A small band in Jerusalem
The Templars began in the years after the First Crusade. Jerusalem had been taken by crusaders in 1099, and pilgrims who traveled to the Holy Land were still exposed to bandits on the roads, especially the route from the coast at Jaffa up to the holy city. According to the traditional account, a French knight named Hugues de Payens and a handful of companions pledged themselves around 1119 to protect these travelers while living under religious vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
The king of Jerusalem is said to have given them quarters on the Temple Mount, in a building the crusaders identified with the Temple of Solomon. That is the source of the name: the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, shortened in everyday speech to Templars. The “poor” part would not stay accurate for long.
Church approval and a rule
The order gained its decisive recognition at the Council of Troyes in 1129, where a rule was drawn up for the brothers. The influential Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux supported the idea of a “new knighthood” that combined monastic discipline with fighting. This was a real shift in thinking, because the church had long been uneasy about clerics and monks shedding blood. The Templars argued, and many churchmen accepted, that fighting on behalf of Christian pilgrims and the crusader lands was a form of service.
A papal bull of 1139, usually known by its opening words Omne datum optimum, gave the order extraordinary privileges. Templars answered to the pope rather than to local bishops, could keep their own chaplains, and were largely freed from certain taxes and tithes. Those privileges helped the order grow, and later also made it unpopular with bishops and kings who resented a powerful body they could not control.
Growth across Europe
Gifts of land, money and sometimes sons from noble families flowed to the order. Over the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Templars built up a network of properties, called preceptories, across France, England, Iberia, Italy and beyond. Some of these were farms and estates that produced income; others were bases for recruiting and sending resources east. The structure was hierarchical, with a Master at the top, provincial leaders below him, and a general chapter of senior brothers.
Within the order there were several kinds of members. The knights came from the warrior class and wore the white mantle with a red cross. Sergeants, who came from lower ranks and served as soldiers and craftsmen, wore darker clothing. Chaplains provided the religious services. For how these men actually fought and lived on the frontier, see the separate account of the order’s daily military life.
Banking, estates and money
The Templars are often called early bankers, which is partly true and easily overstated. Because they held secure, fortified properties in both Europe and the East, rulers and nobles sometimes deposited valuables with them, and a traveler could arrange to leave money in one place and draw on it in another. This sort of credit and money handling was a practical service rather than banking in the modern sense. The Paris Temple, the order’s major house in France, served for a time as a place where the French crown kept funds and accounts. That connection would matter later, for reasons that were not good for the order.
Castles and campaigns
In the East, the Templars held a string of strongholds that guarded roads and borders in the Crusader States. Their castles included Safed in Galilee and Tortosa on the Syrian coast, among others, and many of them are counted among the best-known crusader castles. Templar knights fought alongside the royal armies of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and were often among the shock troops of a battle. Their reputation was for discipline, but it also carried hard edges: a defeat could be costly, and the order’s leaders were sometimes criticized by contemporaries for rash or politically motivated decisions.
The disastrous Battle of Hattin in 1187 destroyed much of the field army of the crusader kingdom. Saladin is reported to have had captured Templars and Hospitallers executed, regarding them as especially dangerous enemies. Jerusalem fell soon afterward. The order rebuilt, shifted its headquarters to Acre, and kept fighting in the thirteenth century, but the balance in the region was moving against the crusaders.
The loss of the East
When the siege of Acre ended in 1291 with the fall of the city, the last major crusader stronghold on the mainland was gone. The Templar leadership withdrew to Cyprus. The order had been created to defend the Holy Land, and with that land lost, critics began to ask what it was for. Plans for a new crusade circulated, along with proposals to merge the Templars and Hospitallers into a single order, an idea the Templars resisted.
Arrest and suppression
In October 1307 King Philip IV of France, known as Philip the Fair, ordered the simultaneous arrest of the Templars in his kingdom. The charges included heresy and improper rituals. Historians have long debated his motives: he was in debt, had a record of seizing the property of other groups, and wanted to show himself a protector of the faith. Pope Clement V, under heavy royal pressure, eventually acted on the matter. In 1312 he dissolved the order by an administrative decision rather than a verdict of guilt, and much of its property was assigned to the Hospitallers, though the French crown kept a good deal for itself.
The leaders were dealt with later. The last Master, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake in Paris in 1314 after he reportedly retracted a confession. What happened in the trials, and how reliable the confessions were, is its own question, covered in a separate article.
Afterward
Templars in other countries often fared differently from those in France. In some regions they were found not guilty or were simply pensioned off or absorbed into other orders. In Portugal, a new order, the Order of Christ, was created in the early fourteenth century and took over much of the Templar legacy. The Templars as an institution were gone, but the combination of military service, wealth and an abrupt downfall has kept them in the public imagination ever since, as later articles on their legends explain.