5

The Crusades and the Templars

The eight Crusades, which took place from 1096 to 1291, had a profound social, economic, political, cultural, and religious effect on Western Europe. And from the beginning to the end of the Crusades, the Templars were among the Continent’s most important and effective agents in all these areas of experience.

The Order of the Templars, derived from its true name, the Militia of the Temple, was created in Jerusalem in 1118 or 1119 by nine noblemen who were, as Guillaume de Tyr writes in his history of the Crusades, “distinguished and venerable men”:^a Hughes de Pains or Payens, their leader, who adopted the title of master of the Temple and who was customarily called grand master; Geoffroy de Saint-Omer; Paien or Payan de Montdidier; Archambaud de Saint-Armand or Saint-Aignan; André de Montbard, maternal uncle of Saint Bernard de Clairvaux; Godefroy; Gondemar; Roral or Roland; and Godefroy de Bissot or Bissor. In 1126 Hugues, count of Champagne and donor of Clairvaux, joined this number. Together they drew their authority from the patriarch Theocletes, sixty-seventh successor of the apostle John, for whom the Templars maintained, along with the Holy Virgin, a special worship. These men took the three vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity and swore an oath to do all in their power to safeguard the roads and protect pilgrims against the attacks of brigands and infidels.

Initially the Order, which at first followed the rule of Saint Augustine, did not expand greatly. In the ninth year of the order’s existence, however, as Guillaume de Tyr notes, “during the council held in France at Troyes [in 1128], attended by the lord archbishops of Reims and Sens; their suffragans; the bishop of Albano, legate to the apostolic see; and the abbots of Citeaux, Clairvaux (Saint Bernard),^b and Pontivy. . . a rule was instituted for the new knights.” The chronicler adds,

Their affairs had prospered so well that at this time they had in their monastery three hundred knights, more or less, all wearing the white robe,^c not including the brother servants, whose number was almost infinite. It is said they own immense properties, on both sides of the sea and that there is not a single province in the Christian world that has not assigned some portion of its holdings to such an extent that their wealth is, on this we can be sure, equal to that of kings.

The Order of the Temple was able to establish itself and prosper not merely in the Holy Land, but in all regions of the Christian world during the same era that witnessed the appearance of brotherhoods and communities of builders. The primary question—one that has always been subject to controversy—is this: Did the Templars wield any influence over these brotherhoods and communities and, if so, what was the nature of this influence?

In this chapter we will examine:

1.  The direct influence of the Templars on the art of the builders. In this sense they followed the example of religious communities such as the Benedictines and Cistercians.

2.  The influence that the Eastern world—Byzantine and Islamic—exercised over Western civilization at the time of the Crusades and the primary role assumed by the Templars in this social and cultural influence, including the close ties they developed to Byzantine and Muslim guilds.

3.  The Templars’ specific involvement in the formation in Europe of professional communities, primarily those of builders, which includes our discovery of the source of the francs métiers in general and operative freemasonry in particular.

The Templars, Creators of the Brotherhoods of Builders

The Templars, protectors of the Holy Land and guardians of the faithful, were great builders of churches and fortified buildings.

The task they undertook in the areas of protection and defense evolved into a real need during the Crusades. The earliest Crusades had very few qualified workers at their disposal. In 1099, during the siege of Jerusalem, their efforts suffered particularly from the lack of equipment, war machines, and qualified workers.¹ In 1123, at the siege of Tyre, the Crusaders paid a king’s ransom to an Armenian named Havedic to come build ballista for them.² On entering Tyre in 1124, the Christians greatly admired the fortifications, the solidity of the buildings and ramparts, the height of the towers, and the elegance of the port—proof that these kinds of works were novel to them and were regarded as revelations.³ This is precisely the time when the Order of the Templars began to extend itself throughout the Holy Land with the building of fortresses, called kraks, which can still be admired today.

