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1114. BRAGA. A VERY OLD CITY IN PORTUGALE . . .

A long line of lords, townspeople, and country folk stood on either side of the nine miles of dirt road connecting Guimarães with the cathedral city of Braga. It was the beginning of May and the Celtic fertility feast of Beltane, but there was little to celebrate. Along the final stretch of gray cobblestones leading to the cathedral, a solemn procession carried the casket of a dignified Burgundian knight who had been born in Dijon and died in the small territory he carefully cultivated eight hundred miles from his birthplace, deeded to him by his father-in-law, King Alfonso VI of Castilla e León.

At fifty-five years of age Count Dom Henrique the Good, father of the county of Portucale, was dead.

In his time he had been much admired by his subjects, whose quality of life he raised by making a priority of education and the husbandry of the land. He would leave behind his wife, Tareja, to act as regent for their five-year-old son, Afonso Henriques, who, with good fortune, would complete his father’s dream: the establishment of an independent state of Portucale, an idea the count had set in motion a few years earlier while taking advantage of the civil war raging in Castilla e León following the death of its king, the very man who awarded Dom Henrique his territory. Even now the county was referred to in the softer local dialect—Portugale.

And so on this somber day in 1114 began the adult life of the child Afonso, surrounded by the austere granite of the cathedral of Braga.^*41

Afonso could not have imagined he would rise to power with the help of a fraternity of spiritual knights with whom his father had become involved—in their embryonic stage—during his voyages to Jerusalem or that the activities of the brotherhood would be centered unequivocally around the city of Braga.

By all surviving accounts, Braga is the oldest Portuguese city and one of the oldest in Iberia, allegedly founded by Teukros, son of the Greek king Telamon, who fought in the Trojan War even though he was related to the royal family of Troy. The legends may well be correct. After the war Teukros moved to Cyprus and founded the city of Salamis before departing westward along the Mediterranean, sailing through the Pillars of Heracles, then turning north along the Lusitanian coast before disembarking in the town of Porto Cale. This dates the founding of nearby Braga to around 1190 BC.² Hellenistic presence in this part of the world is strong, with other Greek settlements founded nearby at Tuy and Hellene.³ Brutus of Troy is also known to have sailed here circa 1100 BC with a large contingent of fellow countrymen on his way to southern Britain, where by the banks of the river Isis, or Tammuz, he founded the city of Caer Troyus, later renamed Llandin. We know these landmarks today as the river Thames and the city of London.⁴ Certainly, there still lingers a great kinship between the Greek/Trojan and Portuguese cultures to this day, but little love for the Romans. Much to the embarrassment of Rome, during a forty-year siege of Braga even the women joined in to defeat its legions, leaving six thousand soldiers dead.⁵

Count Dom Henrique at rest.

Myths also link the founding of Braga with the Egyptian god of resurrection, Osiris, and a temple dedicated to his wife Isis still existed in AD 44. The cult of Isis was venerated throughout the region and partly lent its name to the nearby province of Gallissa.⁶ There was also a temple in the city dedicated to the god of two faces, Baal-Ianus, symbolizing the balance of opposing forces; a street still honors the location today.⁷ Indeed, ancient esoteric roots run very deep here, as they do along much of northern Iberia through to Gaul, for it was an area where the teachings of Priscillian were held in high esteem.

Stone in Braga cathedral marking the temple of Isis.

Priscillian was a fourth-century bishop, mystic, and theologian, and the first person in the history of Christianity to be executed for heresy—or to be legally precise, for the practice of magic. As with later characters such as Walter the Penniless and Peter the Hermit, Priscillian was a rich noble who renounced his material possessions in favor of ascetic mysticism, and through a classical pagan education came to the understanding that true Christian principles require a mystical and continual intercourse with God.⁸ To prove it he upheld the esoteric Christian ethos, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?” and argued that to make itself a vessel fit for the habitation of the divine a person must renounce material goods, do works of love, and above all—and this will come as no surprise—practice a hard asceticism.⁹

Priscillian founded a group that subsisted for several centuries despite persistent persecution. Naturally, his growing appeal among large numbers of followers threatened the growing authority of the Catholic Church, which led to trumped up charges of heresy. Priscillian responded with an appeal to both the Holy Roman emperor and the pope, for which he and six of his followers were beheaded—the first Christian heretics murdered by Christians. Thus Priscillianism was quite at home in Portugale and Braga, places with a long appetite for the independent of spirit.

Ancient Braga suffered heavily throughout the Dark Ages, when waves of barbarian Sueves, Vandals, and Visigoths swooped in from central Europe to rob, pillage, desecrate, violate, murder, rape, and generally lay waste to any land they touched. The Catholics who followed appear to have behaved no better, as did the Saracens and Moors afterward, who in their ignorance and savagery turned much of the ancient city into rubble. Only during the eighth century did some sense of civilization return to the region when Affonso I, king of Asturias, won back the cathedral cities and ordered the new bishops to reform the depraved ways of the Christians, that good laws be passed for the people of the land, and most astonishing of all, that the old pagan temples be venerated once more.¹⁰

Then, thanks to an enlightened Burgundian knight who became count of Portucale, Braga experiences a renaissance.

