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1147. BRAGA. GUALDINO PAES ALSO MOVES INTO HIS NEW DOMICILE . . .

Pelagius built a certain house, a dwelling-place for pilgrims, as a remedy for his soul and those of his parents, in Braga, to the sustenance of which house he brought with his generous hand, vines, landed property, many benefits and many incomes. After his death, however, those wanting many of the perishable riches of this world . . . destroyed it, reducing it altogether to nothing. Afterwards I, Afonso, King of Portugal, saw the above-mentioned house to be so destroyed and diminished, and wishing to reform it for the better, established a charter of testament and stability for it, together with João, Archbishop of Braga, with God and the Knights of the Temple of Solomon. . . . I give and concede it to them, with all its appurtenances which now it has and used to have on the day of the death of Archbishop Pelagius, that they might have and possess it, and do whatever they wish with it in the service to the Temple.¹

The letter by Afonso Henriques illustrates the enormous respect held by the king of Portugal for Pelagius, aka Payo Mendes. Afonso’s decision to refurbish the former dwelling place for pilgrims and its hospital for the poor was opportune timing, for it would soon become the domicile of the Templars’ next rising star, Gualdino Paes, following the knight’s efforts in the recapture of the city of Santarém.²

Gualdino’s life reads like a list of coincidences and ironies; in fact, it takes on a near mythological aspect. He was born on the outskirts of Braga, in the town of Marecos, in 1118, the same year the Knights Templar were established as an entity. By the same token, his death on the thirteenth day of October mirrors the infamous day when the Templars would be arrested throughout France and practically obliterated. He was descended from the first and highest nobility of northern Portugal, and his father, Paio Ramires, sided with Afonso Henriques against the prince’s mother.

Gualdino traveled widely, honing his skills as man of the sword and adept of devotion, and by the then-mature age of twenty-one he fought alongside Afonso at the decisive battle of Ourique, the moment that defined Afonso as a king, Portugal as a nation, and Paes as a Templar Master-in-waiting.^*18

Like an echo of the simultaneous birth of Portucale and the Cistercian Order, the rise of Gualdino Paes goes hand in hand with the fortunes of the Templars, the Cistercians, and the golden age of both in Portugal.

In addition to his lifelong friendship with the future king (with whom he shared a singular vision of a kingdom accountable only to God), his family’s noble status would inevitably have established bonds with another of Braga’s most illustrious families, the la Roche, particularly Arnaldo da Rocha, and most likely it was the prior’s exploits on Mount Sion that inspired Gualdino’s parents to pack him off to Jerusalem. The young man obviously joined Arnaldo’s inner circle, since he is named as one of the five Procurators dispatched to Portugal by Hugues de Payns. Which is an extraordinary concept, given that, back in 1125, Gualdino would have been a mere eight years of age!

It gets stranger. The following year (June 1126) this child Templar Procurator is named in the charter of the village of Ferreira by Countess Tareja.³ An entry written alongside the document states, “This charter is an agreement and reaffirms that Master Gualdino and Arnaldo da Rocha take charge of our village of Ferreira.” And as if the story could not become any more remarkable, one Cistercian chronicler categorically states that for the entire length of his life Gualdino Paes was a Templar Master,⁴ “the principal knight in this kingdom, whom they were obedient to.”⁵

What was so special about this child prodigy that required him to be groomed right from infanthood to be a Templar Master?

At the more sensible age of thirty he followed in the footsteps of so many illustrious, pious knights before him when he undertook the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, his second. After preparing his belongings, he hitched a ride on one of many fleets passing by the shores of Portugal from England, filled with crusaders, mercenaries, glory hounds, blood-hungry zealots, and all manner of fortune seekers hoping for a share of spoils in the Second Crusade then taking place in the Holy Land. It is unlikely that he was actually part of the crusading army, for Portugal was never a recruitment area, the reason being that all hands were either busy protecting their nascent nation-state or busy driving the remaining Moors south and back to North Africa.⁶ One therefore has to ask, Why should Gualdino have been spared for this trip?

Once in Jerusalem, Gualdino joined other Templars and honed his skills as a knight for five years, taking part in the siege of Asqalân alongside one of the original Templars, André de Montbard.