The first krak appears to have been built in 1141 in Ibelin, between Ascalon and Jaffa. Numerous workers participated in its construction, outfitting it with four towers just like the tower of the Templars in Paris.⁴ This project was followed in 1142 by the krak of Moab, or the Stone of the Desert, in TransJordania;⁵ in 1143, the fortress of Geth near Lydda; and in 1144, on the shining Mount or Hill near Ascalon, a high fortress that was flanked by four towers. The local people called this important construction the “white guard” and the Latins, citizens of the Latin states in the Holy Land, called it the “white workman’s hut.”⁶

In 1148, the Christians, especially the Templars, undertook the reconstruction of ancient Gaza. “With the buildings finished and well-kept, the Christians resolved unanimously to place the town and all the land surrounding it in care of the brothers of the Temple and granted it to them in perpetuity. The brothers, strong men who were valiant in battle, have to the present day preserved this trust with loyalty equal to their wisdom.”⁷

The Templars fulfilled prominently and for all time this role of builders on behalf of the Crusaders. The importance of this was emphasized a century later, in 1240, during the construction of the castle of Safed on the instigation of the bishop of Marseilles, Benoit d’Alignan, who had gone to Acre to visit the Templar master Armand de Perigord and tell him that he must at any cost build the fortification in Safed. The master of the Temple, who was ill at the time, answered that he did not have any money. “Stay in bed,” Benoit told him, “but tell your brothers that it is your desire that this construction be undertaken—I am convinced that the action you inspire from your bed will be greater than that of any army.”⁸ In fact, the fortress was rapidly erected under the direction of the Templar Raymond de Caro. It came to govern some 260 caserns and a rural populace of more then 10,000 and guaranteed the safety of the pilgrimage roads to Nazareth and other sanctuaries in Galilee.⁹

In 1243, following an accord reached with the malek of Damascus, the Franks took possession of the whole of Jerusalem, after which the Templars set about building a fortified castle there.¹⁰

The construction activities of the Templars were not confined to the Holy land, however. They erected churches and chapels throughout all of Christendom. During the time of the Council of Troyes, Hughes de Payens went to London to found the first Templar house at Holborn Bars, and during the second half of the twelfth century, the Templars built their famous chapel on Fleet Street on the banks of the Thames. In France, they had maintained an establishment in Paris since the reign of Louis VI the Fat, who died in 1137.

The Templars devoted themselves to the laying out and maintenance of roads and the construction of bridges and hospices, which responded to their mission of protecting and facilitating journeys of the faithful to the holy sites. According to F. T. B. Clavel’s Histoire pittoresque de la Franc-Maconnerie:

One of the routes of Spain that comes out of the Pyrenees goes through Roncevaux, and ends in Lower Navarre has retained the name of the Path of the Templars. It owed its construction to these knights, who, furthermore, protected travelers along its entire length. The Templars were given the task of maintaining the three Roman roads that existed beyond the Pyrenees. Also attributed to them is the building of most of the bridges, hospices, and hospitals from Rousillon all the way to Santiago of Compostella. One circumstance that should be noted, because it establishes the relationship this Order had with corporations of construction workers, is that the old churches in Italy that had once belonged to the Order traditionally retained the name churches della massone or della maccione [of the masons].”¹¹

The Templars most certainly gained their earliest knowledge of architecture, and consequently its trade secrets, from the Benedictines and Cistercians.^d In fact, we have already pointed out the Romanesque Cistercian style of the basilicas built by the Crusaders in the East.

The Templars behaved much as the monastic builders associations had, though their construction talent was displayed in venues beyond just churches intended to propagate the faith. The first concern of these “warrior monks” was the erection of construction that could be used for purposes of attack and defense. Rather than being assumed by the knights, who were primarily soldiers, the role of architect must have fallen upon the chaplains, who were religious clerics, as well as upon actual specialists. Each Templar commandery, though under the orders of a single commander, was managed by a certain number of officers, one of whom was a master carpenter.¹²

In addition to their servant brothers, the Templars also employed Christian workers who were not officially members of the Order. These persons were sometimes Crusaders, but might also be local operatives, especially in northern Syria, where the Armenian and Syrian population had remained entirely Christian and welcomed the Crusaders as liberators.¹³ According to the chronicles, these workers held free status, rather than that of serfs, and enjoyed consideration beyond that accorded the simple manual laborers.