In 1089 Count Dom Henrique and Bishop Gerald de Moissac consecrated the ground occupied by the former temple of Isis and continued the honoring of the divine feminine by constructing a new church and chapel dedicated to Notre Dame.^*5 Among several treasures placed inside is the arm of Saint Luke that Dom Henrique himself brought back from one of his two journeys to Jerusalem.¹¹ And so by his deeds the count raised Braga to become one of the most important bishoprics in the Iberian Peninsula, and the humble church eventually soared into a grand cathedral.

Whether or not the count was feeling homesick, his suggestion of architectural style was modeled on the monastery church of Cluny back in his Burgundian homeland. The ultimate irony is that in erecting this good work for the love of God and paying for it out of his own pocket, Dom Henrique was eventually laid to rest inside its solid granite walls.¹²

Given the local inhabitants’ deep-rooted penchant for independence and respect of pagan traditions (pagan meaning “countrydweller”), it is not surprising that the city of Braga and its surrounding area should have become a magnet for people sharing similar ideals and wishing to practice them in relative peace—such as a small brotherhood of monks and spiritual knights who in time became known as the Knights Templar.

At the time of Count Dom Henriques’ death in 1114 the Order of the Temple was still in its embryonic stage in Jerusalem, but according to historical accounts the Templars were already present in Portugale by his date: “After D. Affonso VI married his daughter to Count Dom Henrique, they [the Templars] always came to his aid, and did not stop doing so even after the death of his son.”¹³ An independent German source also states categorically that the proto-Templars forged a working relationship with Count Dom Henrique: “The acquisition of an important property, such as that of the castle of Souré, which was given to them [the Order of the Temple] by Count Henrique in 1111 proves that these knights had already rendered some services, and that he was convinced of their usefulness.”¹⁴

These statements are told by historians with no ax to grind, so there is no reason to believe the claims were invented out of thin air, and yet the repercussions are explosive given what is historically accepted about the foundation of the Templars. If Dom Henrique donated a castle to the Templars in 1111 it establishes their presence in the county of Portugale seven years prior to their founding date and a full seventeen before their acknowledgment by the pope—the point at which the brotherhood of nine original knights became official in the eyes of the world.

The presence of the Knights Templar in Portugale, years before their accepted creation, makes for all kinds of tantalizing conjectures: for instance, what business could a small band of knights possibly be conducting in a faraway county when their base of operation lay at the opposite end of the Mediterranean?

A close examination of surviving documents shows how this brotherhood is sometimes referred to as Templars and sometimes as Order of the Temple or Knights of Solomon, and these titles were often interchangeable. And they were by no means the only group of knights residing in Jerusalem, but one of four.

As we already know, after the battle of Jerusalem, Godefroi de Bouillon installed a group of knights in the Abbey of Mount Sion, and they were appropriately named the Chevaliers de l’Ordre de Notre Dame de Sion, that is, the Knights of the Order of Our Lady of Sion.¹⁵ Of these, virtually no information survives; the knights and their movements remain as mysterious as the monks of the Ordre de Sion whom they protected. Even so, this fraternity was preceded by another group of knights. Toward the end of the eleventh century, Italian merchants from Amalfi purchased a piece of land in the Christian quarter of Jerusalem, where they built two hospitals and two chapels to care for the sick and the poor. After the reconquest, the growing numbers of pilgrims flocking to Jerusalem required an infrastructure to meet their needs for food and lodging. This was provided by the Amalfi Hostelry, and within the compound of this hospital there grew a body of horsemen and foot soldiers who took it upon themselves to protect the pilgrims, giving rise to the Knights Hospitaller.

Then there was a third group, also nonmilitary in nature, comprising twenty monks, along with twelve knights to protect them, a total of thirty-two,¹⁶ also installed by Godefroi de Bouillon in the church where Christ was interred. It became known as the Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher. According to the thirteenth-century chronicle by Bernard the Treasurer, within this rapidly expanding Milities Sancti Sepulchi¹⁷ there was said to exist a small fraternity of knights with far different ideals, a brotherhood within a brotherhood,¹⁸ and although their liturgy was that of the church—l’ordinaire del Sepulchre—their practices were far more spiritual in nature compared with the rest of the knights. These men were led by a man named Hugues de Payns, and they later built octagonal churches inspired by the church in which they resided.¹⁹

