16

1125. LATE AUTUMN. PORTO. DISEMBARKING AFTER A LONG SEA VOYAGE . . .

To put into place a plan as bold as “the establishment of a Portuguese crown,”¹ the Templars would require a domicile in a location already friendly to their cause and, ideally, accessible to the Portuguese court in Guimarães. Situated a mere nine miles to the northwest, Braga would suit the purpose well, as the fourth Templar Master in Portugal would later acknowledge: “the home of the Temple, which is in the city of Braga.”² They already had a friend there in the form of the Procurator for the Knights Hospitaller, Archbishop Payo Mendes, who had earlier secured properties for the Templars in and around the Hospital for the Poor.³

When the five Templar Procurators from Jerusalem finally landed in the city of Porto (formerly Porto Cale), they were greeted at the quay by the typical damp, gloomy, gray weather that so characterizes the region in winter. Three of the men—Raimund Bernard, Guilherme Ricard, and Hugh Martin^*9—were of French origin; the fourth, a young man named Gualdino Paes, was born in Braga and was thus wholesomely Portuguese; and finally, Pedro Arnaldo da Rocha, Portuguese of Burgundian parentage.

These men arrived armed with nothing more than a clear objective, no doubt minutely discussed with Hugues de Payns and the Templar inner circle, which would now call into play relationships and alliances that had lain dormant since the death of the Count of Portugale. Even during those early years, knights associated with the Order of the Temple had rendered him services: “It was well known and believed throughout the land that after D. Enrique engaged in war with the Moors, the Knights Templar had come to his aid, and asked to be admitted into his service.”⁴ As a gesture of gratitude Dom Henrique awarded them the castle of Souré in 1111,⁵ coincidentally the same year he made a rapid and mysterious trip to France, presumably to his original home in Burgundy.⁶

This relationship would serve his son Afonso now that his star was rising in the east in the city of Zamora, his light spreading ever westward over his nascent kingdom, for just as they had once supported his father, so the Templars now rallied around his son against his ever more errant mother.

By the time Afonso Henriques arose a knight on his sixteenth birthday he was said to be “greatly obliged” to the Order of the Temple. How does a teenager acquire that much responsibility, and that to an elite group of knights over two thousand miles away? Could it be that Afonso Henriques was himself inducted into the Order in Zamora?⁷ Given the bond between his father and the Knights Templar, it is realistic to assume the Order nurtured his offspring, taught him their method, then through fine grooming (and a touch of providence) Afonso would implement the vision of an independent nation-state begun by his father, assisted by the Templars and their co-dependent brotherhoods. We know the protective arm of the Templar fraternity always followed young Afonso because even after his father’s death “they always came to his aid,”⁸ especially at the time of his knighthood, when knights belonging to the Order openly offered him their allegiance.⁹

It was the confrontational Archbishop Payo Mendes who took up the role of mentor to the child Afonso following his father’s death. In Mendes’s grooming of Afonso for kingship we see an echo of the spiritual mentor/pupil relationship established between Peter the Hermit and Godefroi de Bouillon, who was also said to be “greatly obligated”—in his case to the Ordre de Sion—after being offered the throne of Jerusalem.

Likewise, we see an echo of Baudoin I and how he “owed his throne” to the Ordre de Sion, a fraternity with whom Hugues de Payns was well connected thanks to his friendship with Prior Arnaldo, now also a Templar Procurator in Braga, the diocese of Payo Mendes.

We are looking here at an extraordinarily intricate but well-developed web of connections, friendships, and family ties spanning three decades and three separate geographic regions!

One French source adamantly claims the Knights Templar was deeply rooted in Portugale by 1126,¹⁰ given how the village of Ferreira was granted to the Order that June.¹¹ Templar involvement in Portugale accelerated around this period thanks to regional appoin-tees (such as the Procurators), all of whom were invested with the power to make decisions and sign documents on behalf of the executive back in Jerusalem: “The highest Prelates, the first and principal heads of the Order in Portugal, sometimes were named preceptors, others ministers, and Provincial Masters, with regard to the Grand Master who resided in Palestine . . . they resided in homes, hospices, or small convents which the Order had in cities, towns or castles, so they could gather the fruits to raise the level of the people and agriculture.”¹²

The Templar chronicler Bernardo da Costa not only concurred but also claimed their presence to be even earlier: “By the year of their confirmation the Order of the Temple was not only already accepted, but established in Portugal; and not only in that year but in preceding years, and shortly after the nine knights established the Order in Jerusalem.”¹³

This is a remarkable assertion, so let us be very clear about it. The Order of the Temple was confirmed in 1117 by King Baudoin I, and the following year the knights relocated to Temple Mount and became known as the Knights Templar. Da Costa implies the Order was not only established in Portugale by this point, but it had been prior to this date, “shortly after the nine knights established the Order in Jerusalem.” This would refer to the “brotherhood within a brotherhood” established in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher around 1104 when Hugues de Payns took up residence there. Those proto-Templars were still living there by 1114—the year Comte Hugh de Champagne sailed to Jerusalem to join this Militiae Christi. Clearly one of the richest men in Europe did not dispose of his entire wealth and embark on a perilous sea voyage to join a phantom organization, thus the Order of the Temple must have been a fully fledged group years before its official declaration.