Bernard the Treasurer, the continuer of Guillaume de Tyr, recounts how in 1198 when the Christians laid siege to Beirut, the Saracens “emptied the castle of women, children, and weakened individuals and sent as hostages to the land of the pagans the wives and children of all the slaves and a carpenter they held therein, so that these would not commit any treachery.” Thanks to a ruse, this carpenter made it possible for the Crusaders to successfully capture the castle. Amaury, king of Jerusalem, “honored him greatly, giving to him and his heirs a large private income inside the castle and ensuring that his wife and children, who had been sent to the land of the pagans, were freed.”¹⁴ The useless precautions of the Saracens and the honors bestowed by King Amaury on this “carpenter” show that this title must have concerned a man of a certain high social standing, most likely a master builder.

Hugues Plagon, the second continuer of Guillaume de Tyr, writes that in 1253 the Saracens of Damascus came to Acre, destroyed Doc and Ricordane and captured Sidon, “and slew eight hundred men and more, and took prisoners, including masons as well as other folk, some four hundred persons.”¹⁵ This quote from a contemporary underscores the regard held for the masons on the part of the Crusaders. What might have been the nature of this true crafts community? Was it a monastic association formed by the Crusaders or an association of the type that then existed in the Byzantine and Islamic world?

The Influence of the Eastern World

Byzantine Influences

The Christians of the East, subjects of the Byzantine Empire, were still grouped in the ancient Roman collegia, keepers of the Greco-Latin traditions that had evolved through contact with the people of the East. These associations—particularly those of the builders, which had disappeared as legal entities in the West as a consequence of the barbarian invasions but of which traces and remnants still remained in the monastic associations—appeared to the Crusaders as signs of progress and dispensers of valuable teachings. The Byzantines were the first to educate the Crusaders in the art of constructing war machines. In 1137, during the siege—also a fratricide—of Antioch, Emperor John Comnenus employed “immense instruments of war, machines that hurled blocks of stone that were of enormous weight and size.”¹⁶ These machines were a novelty to the Crusaders, but beyond their service during battle, they could also be used to lift the stones necessary to construct churches and fortresses.

The Templars, the Crusaders’ legion specializing in the building of military works, did not fail to absorb the lessons from the Byzantine collegia. Some in the Order, trained in the Cistercian school, were already of a mind to fraternize with the Eastern builders. Byzantine lessons gave them the knowledge to erect their defense works and kraks. “The Templars, always suspected of a leaning toward mysterious Eastern arts and heresies, took up the mantle of Justinian as represented by the degenerate fortresses in Northern Syria and, in simplifying it, served to amplify it.”¹⁷ When they set aside their arms and when truces in the fighting left them leisure time, the Templars, mindful of their religious vocation, turned to erecting churches dedicatd to the glory of the Lord. Like their Benedictine teachers, they first built in the Romanesque style, but here again Byzantium prevailed and Eastern churches often served as models for those of the Templars. This influence was extended to the construction of the Orders’ commanderies in Europe and is especially visible in the shapes of the Templar chapels, which are either circular, such as those in Paris (the Rotunda), London (Fleet Street), and Tomar in Portugal, or polygonal, such as those in Segovia, Montmorillon, Laon, and Metz.¹⁸

Architectural details amount to merely one sign of Eastern influence. The rediscovery of the Byzantine world actually gave impetus to a broad and profound cultural and social movement. The contact with Byzantium established by the Crusades made it possible to rediscover the legal compilations, in all their originality and potency, that the emperor Justinian applied as the foundation for his empire. It was now possible to conduct a direct and detailed study of Roman law, both public and private, and Roman institutions. The Crusades thus revealed a vast new world rich in less tangible though enormously significant treasures.

