Asqa to its original use as a mosque. The Templars then had to move their headquarters to the city of Acre in what is today northern Israel. Without Jerusalem, their original mission of protecting pilgrims was no longer really possible. Nonetheless, throughout the 13th century, while not at the peak of their power, the

Back in Europe by the end of the 13th century and the start of the 14th century, the Templars were losing popularity with many rulers who owed them money, and they were also losing control. In 1291, they lost the city of Acre, and by 1303, they had lost their very last possession in the Middle East. In particular, there was one ruler in Europe who had a big problem with the Templars, King Philip IV of France.

Philip had become heavily in debt to the Templars in the early 14th century. He was so much in debt that it was debatable if he could even pay it back. Moreover, the papacy had changed. A new pope, Clement V, was elected, who was heavily under the influence of France. In fact, he moved the entire papacy to Avignon in France, where it remained for almost 70 years. As the Templars answered directly to the pope, this became a problem.

In 1305, the Pope suggested that the Knights Templar merge with the Knights Hospitaller, which I've discussed in a previous episode. Both orders resisted the request. So in 1306, the Pope ordered the masters of each order to France to further discuss the merger. The Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, arrived in France in early 1307. While in France, he discussed several topics with the Pope, including scandalous charges that were brought against one of his members.

Both the Pope and de Molay agreed that the charges were probably false, but Clement asked King Philip for assistance in the investigation. Philip found in the accusations the opening that he was looking for. On October 13, 1307, he ordered the arrest of all of the Templars in France. Philip accused the Templars of basically everything. Blasphemy, idolatry, sodomy, heresy, and many other crimes. In 1312, Pope Clement issued a papal bull titled Vox in Excelsio, which disbanded the order.

Templars were tortured to extract false confessions, and in 1314, Jacques de Molay and other Templars were burned alive at the stake. Reportedly, Jacques de Molay's last words while being burned alive were, "...God knows who is wrong and has sinned. Soon a calamity will occur to those who have condemned us to death." Clement was dead within a month, and Philip was dead within the year.

The remaining Templars around the world were absorbed into other military orders. Much of the Templar wealth in France was confiscated by King Philip, and other properties were seized by other localities. Investigations into the Templars were conducted in other countries, but there were no further arrests, as there was no evidence. Formerly, much of the remaining Templar land was given to the Knights Hospitaller.

The memory of the Templars has been kept alive over the centuries. They have been the supposed source of secret societies, and there's been claims that much of their wealth is hidden, yet to be discovered. But the real reason we still give so much attention to the Knights Templar is due to their incredible rise, incredible power, and their dramatic fall. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever.

I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.