August 1112 A.D. – The Holy Land – The Dream

The moon lit up the face of the young French knight. The night sky was clear. Even though it was summer the air was cold. He had used his short dagger to dig a shallow pit in the earth to get some respite from the freezing night. Even with his cloak wrapped around him, he was chilled, but the man’s face was covered in sweat. His eyes were blinking rapidly. His chilled lips moved as if having a conversation with an inner demon. In fact that was exactly what was happening. The knight was Hugh of Payns and he was having his recurring dream, or as most people would have described it, his recurring nightmare.

He was reliving an attack on a group of pilgrims he had been escorting the previous summer. The onslaught from the Islamic troops had been ferocious. Hugh had fought back bravely, against overwhelming odds, but without great success. All of the baggage carried on the pack donkeys had been looted. Many of the monks in the group had been ruthlessly cut down. Only the fact that the heathen warriors were eager to ensure they got away with their stolen goods had saved the life of Hugh and the remaining monks. It had been a horrific experience. When Hugh eventually arrived in Jerusalem he found that it was far from unusual.

It was then that he started having the dream. The young knight had taken it as a sign. He determined to seek out other knights like him. And to establish a fighting force which would be dedicated to providing security for Christian pilgrims throughout the Holy Land.

Over the next few months, Hugh gathered a group of eight like-minded men around him. They established a set of rules by which they should live. It was loosely based on the Benedictine rule followed by abbeys and monasteries. But with the obvious difference that they should be prepared to fight and lay down their lives to protect travelling pilgrims. That they should become Christian soldiers.

The knights were brave and committed but had no great riches of their own. They were forever having to beg or borrow horses, armour and weapons from the rich Christian noblemen, who had settled in the Holy Land after the First Crusade. They were all fervent Christians and many times considered abandoning their fight to establish a peaceful religious house. But always some group of travellers would beg them to continue.

Then at Easter in 1119 a great crowd of Christian pilgrims had set off for the River Jordan from the Holy City of Jerusalem. They were in great spirits, singing and praying as they moved slowly through the countryside. But mere hours after starting on their pilgrimage, they were attacked by hundreds of Egyptian troops. A terrible massacre followed. Over three hundred pilgrims were sadistically slaughtered and tens more taken prisoner to be sold as slaves.

Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem had heard of Hugh’s group of knights and after the Easter disaster, determined to put the group on a more formal footing. And so on Christmas Day 1119 at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Order was officially sanctioned. They were to be known as Pauperes commilitones Christi, the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ.