Knights Templars
From Metapedia
The Knights Templars or Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (pauperes commilitones Christi templique Salomonici), formed one of the three great military orders, founded in the 12th century. Unlike the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights it was a military order from its very origin.
Its founders were a Burgundian knight named Hugues de Payns (Hugo de Paganis) and Godeffroi de St Omer, a knight from northern France, who in 1119 undertook the pious task of protecting the pilgrims who, after the first crusade, flocked to Jerusalem and the other sacred spots in the Holy Land. They were quickly joined by six other knights and soon afterwards organized themselves as a religious community, taking an oath to the patriarch of Jerusalem to guard the public roads, to forsake worldly chivalry, "of which human favour and not Jesus Christ was the cause," and, living in chastity, obedience and poverty, according to the rule of St Benedict, "to fight with a pure mind for the supreme and true King."
To this nascent order of warrior monks Baldwin I, king of Jerusalem, handed over a part of his royal palace lying next to the former mosque of al-Aksa, the so-called "Temple of Solomon," whence they took their name. They had at first no distinctive habit, wearing any old clothes that might be given to them. Nor was their community exclusive. Their primitive rule seems to have enjoined them especially to seek out excommunicated knights, and to admit them, after absolution by the bishop, to their order, and they thus served a useful purpose in at once disciplining and converting the unruly rabble of "rogues and impious men, robbers and committers of sacrilege, murderers, perjurers and adulterers" who streamed to the Holy Land in hope of plunder and salvation. It was this rule which led later to the most important privilege of the order, the immunity from sentences of excommunication pronounced by bishops and parish priests.(Fn3) This practice, as Prutz points out, might have brought them at once under the suspicion of the Church, and it soon became expedient to obtain the highest sanction for the new order and its rules. In the autumn of 1127 accordingly Hugues de Payns, with certain companions, appeared in Europe, where he was fortunate enough to secure the enthusiastic support of the all powerful abbot of Clairvaux. Grateful pilgrims had already begun to enrich the order; the De laude novae militae, a glowing panegyric of this new and holy conception of knighthood, addressed by Bernard to Hugues de Payns by name, insured the success of his mission. In 1128 the council of Troyes discussed and sanctioned the rule of the order which, if not drawn up by Bernard, was undoubtedly largely inspired by him
No manuscript of the original "French Rule of the Temple" (Regle du Temple) exists. Of the three extant manuscripts representing later recensions, one is preserved at the Accademia dei Lincei at Rome (Cod. 44,44, A 14), one at the Bibliotheque Nationale (fonds francais 1977), the third in the departmental archives at Dijon (H. 111). The last of these, probably intended for the use of the master of a subordinate house, is much abbreviated; it dates, however, from the early part of the 13th century, whereas the others are of the end of the century at earliest. In essentials these copies preserve the matter and spirit of the primitive Rule, and they prove that to the end the order was, in principle at least, submitted to the same strict discipline as at the beginning.(Fn1) The Regle du Temple in its final form as we now possess it contains the rules for the constitution and administration of the order; the duties and privileges of the various classes of its personnel; the monastic rules, regulations as to costume and as to religious services; rules for the holding of chapters, and a summary of offences and their punishment; the procedure at the election of a grand master and at receptions into the order; a definition of the relations of the order to the pope, and to other religious orders.
It must be borne in mind, however, that the organization of the order as described below was only gradually developed, not having been fixed at Troyes. At first the master of the Temple at Jerusalem was only one among many; the seneschal and marshal appear not to have existed; and it was not till the bull Omne datum optimum of Pope Alexander III. (1163), the great charter of the order, that its organization was definitively centralized.
As finally constituted, the order consisted of (1) knights (fratres milites), (2) chaplains (fratres capellani), (3) serjeants or esquires (fratres servientes armigeri), (4) menials and craftsmen (fratres servientes famuli and officii). All were bound by the rules of the order and enjoyed its privileges. Women were not admitted to the order.