Teachers soon carried into other lands this new understanding of Roman law. Schools focusing on its teachings were founded in Italy and France. This rebirth became one of the most important factors in the development of European civilization, not only resulting in a great influence on the development of private law, but also exercising a profound influence on public law and on the thought of Western nations. This, says A. Esmein, is a fact of the first order from both the political and scientific point of view.¹⁹

Legists of the time not only considered Roman law as the science and law of the past. They endeavored, with deep faith, to bring these laws back to life, to restore them to common practice in both institutional and private arenas. In France, especially, government and administrative personnel were soon recruited primarily from among these legists. This evolution reached its full flowering under Philip the Fair, when French legists strove to reformulate the power of the Roman emperor for the king’s benefit. “The king of France is emperor in his kingdom,” legal counselor Boutellier declared at that time. We should recall, however, that absolute imperial power was also based on the strong municipal organization that had been created and on the economic and social role of the collegia, both of which effected the policies of the king concerning cities and the trades. In fact, the Temple took part in this game—for its own benefit, of course—and though it contributed to the greatness of the Order, it ultimately abetted its downfall.

The Influence of the Muslim World

Crusaders and Templars, and through them the Western world, were subject to the overall influence of Byzantium and particularly that of its secular institutions, notably the collegia. But occurring at the same time was Islam’s powerful ascendancy and its influence was as profound as that of the Byzantine Empire. Nor was it limited to the operative plane of construction. Born from a social and practical viewpoint, its effects overflowed widely into the speculative, intellectual, and spiritual domains until its message was propagated, just like that of Byzantium, throughout the entire Christian West.

It is important to note that there was never a constant state of warfare between the the Christian and Muslim camps. In fact, a strong, neighborly relationship was created between them. There were even alliances concluded between the two sides. The necessities of war led the Crusaders to profit from the divisions that existed among the “infidels” and to exploit the offices of one to combat the others—so much so, in fact, that the first lessons learned from the Muslims were primarily utilitarian and military.

From the very beginning of the First Crusade, the Franks reached a military understanding with the Fatimids of Egypt against their common enemy, the Turks. The Fatimids were far from viewing the Frankish invasion adversely because they deemed that it would stop the advance of the Turks in the direction of Egypt. Arab historian Ibn al-Athir accused the Fatimids of having summoned the Franks into Syria in order to use them as defense against the Turks. In 1099 the Crusaders signed an accord with the emir of Tripoli, Ibn Ammar, which stipulated that they would spare the city in return for the emir’s delivery of three hundred pilgrims who had been held captive in his city; 15,000 bezants; and food, supplies, and guides. The emir even went so far as to promise the Crusaders that he would convert to Christianity.²⁰

Other alliances were similarly concluded. In 1100 a veritable modus vivendi, both political and economic, was established between the Franks and the Arabs in Palestine. In 1102 the grand master of the Assassins (see page 74) sent an ambassador to Baldwin, King of Jerusalem.

In 1138 the Christians allied with the Turks of the kingdom of Damascus, which was ruled by Ainard. Together they subsequently set siege to Paneade. Turkish warriors, assisted by Turkish workers and carpenters, taught the Christians how to erect siege apparatuses and to assault the besieged site with machines called stone throwers.²¹

On the Christian side the Templars were always the most active artisans of these kinds of alliances. In 1129, the Templar grand master urged Baldwin II to come to an understanding with the Ismaili Abu Fewa. Under the terms of their agreement, Baldwin exchanged Tyre for Damascus. In fact, “for some eighty years, the Templars maintained close relations with the heads of the Ismaili sect.”²² Similarly, in 1136 the Templars of Saint John of Acre became friends with the Turkish capitain Unur.