A clue as to why he was sent to the Holy Land lies in his actions upon his return to the motherland. Along with his fellow Templars, he devotes precious little effort toward military goals or to upholding victories; instead, he dedicates himself to spiritual matters and, together with Arnaldo da Rocha, the pursuit and establishment of churches and their attached lands, even the erecting of new temples, and securing from Afonso Henriques guarantees of liberty from ecclesiastical interference and immunity from the state, which the king more than happily obliged.⁷ Such actions are at odds with a man who went to the Holy Land to, presumably, spend his entire time engaged in warfare. It would seem that Paes’s time was perhaps better spent doing exactly what Bernard de Clairvaux prescribed in his eulogy to the Templars: understanding the spiritual context of the land and visiting the sacred sites of the Near East.

Upon his return, Paes discovered a present waiting for him. During his absence, King Afonso awarded his friend the village of Sintra and its surrounding lands and made him Templar Commander of the entire municipality,⁸ the implications of which reveal much about what the Templars learned in Jerusalem and what they were doing with it in Portugal. But we are getting ahead of ourselves . . .

If a man is to be judged by the company he keeps, then Paes’s bond with a mystic named Dom Telo says much about his moral compass.

Dom Telo was the prior of Viseu, who, after returning from his own pilgrimage to Jerusalem, was offered the bishopric but turned it down on ethical grounds. Dom Telo was also an ally of the teenage Afonso Henriques against his mother and even vowed at one point to excommunicate Countess Tareja for her wayward behavior. Not surprising, then, that following Payo Mendes’s death, it was Dom Telo who took up the mentorship of the now-grown king.

Dom Telo also made a second pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and upon his return in 1132 he met in Coimbra with Afonso Henriques, who had just moved the seat of Portugal there and was busy founding the monastery of Santa Cruz so that his recently returned mentor and eleven of his monks could live in brand-new premises. In return for this gesture of kindness, Prior Telo raised Santa Cruz into one of the most important monastic houses during Portugal’s first dynasty; he in turn would be canonized as the first Portuguese saint (Saint Teotonio) in acknowledgment of his reformation of the corrupt habits of the Christian church in Portugal, and his example would spread worldwide via the Augustinian Order.

Telo’s effort to reform a corrupt system is not unlike Bernard de Clairvaux’s, so it is not surprising to learn that the two clergymen exchanged correspondence, in which they expressed “good relations are established between the monastery of Santa Cruz and the abbey of Clairvaux,” a phrase strangely identical to the earlier accord signed between the Ordre de Sion and the Knights Templar.⁹

Needless to say, associating with such an exemplary figure as Dom Telo would leave an indelible mark on anyone. And no doubt it did on Gualdino Paes, because not only was the young knight raised in his monastery, but what he was taught there shaped his conduct in the Holy Land and thereafter.

Upon Paes’s return from Jerusalem in 1156, he is awarded the title of Templar Commander.¹⁰ He spends the next year in close contact with the newly appointed Templar Master Arnaldo da Rocha, who, on July 1157, confers that same title on Gualdino.¹¹

(Interestingly, one of Arnaldo’s later relatives, the Templar Master Aimery de la Roche, would himself initiate into the Order the most famous of all Templar Grand Masters, one Jacques de Molay.)¹²

After handing Gualdino the reins of the Templar brotherhood, Arnaldo returns to near anonymity, performing otherwise subordinate tasks. Two years later, after signing the charter of the town of Redinha as mere “Brother Arnaldo,” the fourth Templar Master of Portugal, a true international man of mystery, gives his last breath unto God, humble to the very end.

This brief stewardship of Paes by the former head of the Ordre de Sion in the twilight years of his life appears as though Prior Arnaldo was instructing his young neighbor from Braga, adding to the speculation that Gualdino’s path was meticulously planned with a certain end in mind. In hindsight, given the careful groundwork laid down by the Templars and their associates in Portugal right from the beginning, Paes’s journeys to the Holy Land served as grooming for his future role, because it was under his tenure as Master that the Knights Templar came to establish a kingdom within a kingdom.

Gualdino Paes.

