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story’ manufactured, which later historians had merely repeated.
Knights Templar The Orthodox Account
So far as is generally known, the first historical information on the Templars is provided by a Frankish historian, Guillaume de Tyre, who wrote between 1175 and 1185. This was at the peak of the Crusades, when Western armies had already conquered the Holy Land and established the Kingdom of Jerusalem or, as it was called by the Templars themselves, “Outremer’, the “Land Beyond the Sea’. But by the time Guillaume de Tyre began to write, Palestine had been in Western hands for seventy years, and the Templars had already been in existence for
- 51 -
more than fifty. Guillaume was therefore writing of events which predated his own lifetime events which he had not personally witnessed or experienced, but had learnt of at second or even third hand. At second or third hand and, moreover, on the basis of uncertain authority. For there were no Western chroniclers in Outremer between 1127 and 1144. Thus there are no written records for those crucial years.
We do not, in short, know much of Guillaume’s sources, and this may well call some of his statements into question. He may have been drawing on popular word of mouth, on a none too reliable oral tradition.
Alternatively, he may have consulted the Templars themselves and recounted what they told him. If this is so, it means he is reporting only what the
Templars wanted him to report.
Granted, Guillaume does provide us with certain basic information; and it is this information on which all subsequent accounts of the Templars, all explanations of their foundation, all narratives of their activities have been based. But because of Guillaume’s vagueness and sketchiness, because of the time at which he was writing, because of the death of documented sources, he constitutes a precarious basis on which to build a definitive picture. Guillaume’s chronicles are certainly useful. But it is a mistake and one to which many historians have succumbed to regard them as unimpugnable and wholly accurate.
Even Guillaume’s dates, as Sir Steven
Runciman stresses, ‘are confused and at times demonstrably wrong’.”
According to Guillaume de Tyre, the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon was founded in 1118. Its founder is said to be one
Hugues de Payen, a nobleman from Champagne and vassal of the count of Champagne.” One day Hugues, unsolicited, presented himself with eight comrades at the palace of Baudouin I -king of Jerusalem, whose elder brother, Godfroi de Bouillon, had captured the Holy City nineteen years before. Baudouin seems to have received them most cordially, as did the
Patriarch of Jerusalem the religious leader of the new kingdom and special emissary of the pope.
The declared objective of the Templars, Guillaume de Tyre continues, was, ‘as far as their strength permitted, they should keep the roads
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and highways safe .. . with especial regard for the protection of pilgrims ‘.3 So worthy was this objective apparently that the king placed an entire wing of the royal palace at the knights’ disposal. And, despite their declared oath of poverty, the knights moved into this lavish accommodation. According to tradition, their quarters were built on the foundations of the ancient Temple of Solomon, and from this the fledgling Order derived its name.
For nine years, Guillaume de Tyre tells us, the nine knights admitted no new candidates to their Order. They were still supposed to be living in poverty such poverty that official seals show two knights riding a single horse, implying not only brotherhood, but also a penury that precluded separate mounts. This style of seal is often regarded as the most famous and distinctive of Templar devices, descending from the first days of the
Order. However, it actually dates from a full century later, when the
Templars were hardly poor if, indeed, they ever were.
According to
Knights Templar The Orthodox Account
So far as is generally known, the first historical information on the Templars is provided by a Frankish historian, Guillaume de Tyre, who wrote between 1175 and 1185. This was at the peak of the Crusades, when Western armies had already conquered the Holy Land and established the Kingdom of Jerusalem or, as it was called by the Templars themselves, “Outremer’, the “Land Beyond the Sea’. But by the time Guillaume de Tyre began to write, Palestine had been in Western hands for seventy years, and the Templars had already been in existence for
- 51 -
more than fifty. Guillaume was therefore writing of events which predated his own lifetime events which he had not personally witnessed or experienced, but had learnt of at second or even third hand. At second or third hand and, moreover, on the basis of uncertain authority. For there were no Western chroniclers in Outremer between 1127 and 1144. Thus there are no written records for those crucial years.
We do not, in short, know much of Guillaume’s sources, and this may well call some of his statements into question. He may have been drawing on popular word of mouth, on a none too reliable oral tradition.
Alternatively, he may have consulted the Templars themselves and recounted what they told him. If this is so, it means he is reporting only what the
Templars wanted him to report.
Granted, Guillaume does provide us with certain basic information; and it is this information on which all subsequent accounts of the Templars, all explanations of their foundation, all narratives of their activities have been based. But because of Guillaume’s vagueness and sketchiness, because of the time at which he was writing, because of the death of documented sources, he constitutes a precarious basis on which to build a definitive picture. Guillaume’s chronicles are certainly useful. But it is a mistake and one to which many historians have succumbed to regard them as unimpugnable and wholly accurate.
Even Guillaume’s dates, as Sir Steven
Runciman stresses, ‘are confused and at times demonstrably wrong’.”
According to Guillaume de Tyre, the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon was founded in 1118. Its founder is said to be one
Hugues de Payen, a nobleman from Champagne and vassal of the count of Champagne.” One day Hugues, unsolicited, presented himself with eight comrades at the palace of Baudouin I -king of Jerusalem, whose elder brother, Godfroi de Bouillon, had captured the Holy City nineteen years before. Baudouin seems to have received them most cordially, as did the
Patriarch of Jerusalem the religious leader of the new kingdom and special emissary of the pope.
The declared objective of the Templars, Guillaume de Tyre continues, was, ‘as far as their strength permitted, they should keep the roads
- 52 -
and highways safe .. . with especial regard for the protection of pilgrims ‘.3 So worthy was this objective apparently that the king placed an entire wing of the royal palace at the knights’ disposal. And, despite their declared oath of poverty, the knights moved into this lavish accommodation. According to tradition, their quarters were built on the foundations of the ancient Temple of Solomon, and from this the fledgling Order derived its name.
For nine years, Guillaume de Tyre tells us, the nine knights admitted no new candidates to their Order. They were still supposed to be living in poverty such poverty that official seals show two knights riding a single horse, implying not only brotherhood, but also a penury that precluded separate mounts. This style of seal is often regarded as the most famous and distinctive of Templar devices, descending from the first days of the
Order. However, it actually dates from a full century later, when the
Templars were hardly poor if, indeed, they ever were.
According to
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