In 1167, a peace treaty was concluded in Cairo between the Christians and the caliph of Egypt. The negotiators for the Crusaders were Hugues de Cesarée and Geoffroi, a Templar knight. The event was noted by Guillaume de Tyr, who recounts in dithyrambic style all the marvels that struck them with admiration in the capital of Egypt. During that same year, however, the Christians broke the peace treaty and invaded Egypt on the instigation of the Hospitaller Order. “The brothers of the Temple, whose grand master was then Bertrand de Blanquefort, wished to take no part in this expedition, saying that it was most unjust to wage war against a kingdom whose alliance was based on our good faith, and to misinterpret the tenor of a treaty and the sacred principles of law.”²³

In 1187, in order to obtain the surrender of Ascalon and other Christian strongholds, Saladin employed as negotiators his prisoners, Guy de Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, and Gerard de Ridefort, grand master of the Templars. Though these negotiations went nowhere, a short time later the grand master succeeded in having Gaza turned over to Saladin, who then freed his prisoners as a sign of thanks. While R. Grousset views this as a cynical transaction, perhaps this negotiation occurred in response to the needs of the day and from a desire to avoid the useless spilling of blood. The Greek Orthodox community of Jerusalem acted from a similar attitude, with a fortunate result: Saladin, once master of the kingdom of Jerusalem, behaved toward the city’s Christian populace with feelings of loyalty, humanity, and chivalrous grace, which struck the Latin chroniclers with admiration.²⁴

Bernard the Treasurer indicates in his chronicle that in 1198 the “Lord of the Assassins” (the Old Man of the Mountain) treated the Christians and their leader, Count Henri, as royalty. The same author informs us that in 1227 the sultan Coradin, at the time of his death, entrusted his land and children to a Spanish knight who was a Templar brother. “He was fully aware that this knight would faithfully protect his land. He had no desire to leave it to the Saracens, for he knew full well that they would entrust it to his brother, the Sultan of Babylon.”^e

It was through the intervention of the Templars in 1243 that the Christians were able to conclude an accord with the malek of Damascus and take possession of Jerusalem. In the following years, the Franks made an alliance with the malik of Homs, al-Mansour. The Templars made themselves noticeable by their eagerness to arrange this union. In fact, they celebrated in their strongholds to such an extent that Islamic prayers could be heard echoing beneath the roofs of their monasteries.²⁵

In 1247 the Templar grand master Guillaume de Sonnace got along so well with the Turkish emirs that a chronicler wrote: “The master of the Temple and the sultan of Egypt have made so strong a peace between them that they bled themselves together every two years in the same bowl.”^f

When the different branches of the military, governed mainly by common interests, gave way to a peaceful coexistence, the Christians found in the Muslim world a favorable milieu and climate. Claude Cahen, a specialist in Islamic studies, came to this conclusion in his summary work Orient et Occident au temps des Croisades: “The image of the Muslim world up until the eleventh century is that of a very remarkable multifaith society that is politically dominated by Islam, but in which a large proportion of believers in other faiths manage to live without difficulty, in a kind of symbiosis for which we would search in vain to find an equivalent in other societies.”

Islam opened for Christians numerous doors toward social understanding and harmony. On the Muslim side, the principle artisans of this action were the Ismaili sects, particularly the Karmates and the Assassins.

The Ismaliens were a bough of the Shiite branch of Islam. Karmate propaganda, born from Ismailism, took on the form of a large reform movement that was both social and religious in scope. From the ninth to eleventh centuries, this movement shook the Muslim world, including Syria, Persia, India, and especially Egypt, where it led to the installation of the Fatimid dynasty. It was in Egypt that a command center for the majority of Ismailian sects, the Dit ul Hikmat, was founded.

In the social sphere, Karmatism is characterized by the organization of labor and groups of workers into professional corporations (sinf; pl. asnaf), which seem to have been in existence since the tenth century and were connected with religious brotherhoods (tariqa; pl. turuq). It is important to note that the contemporary recollections of asnafs and turuq in Shiite sects emphasize both the spiritually and socially educational value of labor.²⁶ The hierarchical degrees—apprentice, worker, foreman, and master—were the rule, as were the obligation to mutual assistance and the initiatory oaths.²⁷ Trade secrets were gradually passed on to each grade in accordance with a legal custom (dustur), which was transmitted orally.