One of Master Gualdino’s first duties was to preside over the apotheosis of a long-festering confrontation between Afonso Henriques and an Englishman named Gilbert of Hastings, a monk sailing with the Christian army who took part in the siege and conquest of Lisbon in 1147. After the fall of the city, Gilbert was appointed the diocese’s bishop, following the convenient and likely premeditated murder of the incumbent Christian bishop and member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which itself was involved in a decades-long spit with the Roman Catholics. Thus, his timely death conveniently prevented the Constantinople-based church from reclaiming the Diocese of Lisbon, and it was widely rumored that Gilbert, a Roman Catholic, was heavily involved in his predecessor’s suspicious “removal.”

Gilbert then took it badly that the king awarded the Templars properties in recently reconquered Santarém because its diocese came under the jurisdiction of Lisbon. The Englishman made enormous—and ludicrous—demands (such as a new church actually built by the Templars), maneuvering hard to acquire the benefits enjoyed by the knights by writing a petulant letter to Rome outlining the manner in which he was being disrespected. The situation was a delicate one, not least for Afonso Henriques, who’d secured Lisbon thanks to the convenient timing of an armada of 164 ships sailing along the coast on its way to the Second Crusade. But how did Afonso come to possess knowledge of this armada?

As the ships made landfall on June 16 in Porto to take on food, water, and provisions, they found Bishop Pedro Pitões waiting for them at the quay.¹³ In the Cistercian’s cloak was a letter from the king: “To Pedro, Bishop of Porto, greetings. If perchance the ships of the Franks should come to you, take care to receive them with all possible friendliness and courtesy; and, in accordance with the agreement which you may conclude with them to stop with me, offer yourself and whoever else they may desire with you as security for its absolute inviolability; and so you may come with them to me at Lisbon. Farewell.”¹⁴

Essentially, the king commandeered the fleet and was instructing it to make an unscheduled stop in Lisbon. The proposition would be tempting to the soldiers, especially for the manner in which the region around Lisbon was described by Raol, the armada’s chaplain:

. . . second to none, rich in products of the soil, whether you are looking for the fruit of the trees or the vines. It abounds in everything, both costly articles of luxury and necessary articles of consumption. It also contains gold and silver and is never wanting in iron mines. The olive flourishes. There is nothing unproductive or sterile or which refuses to return a harvest. They do not boil their salt but dig it. Figs are so abundant that we can hardly eat a fraction of them . . . the air is healthful. In its pastures the mares breed with a wonderful fecundity.¹⁵

Beside the city flowed the mighty Tejo, at the time so bounteous it was said to consist of two parts water and one part fish and shellfish. Afonso reasoned that this western Eden would tempt the men to stay awhile. And while there they might as well help expel the Moors from the magnificently fortified city and complete the task his father had attempted forty years earlier.

How had Afonso known an armada was arriving in Porto? There exists a cryptic letter written at the time of the ensuing skirmish from Bernard de Clairvaux to his nephew Afonso, alluding to the king having sent an emissary to Clairvaux requesting help in removing the Moors then entrenched in Lisbon: “I have received Your Highness’ letter with great pleasure. . . . What I have done in the matter will be evident from the outcome, as you will see for yourself. You will see with what promptitude I have complied with your request and the exigencies of the matter. Pedro, the brother of your Highness, and a prince worthy of all honour, has acquainted me with your wishes. . . . My son Roland will bring you documents which set forth the liberality of the Holy See.”¹⁶

Clearly, Bernard used his influence in Rome in persuading the Holy See to divert a contingent of men scheduled for the Holy Land by cunningly suggesting they remove infidels from the western flank of Europe en route, the natural consequence of which would help his illustrious nephew consolidate the Cistercian-Templar plan to secure a new territory where their New Jerusalem could flourish. A later Cistercian chronicler made this very clear: “[The Cistercian Order] reached out to [Portugal] with spiritual and material assistance, such as the conquests of Santarém, Lisbon . . . and other successes, for which assistance was provided by the intervention of Bernard and his contacts: this is proof of the material assistance our saint [Bernard] placed within reach of Afonso Henriques in the instigation of his reign, for which the king placed his reign under the [Rules] of Clairvaux.”^*1917

In shrewdness, both uncle and nephew were alike.

As Bishop Pitões opened negotiations in Porto on the king’s behalf, the Norman and English knights sailing with the fleet at first refused to attack unless the king gave them the right to plunder everything inside Lisbon’s city walls, without sharing as much as a brick with the Portuguese army. Back at his camp to the north of Lisbon, Afonso debated the situation: “Having been constantly harassed by the Muslims, it surely has not been our destiny to accumulate material wealth,” he said, and with that he conceded the terms, with the caveat that “myself and all my men shall have absolutely no share in them.”¹⁸ The Crusading soldiers not only stripped Lisbon of its wealth, they also reneged on the provision for the peaceful terms of surrender, forcing Afonso to intervene in stopping the ensuing atrocities.

So Afonso won the city on the back of the Crusades, but since the army was under orders from the pope, technically he owed Rome a small favor. And Rome wished that Bishop Gilbert would be given what he wanted. It was a bittersweet position for Afonso, for the king was no friend of the antics of the Roman Church, and proved so when he promoted a black monk to the post of Bishop of Coimbra with the power to conduct mass. This symbolism of a monk conducting mass—let alone an African—was an affront to the Holy See, who had complete dominion over the anointing of bishops.¹⁹

Afonso dug his heels in, and the dispute with Gilbert smoldered for twelve years.

Then suddenly, around 1158, as though Afonso had been waiting for the opportune moment, the king abruptly presented Gilbert with a tempting proposition: if the Templars relinquished their holdings in Santarém, would the bishop show good faith by exchanging them for a massive plot of less-than-prime agricultural land north of Lisbon presently belonging to his diocese, along with a dilapidated old town and its ruined castle?

By now, Afonso had become an acute reader of people, and his offer played to the bishop’s greed and vanity: the cities of Lisbon and Santarém for the bishop, a seemingly worthless tract of land for the Templars.

Greed and vanity triumphed. However, after Gilbert “gave up all his rights and those of his successors to all the churches already founded in that territory, in perpetuity,”²⁰ Afonso Henriques, as arbitrator, and probably in distaste of Gilbert’s morals, withheld for the Templars the two main sites in Santarém demanded by the bishop—the church of Saint James and the temple of Our Lady of Alcáçova.

And so the Templars came away with the strategically poor and second-rate agricultural lands of the municipality of Ceras, a crumbling town, and its wreck of a castle.²¹ The transaction was witnessed by Petrus Silva and accepted without one word of protest by Master Gualdino Paes on behalf of the Order of the Temple.

Why should the Templars negotiate such a ridiculous deal?

Afonso’s abrupt change of heart coincides with a series of interrelated events. Following the taking of Santarém, Gualdino Paes and Arnaldo da Rocha each move to homes in Braga and spend the next six months making plans before returning south to assist the king in preparations for the liberation of Lisbon. After the battle, Paes makes his second journey to Jerusalem, where he teams up with André de Montbard to assist in the conquest of Asqalân.

For André it was a bittersweet time. Shortly before winning the city he learned of the passing of his uncle Bernard de Clairvaux. For Gualdino it was an opportune time and place, because two days later André is appointed Templar Grand Master.

The two knights spend the subsequent three years attending to business in the Holy Land until André himself passes away in January 1156, precipitating Gualdino’s return to Portugal, whereupon he reconnects with Master Arnaldo. In essence, Paes benefited from five years of training under the supervision of not just two Templar Masters but two officials of the Ordre de Sion.²²

It is at this point that Afonso Henriques makes his move and negotiates a massive swathe of territory from Bishop Gilbert and the church he represents, then transfers it to the Knights Templar and their recently appointed Master, Gualdino Paes. The timing suggests Paes returned to Portugal with some undisclosed instruction that required forward motion to take place.

Is it possible the vast and apparently worthless territory of Ceras played a part in this unrevealed plan?

The truth is that the territory awarded to the Templars may have been poor compensation for the rich ecclesiastical properties in and around Santarém—two of which the Templars kept anyway—but when combined with adjacent territory later donated by the king, the Templars were suddenly in possession of a massive chunk of land, one-third of Portugal to be exact, large enough to establish a kingdom within a kingdom. On top of this, the lands of Ceras were guaranteed “free from all ecclesiastical interference” from Rome, so when the charter was sanctioned by papal bull in June 1159, the Templars were effectively given the right to build without homage to the church.

Within a matter of weeks Gualdino and the Templars moved out of Santarém to their fifth and final base in Ceras, named for the goddess of agriculture, grain, and fertility of the land. In this lackluster domicile the golden age of the Knights Templar was about to begin, as though the entire exercise had been patiently premeditated.