Hugues de Payns was a noble from Burgundy who spent a considerable part of his life traveling throughout Asia Minor. According to a contemporary account, this man:

went to Jerusalem on pilgrimage. Having heard that at a cistern just outside Jerusalem, Christians watering their horses were frequently ambushed and killed in pagan attacks, he took pity on them. Moved by a strong feeling of justice, he defended them to the best of his ability, often lying in ambush himself and then coming to their aid, killing several of the enemy. The pagans were shaken by this and they set up camp in such numbers that nobody would be able to counter the attacks. The result was that the cistern had to be abandoned. But Payns, who was a man of energy and not easily defeated, obtained help for himself and for God after a lot of effort. From the Regular Canons of the Temple of the Lord [the Holy Sepulcher] he acquired by means at his disposal a large house within the precincts of the Temple. He lived there poorly dressed and ill-fed, spending everything he had on horses and arms, using all means of persuasion and pleading to enlist whatever pilgrim-soldiers he could either for permanent service there to the Lord or at least for temporary duty. Then, strictly according to rank and duty he fixed for himself and his fellow knights the insignia of the cross or the shield, imposing on his men a regime of chastity and sobriety.²⁰

This brotherhood lived among the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher for about fourteen years before something compelled them to move a few blocks away to Temple Mount. At that moment, the fourth group, the Knights Templar, were born.

Portuguese chroniclers make very clear distinctions between the Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller, and Knights of the Holy Sepulcher, that they were co-dependent and cooperative entities, and that all three were either influential or directly involved in the creation of Portugal as a nation-state.^*621

The Knights Hospitaller^†1 were the first group to appear in Portugale, in 1104,²² shortly after Count Dom Henrique returned from his first voyage to the Holy Land. It is reasonable to assume they came at his invitation, and their residence would have been near the royal household. Indeed, the Hospitallers’ first recorded conventual house in 1112 was located by the river in Leça,²³ a small town one league from the city of Porto Cale and twenty-five from the royal household in Guimarães. Built on the site of a previous Roman temple dedicated to Jupiter, it became the Hospitallers’ primary chapter house and consisted of a hospital, a monastery, and several homes where the monks lived as regular canons.

Like the Knights Hospitaller, the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher were also present in Portugale from an early date; in fact, the Order expanded considerably thanks to properties donated by the widow Countess Tareja during her reign as regent, in continuation of the tradition begun by her late husband,²⁴ as well as from private donations such as the one by “Emisa Trastemiriz, wife of D. Egas Mendes, of the convent of Pendorara with all its rights to the Saint Sepulcher.”²⁵ Two decades later, the Order of the Holy Sepulcher was still residing near Porto Cale, in a monastery under the ownership of the Knights Hospitaller.²⁶

The glaring anomaly in the story is the aforementioned donation of the castle of Souré by Count Dom Henrique in 1111 to the Order of the Temple. At that time the Knights Templar simply did not exist, that name was still seven years in the future. And yet Dom Henrique would hardly have awarded a castle to a nonexistent entity.

There is one possibility. It has been repeatedly suggested that Hugues de Payns, together with his partner, the Flemish knight Godefroi de Saint-Omer, had designs on Temple Mount from the moment they took up residence in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Is it possible they and their small group of nine knights were secretly addressing themselves as the Order of the Temple in anticipation of the day they moved to Temple Mount? Hugues de Payns arrived in Jerusalem the same year Count Dom Henrique was stationed there, and it is natural to assume the two Burgundian knights established a friendship. If so, Dom Henrique was privy to inside information on Hugues de Payns’ plans, and if these two leaders established an accord, Dom Henrique’s awarding of a castle to Hugues and his proto-Templars makes perfect sense.

The donation of Souré gave the proto-Templars a foothold in Portugale. But shortly before he passed away Dom Henrique signed another document providing them with a second, a residence in the city of Braga donated by a member of the clergy. It is very simple to locate this property because it is described as being “beside a Templar hospital,” which would be the hospital for the poor founded by Archbishop Payo Mendes of Braga, “annexed to the main houses he had earlier donated to the Templars in the hermitage.”²⁷

That’s a lot of properties donated to the proto-Templars by a high-ranking clergyman. In those days it was customary to give property to the church, not the other way around! What is even more interesting is that said hospital in Braga had previously been in the possession of the Knights Hospitaller, who transferred ownership to said archbishop; two days later, Payo Mendes donated it to the Order of the Temple.²⁸ In the glacially moving world of real estate deals, this is an extraordinarily rapid series of transactions. Why the haste?

Mendes had the deed countersigned by Dom Henrique. A head of state would hardly be called into to a real estate transaction unless he had a vested interest in one of its parties or stood to gain from such a deal, and given how the count was already in the late stages of the illness that ultimately claimed his life, the latter motive can be ruled out.²⁹ However, with the property underwritten by the Count of Portugale, the Order of the Temple was guaranteed a domicile regardless of whether Dom Henrique lived or died. In the end, this transaction served the proto-Templars well, for it would become their center of operations, a fact openly asserted by a later Templar Master in his own words, “De Domo Templi, quae est in Bracharensi Civitate (the home of the Temple, which is in the city of Braga).”³⁰

Templar font, Cathedral of Braga.

Whatever elaborate plans were made in Jerusalem between Count Dom Henrique, his friend Godefroi de Bouillon, Hugues de Payns, and the Order of the Temple, they were most likely put on hold following the count’s untimely death. With his five-year-old son Afonso far too young to rule, the opportune moment to set things in motion would have to wait.