The kinship of these professional brotherhoods with the Christianized collegia of the late Roman empire is obvious. Among their members could be found not only Arabs but converts—mainly Christians and Jews. In lands that had become Muslim it seemed that there was some sort of transformation taking place in the various models of Latin and Byzantine institutions that had survived.

The Karmati movement, which is the source of these Muslim institutions, stands out both religiously and philosophically in its introduction to Islam of basic foreign assumptions—primarily those that were Hellenic, Neoplatonic, pseudo-Hermetic, and “Sabine.” By spreading these elements through an esoteric method of initiation based on reason, tolerance, and equality, the Karmates facilitated ties among all races and castes.^g

A conversion to Ismailism is the basis for the creation of the brotherhood of the Assassins: the conversion of its founder and first grand master, Hassan Sabah, a highly educated man who was a minister of the Sultan of Isfahan. He reformed Ismailism with a less flexible administration that provided him with a military organization.

The word assassin as applied to the brotherhood does not mean, as some have maintained, “eater of hashish.” In reality, assassin is the plural form of the Arab word for guardian, assas. The Assassins or “Guardian Brothers were so named because the purpose of their order was the protection of the Holy Land, whose central orientation, the axis of the Spiritual World, was the mystic Mountain, which explains the title held by the grand master, the Sheik el Djebel,” interpreted by the Europeans to mean the Old Man of the Mountain. (Sheik means “master,” “teacher,” or “head of a brotherhood” and “old man” as in a person worthy of respect.)²⁸

The higher adepts within the Assassins devoted their time to the study of philosophy in the fortress of Alamut, which was located in a Persian domain. When the Mongols of Kubla Khan defeated the Assassins in the twelfth century, the victors found an immense library and an astronomical observatory there.

Outside of the Holy Land, there was another region where Christians had contact with Arab civilization and Ismailian sects in particular: Spain. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, an Ismaili group similar to the Assassins, the Brothers of Purity, lived on the Iberian peninsula. We possess fifty-one treatises left by these brothers and know that their initiation consisted of four grades. The objective they pursued was the propagation of a philosophy inspired by that of Aristotle with Neoplatonic interpretations.

There is no need anymore to provide proof of the influence exercised by the Arab civilization over the Western world. We have already shown how such influence occurred well before the Crusades in the Holy Land. In fact, the very first Crusade was the eleventh century Crusade in Spain, the advance post of Christianity against the Muslim world. This effort was the work of the Benedictines of Cluny. The Crusades into Spain and the Middle East served to intensify and expand the propagation in the West of Arab influences triggered two centuries earlier by the initial contact between the two civilizations. These influences were especially attributable to the initiatory movements that maintained the best and most long-lasting relations with the Crusaders: those of the Karmates, Ismailians, Fatimids, Assassins, and Brothers of Purity. It was perfectly natural that spiritual and social interpenetration would be the outcome of the extensive relationship between the two cultures.

It is this extensive Arab influence, twin to that of the Byzantine world, that prompted the first cultural and philosophical renaissance that took place in the West during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, especially in France. Along with the rebirth of the studies of Roman law, the royal role enjoyed by theology, which had ruled as sovereign over the world of ideas and provided society with it principal leaders, was strongly undermined. A new science was born that, rather than being fundamentally opposite to its theological predecessor, was instead independent of it. This was not the science of society such as the one the Romans had let loose. Despite the official resistance of the Church, this science was a synthesis, a joining: The great renown of the Roman empire, like the wisdom of Greece or Egypt, had never vanished from the memory of men. The Church was the direct heir to Rome and retained its dominance in this new world. But now next to the theologian stood the jurist, the philosopher, and the scholar. This conjugation, a return of authentic traditions, was the collective work of the Latins (Europeans or their descendants living in the Latin States in the Holy Land), the people of the East, and the Arabs.

