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1128. BACK IN CLAIRVAUX. UPON THE CONCLUSION OF THE CONCLAVE . . .

His business at the Council of Troyes concluded, Hugues de Payns reminded Bernard to compose another kind of Rule: a sermon of encouragement for the Knights Templar, an affirmation of the validity of the Templars’ lifestyle, and a spiritual compass for the members of the Order. Bernard noted, “Once, twice, three times, dearest Hugues, you have asked me to write a work of exhortation to yourself and your fellow knights.”¹ In time, the perpetually traveling-writing-preaching Bernard would grant his request.

Thirteen chapters long—apparently the Cistercian rule of asceticism did not apply to words—Book to the Soldiers of the Temple: In Praise of the New Militia is a work more closely suited to Templar and Cistercian ideals; it even analyzes the spiritual significance of holy sites that were now the Templar’s role to protect.² In his tract Bernard again makes clear the distinction between militia and malicia—between a knighthood engaged in true Christian virtues and one of worldly knights engaged in malevolence. Those who engaged in war for war’s sake gained nothing, for if they died they lost their life, and if they won they lost their soul. Bernard regarded the latter as murderers who coveted riches, vanity, and personal glory. The real battle lay in the conquering of spirit over base human faults; thus a warrior monk placed ideals above barbarism, he allowed for the fight against “sinners” so they would cease menacing the “just.”

The motivation behind the Knights Templar on Temple Mount and the abrupt return to Europe of its inner brotherhood and affiliates is laid bare in the preliminaries to the Rule that Bernard was drafting, in which he reveals, “Well has Damedieu [mother of God or Notre Dame] wrought with us and our savior Jesus Christ; who has set his friends of the Holy City of Jerusalem on march through France and Burgundy. . . . The work has been accomplished with our help. And the knights have been sent on the journey through Champagne under the protection, as we shall see, of the Count de Champagne, where all precautions can be taken against all interference by public or ecclesiastical authority; where at this time one can best make sure of a secret, a watch, a hiding place.”³

What kind of work had they accomplished?

Why should it require preventive measures against church interference?

What secret did they bring back to Champagne?

The passage points to the Templars having undertaken a predetermined mission in Jerusalem, and their return to Champagne being arranged with the full knowledge of Bernard de Clairvaux. With their mission completed, the Cistercians and Templars adopted the beehive as their symbol, suggesting they had been collecting “pollen” to be brought back to the “hive” in Champagne.⁴

The symbolism is revealing. Ancient Middle Eastern and Egyptian cultures regarded the bee as a bridge between the living and the Otherworld,⁵ and this divine association was adopted by the Merovingians, who used the bee as the symbol of immortality and resurrection. This is the very same lineage into which Bernard de Clairvaux and Godefroi de Bouillon were born.^*126

Whatever they were up to, the Templars had been putting a lot of energy into a new domicile far from ecclesiastical interference. Portugale was as distant from Rome as was possible, and its inhabitants had a history of paying lip service to papal authority. Obviously, Bernard and his Cistercian Order were involved in this plan, and his previous meeting in 1126 with the Templars André de Montbard and Brother Gondemare had been no casual get-together, especially as all three, plus the remaining Templars—Bisol de Saint-Omer, Archambaud de Saint-Aignan, Nivard de Mont-Didier, and Brother Roland, along with Hugues de Payns and Comte Hugh de Champagne—are all listed as members of the Ordre de Sion.⁷

Their secret was given safe passage through the substantial territory in central Europe owned by Comte Hugh de Champagne, one of the first sponsors and patrons of the Cistercians, whose donation of land allowed the abbey of Clairvaux to be built; later, he donated to them the abbey of Orval, the building originally erected by the monks addressing themselves as the Ordre de Sion.

Could this secret, then, involve the creation of an ideal state, a temporal mirror of the heavenly Jerusalem so idolized by Bernard de Clairvaux? After all, why would a group of men from central Europe travel all the way to Jerusalem, only to then expend all their energy settling a territory bordering the Atlantic thousands of miles to the west? There are no simple answers, and yet when Bernard drafted In Praise to the New Militia and various church leaders and sovereigns requested he establish a Cistercian abbey in Jerusalem, he declined, as though the holy city no longer played a role in the Order he had just publicly endorsed. Even in a letter to the pope, Bernard voiced opposition to the establishment of a Cistercian presence in Jerusalem by the abbot of the Cistercian House of Moribund, on the grounds that “he wishes to propagate the observances of our Order in that land, and for that reason to lead a multitude with him, who cannot see that the necessities are fighting knights not singing and wailing monks.”⁸ It seems the protection of the Holy Sepulcher or the expansion of Christianity was no longer the central aim of a holy order of knights, perhaps because it never was, and the ultimate purpose of the Templar-Cistercian alliance lay elsewhere.

Bernard de Clairvaux often meditated on the concept of a model Christian nation where the ideals of the kingdom of heaven could be experienced right here on Earth.⁹ Such a vision of utopia must have felt delightful amid the dissonance of the twelfth century, and a look at the bare facts indicates Portugale was high on Bernard’s inner radar.

The Cistercians had long ago established a relationship with Count Dom Henrique, whose close friends—the former Archbishop of Braga and the Bishop of Coimbra—had both come from the monastery at Cluny, from which a group of monks had left to form the Cistercian Order at Citeaux.¹⁰ When he journeyed to the Holy Land, it was a Cistercian monk living in the Hermitage of Saint Julian in Alcobaça who “served Conde D. Henrique of Portugal in the wars, who was with the Moors, and the journey to Jerusalem.”¹¹ Furthermore, Dom Henrique and Bernard de Clairvaux shared the same Burgundian lineage and ideals, and both their families’ estates back in Dijon were practically within shouting distance of each other.