The same argument holds true in Portugale. A land grant from Ejeuva Aires and sons is made out “to you Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem, Pelagio Gontimiris and Martino Pelagii,” a property owned by the family in the city of Braga, “around the well of the hospital.”¹⁴ The transaction could not have been made to any other organization because one of the recipients is Pelagio Gontimiris. Pelagio typically denotes a member of the clergy, and Gontimiris is the Latinized form of Gondemare. This Brother Gondemare is none other than one of the original Templars, the very same person who met with Bernard de Clairvaux, and he would have had good cause to do so because Brother Gondemare was himself a Cistercian monk.¹⁵

But the plot thickens because Brother Gondemare was also the son of a Portugale family¹⁶ and, if the source documents are correct, a member of Ordre de Sion.¹⁷ This makes him not only a direct link between the Templars, the Cistercians, and the Ordre de Sion, it also proves that one of the founding Templars lived in Portugale right from the very beginning.

Of all the original knights, Gondemare stands out in that he is one of only two original knights not named after his place of origin, a deviation from the standard practice of the age (i.e., Hugues de Payns, André de Montbard, etc.). Or is he? A few miles from where the Knights Hospitaller owned their first chapter house at Leça, there existed at that time another monastery in the town of Gondemare. To all intents and purposes, if Godemare was not in fact the knight’s name but his domicile, it means all that was required of the Cistercian monk to accept the aforementioned property transaction in Braga on behalf of the “Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem” was a brief twenty-eight-mile horse ride.

There is another revelation in the chronicles of Bernardo da Costa concerning the Templars’ presence in Portugale, and it is equally riveting. It states, “After the death of Conde D. Henrique, due to his son D. Afonso Henriques being a minor, governorship of the Kingdom was taken up by Queen Tereza . . . . Already by this time the Order of the Temple was accepted and established in this Kingdom, and in the government of Queen Tereza, as the original documents in the Archive of the Convent of Tomar prove . . . the same Queen had made another title deed to the Order of the Temple, without a date, but it can be shown this deed was made before those in 1128.”¹⁸

Da Costa is unequivocal about the Templars and their regional representatives being embedded within the Portugale court from a very early date. The deed without a date refers to a substantial property donation for a small town in the vicinity of both Gondemare and Braga. It reads, “I, Queen D. Tereja give to God and the Knights of the Temple of Solomon the village called Fonte Arcada, in the land beside Penafiel, with all its terms and benefits, for the good of my soul.”

It is accepted by and signed, “I, Guilherme, Procurator of the Temple in this territory, receive this document.”¹⁹ The aged parchment goes on to mention no less than seventeen additional land grants by local families.²⁰

The ancient village and its arched sacred spring (known as Fonte Archatus by the seventh century) is the first documented location where the Knights Templar developed a convent.²¹ The original title deed still exists,^*10 signed by Tareja with the highly imaginative title “independent sovereign of all of Portugale.” Indeed, it bears no date, so a little sleuthing is required here.

By law, Afonso Henriques should have ascended to the throne on his fourteenth birthday in July 1123, becoming de facto ruler of Portugale and thus administrator of the affairs of state and signatory of legal documents. Until then his mother acted as regent with sole authority to sign official documents on his behalf. Since the grant of Fonte Arcada bears her signature there are two possibilities: either it was made before July 1123, or before 1128, when her historical—and questionable—status as sovereign ceased altogether.

Between these dates Afonso was in exile and at war with his mother, literally, thus he had little or no access to government offices. It is plausible that Tareja’s need to assert herself as a ruler meant she started signing away property that technically was not hers to give away, what amounted to a usurpation of power. Whether this was the case or not, the accepting signatory on the donation of Fonte Arcada holds the key to the dating of the document: Guilhermus P. Templi, P standing for Procurator, a person with the power and authority to conduct transactions on behalf of the Grand Master of the Knights Templar. Guilherme Ricard was one of the five Procurators arriving in the autumn of 1125 to “establish the Portuguese crown.”²²

Early in 1126 he was elevated to first Master of the Knights Templar in Portugale,²³ his new title again reflected on a follow-up land grant for half the estate of Villa-nova, donated by Affonso Annes “to God, and the brotherhood of the Knights Templar,”²⁴ which he signed Magister Donus Ricardus (names in those days were written in different languages and spellings). So the most likely date for the donation of Fonte Arcada—when he was still a mere Procurator—would be the fallow days of 1125.

It is worth bearing in mind that a property transaction is a complicated and time-consuming process; both the paperwork and legal framework do not appear overnight but over the course of months, sometimes longer. And in those days of pen, ink, and vellum, the process would have been equally laborious, if not more, meaning that the preparations to transfer such a considerable property must have been on Countess Tareja’s mind for quite some time. If so, the Portuguese court must have known in advance of the impending arrival of five Templar Procurators from Jerusalem.

Tareja was an extremely insecure individual to begin with, and as acting head of state she would hardly have awarded a large property like Fonte Arcada to complete strangers of unknown provenance. Furthermore, in twelfth-century Europe nothing moved without papal blessing, and since in 1125 the Templars had yet to be recognized by the pontiff, officially speaking the Knights Templar did not yet exist. So the Order of the Temple must have established quite a solid reputation within Portugale during Tareja’s tenure. If her late husband trusted them, in theory so did she.

Which may explain why later that year a small Templar army quietly disembarked along the Portuguese coast, at the estuary of the river Mondego,²⁵ twenty-six miles from the administrative city of Coimbra, to take possession of the town of Souré, the exchange being made to the captain of the army.²⁶