KNIGHTS OF LORE SERIES:
KNIGHTS TEMPLAR
The Knights Templar
were a group of religious knights formed to create safe passage for European
Christians to visit Jerusalem after the first Crusade in the early twelfth
century by Hugues de Payans. He and
eight other knights convinced King Baldwin II of Jerusalem to allow them to
camp at the site of the Dome of the Rock, otherwise known as Solomon’s Temple.
Somehow along the way
they became rich. It is quite unknown how they came to possess such fortune and
power, but it is widely assumed they found ancient secret knowledge during
their early time at the temple, and thus used their find to blackmail the
Church and the kings that they ruled at the time. One thing is for certain
though, the Knights Templars sudden accumulation of lands and wealth, no matter
how righteous their use of it, doomed them and their order to death.
An elite fighting
force, the Knights Templar grew in size, fortune, land, power and influence
over the years. One of the biggest moves
was when the Pope made them a charitable organization. This allowed them to
cross any borders without reprisal and exempted them from paying taxes.
Eventually they became
like a bank. When a nobleman made the trip to Jerusalem, they often gave all
their wealth and businesses to the Templars to hold until they returned, in
return for their safe passage. Most of the men in the Order had more to do with
economics than they did with actual combat.
Before long they were
issuing credit and collecting interest. This was an idea that was strictly prohibited
by the Church, but since they had the Pope in their pocket, they got away with
it. If they couldn’t charge interest, then they charged rent, or in other
words, they collected whatever was produced on the land used for collateral
until the mortgage was paid in full.
But how did they come
to possess such power in the first place? It has been speculated that they came
upon secret, sacred knowledge during their time at the Temple Mount. The
legends range from finding the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, proof that
Jesus survived his crucifixion, proof that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were
married and had a child, whose bloodline still survived, to even proof that
humans were created by aliens instead of the ‘all powerful’ God of the
Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths. Whatever the case, they started with
nothing and ended up with more power than any king or religious leader in
Europe.
But their power and
wealth created great enemies. King Philip the Fair of France wanted to take
what they had and make it his own. His first act in making the plan happen was
by having the Pope of his choosing elected. With the Pope in his pocket,
instead of the Templar Knights, he had them outlawed and arrested. Those that
weren’t killed were tortured into confessing to crimes such as urinating on the
cross and kissing other men in black magick rituals. Needless to say, once the
once brave knights confessed in order to stop the torture, they were then
burned alive at the stake.
“King
Philip the Fair—grandson of St. Louis of France—had engineered the election of
the pope and the relocation of the papal court to Avignon. Although the papacy
may have been in the ambitious king’s pocket, one of the most powerful and
wealthy institutions of the day was not: The Order of the Temple. Philip knew
its vast wealth and schemed to seize it.
The arrests of the
Templars in France was easy: The fighting men of the order were then on the
bloody border with Islam, in Spain, and on Cyprus. The Templars in France were
aged veterans of the Crusades, well into their second childhood.
The things the knights
confessed under torture defied belief: trampling and urinating on the Crucifix,
secret rites of obscene kisses, sodomy, usury, treason, idolatry, heresy. After
the arrests came seven years of inquisition, then hundreds and hundreds of
public executions by burning. In the end, Pope Clement V abolished the order.”
The date of their mass
arrests was on Friday, October 13, 1307. Since that day, Friday the 13th
has been associated with bad luck.
Many believe that the
Knights Templar were warned of the upcoming arrests at the last minute and some
of them were able to escape with their most valued treasures, or holy relics.
Those relics are still sought after today and have inspired many books and
movies.
Some claim that the
Knights Templars survived even unto our current times as secret societies such
as the Free Masons and Skull and Bones. These organizations have many of the
same rituals and beliefs and they also have tremendous power, as many
presidents have come from the annals of these groups such as William Howard
Taft, George W. Bush, George Washington, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Teddy
Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Trumand and Gerald R. Ford, amongst
others.
Whatever the case, the
Knights Templar have left their mark on history.
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