The three brotherhoods of knights—the Hospitallers, the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher, and now the Knights Templar—had gradually established themselves in Portugale since 1104; working among them were high-ranking members of the Ordre de Sion, notably Brother Gondemare (also a Cistercian monk) and Prior Arnaldo da Rocha (a relative of Bernard); even at that very moment the Templars were assisting Afonso Henriques in reestablishing his claim over the territory usurped by his mother and a Galician interloper.

If Bernard sought a new territory to implement his vision, the portents for a favorable outcome in Portugale looked good, especially since the abbot had fostered a relationship with his young nephew Afonso Henriques as early as 1119, after he had sent a delegation of monks to request land for a monastery. As an adult, Afonso fulfilled his duties as a kind of vassal to Clairvaux by gifting said abbey fifty pieces of gold.^*13 The payment was made every year on the spring equinox “to Abbot Dom Bernardo [Bernard de Clairvaux] and his successors” and delivered on Afonso’s behalf by a Procurator of the Knights Templar in Portugale. Subsequent Portuguese kings maintained this inviolable promise and were still doing so two and one-half centuries later.¹²

Suffice it to say, both the Cistercian and Templar Orders were by now deeply invested in Portugale.

The Knights Templar, in turn, did more than pledge allegiance to the Cistercian code established and expounded in Bernard’s ode In Praise of the New Militia,¹³ they were bound by the Cistercian Order, as proved in a document (in the Cistercian monastery of Alcobaça) describing the oath by which every new Templar Master or Procurator in Portugale should conduct himself:

I [name], Knight of the Temple, newly elected master of the Knights that are in Portugal, promise . . . to defend the Mysteries of the Faith, along with the seven Sacraments, the fourteen Articles of Faith, the Symbol of the Apostles . . . and of the Virgin Mary . . . and the bloodline of King David. After this I grant sovereignty and obedience to Grand Master of the Order, according to the statutes of our father Bernard . . . and never to deny help to the religious, through words, arms and good deeds, in particular the pious of the Order of Cister and its abbots, for they are our brothers and companions.¹⁴

Thus the Knights Templar was predominantly a secular extension of the Cistercian ideals of Bernard de Clairvaux, and it was still being asserted as such four centuries later by Cistercian chroniclers such as Brito.¹⁵ In a later deposition to the Holy Inquisition, Brother Aymery of Limoges made a defense on behalf of the Templars imprisoned in the abbey of Saint Geneviève, in the form of a prayer to God, in which he reveals the Templars’ sponsor: “Your order, the Temple, was founded in general council for the honor of the holy and glorious Virgin Mary, your Mother, by the Blessed Bernard, your holy confessor. . . . It was he who, along with other overseers briefed and gave them their mission.” He then addresses the divine Virgin, “Mary, Mother of God . . . defend your order which was founded by your holy and dear confessor, Blessed Bernard.”¹⁶

Not only were many of the key figures of the Knights Templar connected through family ties to the Cistercian Order, most of them also were handpicked by Bernard de Clairvaux himself.¹⁷ It is feasible, then, that if the Templars swore a vow of obedience to Bernard, their tour to Jerusalem was a mission entrusted to them, not of their own making. Thus, Bernard’s discourses on the Templars and their public approval by him at the Council of Troyes had been mere window dressing, a public gesture, which to some degree explains his reluctance to publicly endorse the Templar Order at the council. It was a fait accompli.

There is another part to this equation, and it involves the Templars’ sister fraternity, the Knights Hospitaller; they even shared the same emblem, the red cross—the Templar version defined by its sinuous semicircular pattern in contrast to the Hospitallers’ hard, angular lines and edges.¹⁸ Relatively speaking, both Orders had a presence as old as each other’s in Portugale, but, just as in Jerusalem, they fulfilled very different roles.¹⁹ The Hospitallers’ first conventual house and primary chapter in Portugale was in Leça in 1112;²⁰ the property was expanded ten years later to include a monastery and its four houses eight miles away in Gondomare.²¹

The first significant thing about these places is their geographic proximity: Gondomare lies eight miles from Fonte Arcada—the Templar’s major donation of 1125—which in turn lies 33 miles west of Tarouca, the first monastery founded by Cistercian monks. The second significant thing concerns one of the monks sent by Bernard to found said monastery, Brother Roland, whom locals described as “an expert of the deeds of France.”²² Could this man be the same Brother Roland, one of the original Knights Templar handpicked by Bernard de Clairvaux? If so, it places two of the founding Templars (three, if we accept the assertions about Prior Arnaldo da Rocha) in Portugale many years before the Council of Troyes—Brother Roland at Tarouca in 1119, and Brother Gondemare at the monastery of his namesake Portuguese town, who took possession of a nearby property on behalf of the Order of the Temple in 1114.²³

And while Brother Roland moved to Portugale from Champagne, the itinerant Brother Gondemare journeyed from Portugale to Jerusalem to join the other original Templars; then in 1126, he boarded a galley bound for Champagne to deliver news of the knights’ discoveries to Bernard de Clairvaux.

It appears all the comings and goings between Clairvaux, Portugale, and Jerusalem were by design, and the groundwork laid in Portugale by Cistercians, Templars, and members of the Ordre de Sion was one long, patient enterprise undertaken long before the pope placed his stamp of approval upon Hugues de Payns and his knights.