We have seen a broad view of the role played by the Byzantine world in the growth of culture in the West. It was the Arabs, though, who reintroduced Aristotle in a form permeated with Neopythagorism and Neoplatonism. It was also the Arabs who passed on the knowledge of mathematics in general, particularly algebra and the works of Euclid. Nor should we overlook the considerable influence of alchemy. This science, which took shape in the syncretic milieus of third-century Alexandria as a synthesis of Egyptian, Chaldean, Jewish, and Hellenic speculations and practices, evolved rapidly before entering Byzantium and from there the Arab world, notably in the Fatimid and Ismailian sects. It was among the Arabs in the thirteenth century that Arnaud de Villeneuve, Saint Thomas, Raymond Lulle, and Roger Bacon studied alchemy, which took on considerable importance in Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. We should also note that its symbolism is closely tied to that of philosophy and construction.

In the architectural domain, European builders were subject to the direct influence of the Arab world. In fact, masons’ marks, those symbolic markings left by European masons on all their work starting at the end of the twelfth century, had been in common use throughout the East since the remote past.²⁹

Those in the East and Muslim Spain were familiar with the broken arch and the tiers point long before the Europeans. In some portions of France (especially in central France and the Midi region), in Spain (as seen in the portal of Santiago de Compostela and the San Pablo del Campo Cloister in Barcelona), and in Germany, (primarily along the banks of the Rhine), Romanesque buildings, some of which date to before the twelfth century, have architectonic forms borrowed from the Arabs. These forms, which are most often seen above compartments such as bays, doors, and windows, consist of several sections of circles combined in various ways. Examples are trefoil arches and arches with multifoil festoons and two-color archstones. The churches of Auvergne and of the Velay, particularly the apse and tribunes of Notre Dame du Port in Clermont Ferrand and the cloister, transept, and chapels of the cathedral Notre Dame du Puy, provide some characteristic examples that have inspired several imitations in the surrounding areas.^h Other examples include the triforium of the meridional transept of the Cluny Abbey; the bell tower, the tower of the crossing of the transept, the triforium of the nave, and the choir of the church of La Charité sur Loire, a former Cluny priory; the bell tower of the transept of Saint Philbert of Tournus; the apse and transept of the cathedral of Valence; the bell tower of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Vienne; the nave of the church of Champagne (Ardèche); and the multifoil portals of numerous churches in the southern half of the former Bourges diocese. The same influences have also been detected in the dormitory of the convent of Saint Gereon in Cologne, in the church of Saint Quirin in Neuss, in the church of the Holy Apostles in Cologne and in many of the houses of this same city, and in the church of Limburg.³⁰ No less curious are the borders and frames that derive from Arabic letters and that even carry transcriptions in Kufic of passages of the Qur’an (which can be seen in Moissac, Puy, and Saint Guilhem le Desert in the Herault region).

Templars and Muslims

On the Christian side, the Benedictines and Templars played an important role in the propagation of these Muslim influences. Of course, the Templars, recipients of Arabic knowledge and culture, which they then passed on to others, did not necessarily explore these influences through high scientific and metaphysical speculation. They were primarily men of action, warriors and builders.ⁱ From their extensive relations with Ismailian sects and Arab corporations, the Templars were at least aware of and largely adopted—if only on an operative plane—certain Arab organization structures, rites, symbols, practices, and trade secrets. Many brother servants had already been initiated in their secular lives to similar operative rituals. They were particularly open to receiving this new contribution and transplanting it to the West, where the social fabric had become propitious for its introduction.

It is a fact that the architecture of the castles and fortified churches built by the Templars show clear evidence of ancient Arab lessons. “It was in the east that the Crusaders learned from the Byzantines and the Arabs the art of fortifying a castle, a millenarian art in Asia that went all the way back to ancient Assyria.”³¹ The Templar master builders and workers had to have been in contact with their Assassin colleagues, who were also great builders. These Assassins, we are told by Guillaume de Tyr, possessed notably ten fortified castles in the province of Tyre.³²

