Templars

[Icarus]

Code and Motto:

1) Thou shalt believe all the Church teaches and shalt obey her commandments.

2) Thou shalt defend the Church.

3) Thou shalt respect all weaknesses and shalt constitute thyself the defender of them.

4) Thou shalt not recoil before thine enemy.

5) Thou shalt make war against the infidel without cessation and without mercy.

6) Thou shalt perform scrupulously thy feudal duties, if they be not contrary to the laws of God.

7) Thou shalt never lie, and shalt remain faithful to thy pledged word.

8) Thou shalt be generous, and give largesse to everyone.

9) Thou shalt be everywhere and always the champion of the Right and the Good against Injustice and Evil.



Motto: Non Nobis Domine Non Nobis Sed Nomini Tuo Da Gloriam



Not To Us O Lord Not To Us But To Your Name Give Glory

(Psalm 115, v1 Hebrew Psalter Psalm 113, v13 Greek Psalter)

[Icarus]

The Fall of the Templars


In the early hours of 13 September 1307, King Philip the Fair’s officers swooped on the houses of the Knights Templars all over France, carrying off their occupants to the royal dungeons. The operation had been planned a month in advance, but kept so secret that the Grand Master of the Templars was unsuspectingly playing a leading role in court ceremonial on the eve of his arrest. It was prompted by the king’s alleged discovery of a lamentable thing, an outrage too horrible to contemplate, a detestable crime’, whose nature was revealed when over a hundred Templars confessed to an amazing array of offences against God and man.


They admitted, for instance, that at their secret initiation ceremonies, the Templars regularly spat, trampled and urinated on crucifixes, at the same time denying God, Christ, and the Virgin. New members of the order, or those who received them, were then kissed on the mouth, the naked buttocks, the navel and the penis, before being licensed to indulge in homosexual relations with fellow Templars-and sometimes forced to do so there and then. The Knights worshipped a mysterious cat, and habitually adored idols in the form of bearded heads; named Baphomet (or Mohammed,) these statues were credited with the power of creating riches and fertility.


The confessions sent a thrill of horror through western Europe, where the Templars had long been ranked among the leading defenders of Christendom. Established in 1119 to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land, and named for their original headquarters near Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, these ‘monks of war’ were aristocratic warriors vowed to a semi-monastic discipline, and were much feared by the Saracens for their ferocity. They had attracted gifts of extensive lands in Europe, particularly in France, which provided a reservoir of funds for their military operations. Their guardianship of crusaders’ cash made them international financiers, who lent money to kings and frequently acted as treasurers to the French monarchy. Their wealth, pride, and exclusiveness made them increasingly popular, and they were blamed, unjustly, for the defeats which culminated in the loss of Acre, the last crusader outpost in 1291. The Templars were now an order without a function.


Despite the order’s unpopularity, many people found the charges against the Knights incredible. The kings of England and Aragon initially discounted them altogether, while the order’s special patron, Pope Clement V, took action against it only because of increasingly blatant threats from the powerful king of France, Philip the IV. Eventually, in 1312, Clement dissolved but did not directly condemn the Templars, and transferred their great estates to the rival crusading order Knights Hospitaller, who became the legal owners only after paying massive and fictitious Templar’ debts’ to Philip IV- the chief beneficiary of the order’s downfall.


This fact in itself casts doubts on the truth of the accusations against the order. The so-called confessions, moreover, were obtained principally by a mixture of psychological pressure and horrific tortures. Templars were racked, ‘strappadoed’ by being jerked on ropes with weights fastened to their testicles, or had their feet sacagely burnt. When papal intervention temporarily stopped their maltreatment, many Templars revoked their confessions and vehemently defended their order; Philip responded by burning 54 of them alive.


In England, where the authorities rejected torture as contrary to law, only a handful of confessions were obtained, and in Italy and Germany none at all. Nor did a single Templar die proclaiming his diabolical doctrines, though many perished protesting their innocence.


It seems probable that the changes were deliberately concocted by Philip and his ministers, playing medieval fears of witchcraft, heresy, and Moslem conspiracy to gain maximum public support. Their motives are less obvious, though greed and suspicion of Templar power were doubtless important factors, and it is even possible that Philip believed in their guilt.


Although an extraordinary crop of myths has grown up around the Templars during the last hundred years, there is no vestige of contemporary evidence for such fantasies. But belief in power of the wronged Templars’ curse was widespread. As he stood at the stake, the legend related, Grand Master Jacques de Molay summoned kind and pope to appear with him before God’s tribunal: within the year both were dead, and within a generation Philip’s three short-lived sons-the ‘cursed kings’- were all to perish without heirs, bringing the royal line of Capet to an end.


From: Chronicles of the Age of Chivalry, edited by: Elizabeth Hallam