Where the Middle Ages Begin
The meteoric rise of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon (more commonly known as the Knights Templar) and their equally swift fall has fueled fanciful tales and scholarly research. The order promoted their mythological origins and the extreme charges leveled against them by Philip IV of France (1285-1314) created an atmosphere of speculation.
That the threat posed by bands of marauders was taken seriously by the early crusader settlers can be seen by some of the barons’ brutal reactions to it.
The undoing of the Templars was in part a result of their own over-reaching, but it also came because they opened up an organizational arena that other military orders and confraternities came to fill.
Listen to the three-part programme The Sword Brothers, broadcast by the CBC radio show Ideas
Although Joan’s trial took place in France and The Malleus Maleficarum was published in Germany, they are suitable for comparison because this text became the definitive manual for witchcraft inquisitors across Europe.
This thesis investigates the Order of the Knights Templar by examining the varied phenomena that led to the formation of the Order in the early twelfth century and its dissolution nearly two hundred years later
What did medieval contemporaries think of military orders such as the Knights Hospitaller and Teutonic Knights? Helen Nicholson investigates.
Forms of Lay Association with the Order of the Temple By Jochen G. Schenk Journal of Medieval History, Vol. 34 (2008) Introduction: Over time, Templar commanderies, like most religious houses, gathered a following of lay men and women who, for spiritual or purely practical reasons, and very often for both, exposed themselves to Templar life without […]
Although the trials in general were held with enormous personal expenditures and by obviously careful observation of procedural rules, the ’system did not really work’; it was undermined by the dynamics of a legal instrument (that is, torture), which in the end was based on the use of violence.
The charge of sodomy was unique because it was a crime of personal moral failure, rather than an organizational heresy which could threaten state authority.
AN ENQUIRY INTO THE CHARGES AND MOTIVATIONS OF THE CAPETIAN MONARCHY BEHINDINSTITUTING THE FALL OF THE ORDER OF THE TEMPLE Singhal, Chetan The Concord Review, Vol. 21:4 (2011) Abstract The Templars were a religious military Order, founded in the Holy Land in 1119. During the 12th and 13th centuries they acquired extensive property both in the crusader […]
So is the Grail or some other treasure really hidden there? Did the Templars really build Rosslyn, as some allege? Why is Rosslyn Chapel so important today?
Archaeologists and historians working in northern Israel have discovered the remains of a Templar and Crusader army who were slaughtered by Saladin in one of the major battles of the Crusades. The results of the excavations are now being broadcast on the program “Last Stand of the Templars”, which is being shown this week on […]
Opposing Identity: Muslims, Christians and the Military Orders in Rural Aragon Gerrard, Christopher Medieval Archaeology, Vol.43 (2000) Abstract This paper addresses the issue of identity among Christian and Muslim groups in medieval Spain after the Reconquest in the 12th century. A wide variety of archaeological evidence, including artefacts, graffiti, settlement morphology and standing buildings, demonstrates that ethnic and […]
New insights on Maritime Akko revealed by Underwater and Coastal Archaeological Research Galili, E., Rosen, B., Stern, E. J., Finkielsztein, G., Kool, R., Bahat-Zilberstein, N., Sharvit, Y., Kahanov, Y., Friedman, Z., Zviely, D. Paper given at the Israeli Society for Aquatic Sciences, Forth annual meeting (2007) Introduction: During the last decades, Akko (Acre), its harbor […]
Taking the Templar Habit: Rule, Initiation Ritual, and the Accusations against the Order Edgeller, Johnathan James MA Thesis, Texas Tech University, August (2010) Abstract Originally the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon were fewer than a dozen knights, pilgrim knights who had sworn to protect travellers to the Holy Land. Their seal exalted this humility by […]
Military orders in Osona during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries By Paul H. Freedman Acta historica et archaeologica mediaevalia, No.3 (1982) Introduction: It is difficult to determine precisely when the military orders of crusading knights first became active in Catalonia. Unlike Castile, León or Portugal, where national orders became extremely powerful, Catalonia was dominated by […]
The Templars and the castle of Tortosa in Syria: an unknown document concerning the acquisition of the fortress By Jonathan Riley-Smith English Historical Review, Vol.84 (1969) Introduction: One of the best historians of Latin Syria recently pointed out that the loss of the archives of the Templars made it impossible for him to describe in […]
Militia and Malitia: The Bernardine Vision of Chivalry By Areyh Grabois The Second Crusade and the Cistercians, edited by Michael Gervers (New York, 1992) Introduction: In his treatise, De laude novae militiae, Bernard of Clairvaux distinguished between the Templars and the entire secular knighthood. The first deserved the epithet militia, while the others received the […]
The London Templar Trial Testimony: ‘Truth’, Myth or Fable By Anne Gilmour-Bryson A World Explored: Essays in Honour of Laurie Gardiner, ed. Anne Gilmour-Bryson (Melbourne, 1993) Introduction: Little is known about the origin of the military order of Knights Templar. According to two medieval writers, and mentions in various other contemporary chronicles, it was founded […]
La Régle du Temple as a Military Manual or How to Deliver a Cavalry Charge By Matthew Bennett Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown, edited by Christopher Harper-Bill, Christopher J. Holdsworth and Janet L. Nelson (Boydell, 1989) Introduction:`In the charge against both cavalry and infantry each man will ride at his opponent at […]
How you can Follow Us!