Going beyond simple architectural instruction, the influence of the Ismailians and the Assassins also left its mark on Templar ceremonies as well as on many of their customs. “Ismailism clearly seems to have been the practical model that the Templars adopted almost immediately after the formation of the Order, with respect to its hierarchy and the obedience to a grand master and commanders on whom the Order firmly established its discipline.”³³ This hierarchy in fact was derived from the Pythagorians and the Egyptian mysteries. The same could also be said about other customs and symbols that the Assassins and Templars had in common. For example, couldn’t the white garb of both the Assassins and the Templars be modeled on that of the disciples of Pythagoras?^j

It is also acceptable to believe that outside the respective dogmas of Assassins and Templars there were flexible interpretations of ideas and doctrines. Members of the two groups managed to make the transition from one faith to to another: Muslims became Christians and Christians became Muslims without experiencing any disorientation. There were affiliations of Ismailians and Saracen rulers in the Temple and perhaps Templars among the Muslim brotherhoods. This becomes all the more likely given that the faith of Eastern Christians showed such distinctive features that it was almost impossible to discern any demarcations between these Christian sects and the derivatives of Islam. Both sides came closer to one shared ideal. The Fatimids of Cairo imagined the possibility of a peaceful universalism that was the rebirth of the thought of the pharaoh Amenhotep IV. The Templars echoed them on this point by trying to establish cooperative relations between Easterners and Westerners united in the desire for universal peace.

Despite the considerable influence of the Arab world, however, there are no grounds for concluding that the Templar Order underwent a secret Islamization, even if only relatively, as some are prone to think. Quite a few of the more subtle aspects of Christianity that were not deemed suspect or condemnable before the Council of Trent became so afterward. Free thinking was not considered heresy during the Middle Ages, as can be shown by the fortunate Raymond Lulle. He spent time with Muslims, was influenced considerably by the Sufis, and sought, naturally outside of dogmas, to bring Muslims and Christians closer together. The Templars did the same. Among all the Crusaders they were the ones, writes Gerard de Nerval in Les Illuminés, who tried to realize the broadest alliance between Eastern ideas and those of Roman Christianity.

The name the “Militia of Christ and the Temple of Solomon” that the Templars assumed immediately after the creation of their Order was evocative not only to Christians. While it recalled the Holy Sepulcher, it also recalled to Jews and Muslims the Temple of Solomon (Wisdom), which was furthermore reproduced on the seal of the grand master. A sacred sanctuary, it spoke simultaneously to the sons of Shem, Cham, and Japhet.³⁴

So the reason for the condemnation of the Templars is not to be sought in a heretical deviation. In fact they were never condemned by the pope—who was satisfied with simply dissolving the Order—but by the temporal authority. Philip the Fair could not take action against the Templars, a sovereign and independent religious order, without a condemnation or dissolution of the Order by the Holy See. Dissolution was forthcoming from Rome in payment of a debt of gratitude owed the king of France. The action Philip the Fair took against the Templars had nothing to do with the struggle against heresy, a pretext, at any rate, that no one believed. Nor can the trial of the Templars be explained simply by the greed of the king. It certainly seems that the destruction of the Order in France was justified by reasons of national politics. It falls into the framework of the struggle, ongoing at the time, between the king and the feudal authorities. The Temple was in fact a sovereign entity of great power; its domains, great in number, with their own legal, political, and social armatures, formed autonomous enclaves inside the territory ruled by the crown. At the end of the thirteenth century, the Templars owned almost a third of Paris, a vast part of the city that escaped royal jurisdiction and authority. The jurist Guillaume de Nogaret was especially concerned with defense of the French monarchy. His purpose was the pursuit of national unity under the sole authority of the king. It is not possible to take seriously the accusations of heresy lodged against the Templars. It should certainly be acknowledged, however, that without the destruction, or at least the weakening, of the Holy Land’s Latin states, whose great strength derived not only from their ties to the top feudal families, but also from their wealth, immense domains, perpetuity and mysterious prestige, and divine character that had no equal on earth, the French kingdom—that is, French unity—never would have prevailed. In short, it is acceptable that the destruction of the Order was legitimized by reasons of state; it was only the means used to accomplish this destruction that were iniquitous.