Historical Distortions and The Templars | The Foreword to Régine Pernoud's The Templars: Knights of Christ | Piers Paul Read | Ignatius Insight
Historical distortions are difficult to straighten out. A mistake about a chemical compound or an airline schedule will be exposed in due course by an explosion or a missed connection, but misconceptions about the past can persist for centuries, despite the diligent work of historians, either because vested interests benefit from the distortions (the Whig view of history) or because the fanciful version is more fun.
Thsi is particularly true of the Knights of the Temple of Solomon, the Templars. The order was founded at the start of the twelfth century by a knight from Champagne in eastern France, Hugh of Payns, who, five years after the capture of Jerusalem by the First Crusade, made a pilgrimage in the Holy Land with his liege lord and namesake, Count Hugh of Champagne. Seeing the need for knights to protect the pilgrims from Muslim marauders, but also sensing a call from God to lead the life of a monk, Hugh and eight companions formed a hybrid community of monk-knights. They took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and followed the rule of a religious order but remained under arms.
Not all the leaders of the Church at the time approved of this notion of a military order. Saint Bruno, the founder of the Carthusians, had grave doubts about the moral legitimacy of killing for Christ. However, Hugh of Payns found a champion in the leading churchman of the time, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who not only endorsed the concept but also drew up a strict rule much like that of his own Cistercian order which was approved by the Pope.
It was an idea whose time had come. The rulers of Latin Christendom all wished to go on crusade but ran the risk of usurpation if they left their kingdoms for any length of time. The Templars became their proxies.
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