{"id":358,"date":"2021-11-04T13:33:42","date_gmt":"2021-11-04T17:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/?p=358"},"modified":"2021-11-04T13:33:45","modified_gmt":"2021-11-04T17:33:45","slug":"the-history-of-the-knights-templar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/04\/the-history-of-the-knights-templar\/","title":{"rendered":"The History of … the Knights Templar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I was watching the third Indiana Jones movie with the kids and got curious about the knight at the end who is there to protect the cup of Christ.  You remember, \u201cHe chose, poorly.\u201d  Were there really a group of knights who protected holy relics?  In fact there were, kind of.  The Knights Templar were founded to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land.  Their role expanded by necessity to the defense of the Holy Land.  For 200 years they fulfilled their mission and were well respected in the west.  However, after Christians were expelled from the east they were brought down by a French king who wanted their wealth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the first crusade, which was launched to take Jerusalem back from its current Muslim rulers, the area around Jerusalem was still very dangerous.  Christian pilgrims were regularly set upon by Bedouins in their travels.  There were many instances, but one particularly where 200 pilgrims were slaughtered at Easter on their way to the River Jordan stuck in the public imagination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response to this atrocity, Hugh of Payns, a French knight who fought in the first crusade, was asked by the king of Jerusalem to start \u201cthe Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Jerusalem\u201d in 1119.  They were given the al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount which had been turned into a temporary palace for the king of Jerusalem to live.  The Dome of the Rock, also on the Temple Mount, had been turned into a church called the \u201cTemple of the Lord.\u201d  This is why the knights were eventually called the Templars or the Knights Templar.  The idea behind the formation of the Templars was to combine knighthood with being a monk.  Their founding principles were chastity, obedience and poverty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once it was formed, the new order found quick support in the west.  Christian backing for control of the Holy Land was deep and spiritual.  The Templars also got support and recognition from the pope.  With this financial support and recognition, their mission soon expanded from protecting Christians to protecting the Holy Land itself.  They wore white robes with a red cross to symbolize their willingness to become martyrs for the Holy Land.  Over 200 years they helped fight Muslims in Spain and Portugal, as well as, participated in the eastern crusades.  They also became known as bankers to Europe because they were honest, meticulous and provided a form of money transfer for pilgrims and crusaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually the tide turned.  While the Holy Land was important to the west, Europeans by and large did not want to settle there so the Islamic world slowly overwhelmed the crusaders.  When the last major Christian city, Acre, fell in 1291, the loss of the Holy Land was seen as disfavor from God.  Since the Templars mission was to protect the Holy Land some blame fell on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They made efforts to retake the holy land, however, this time Muslims had destroyed castles, infrastructure, crops and anything else that would be useful to regain.  There wasn\u2019t much left to re-conquer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, in 1307, a corrupt king, Philip IV of France, who wanted the Templars wealth, charged them with heresy.  He used a loophole in a papal edict to get around their papal protection, he used lawyers to figure this out.  The king\u2019s charges were later found to be without merit, despite some odd induction rituals of the Templars.  However, it was too late.  The Knights Templar had already been tortured, some burned at the stake, and their wealth and power stolen.  Public opinion was against them already because of the fall of the east.  The order was suppressed and the few survivors fled, many living out their days in monasteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After their fall, the Templars lived on in folklore.  Perhaps because of the quickness of their downfall, mystery shrouded who was left and what artifacts they might possess.  It was rumored they might have the shroud of Turin or even the Holy Grail.  To this day popular movies, like the Indiana Jones one I as watching and books like \u201cThe Da Vinci Code\u201d keep their legend alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was watching the third Indiana Jones movie with the kids and got curious about the knight at the end who is there to protect the cup of Christ.  You remember, \u201cHe chose, poorly.\u201d  Were there really a group of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[86,87],"class_list":["post-358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crusades","tag-knights-templar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p29EPY-5M","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}