A lot has been written about the Templars, but the secrets and mysteries associated with them are not becoming less. For example, why did “the poor knighthood of Christ and the Temple of Solomon” (this is the official name of the Order of the Templars) turn into the largest landowner and owner of untold wealth, significantly exceeding the treasury of any then sovereign in Western Europe? Founded in 1118 by nine knights, the Knights Templar became the most powerful and wealthy organization in Europe just half a century later. The Templars built roads, fought wars, and financed the construction of Gothic cathedrals. They say they even sailed to America long before Columbus. But... in 1307 they disappeared from the historical arena as mysteriously as they appeared on it.
Questions are multiplying. Where did the material and spiritual treasures of the Templars go? Why did the Templars pay so much attention to reviving the legends of King Arthur and the Brotherhood of the Round Table? How are the Templars and the Holy Grail connected, were they really the guardians of the sacred relic? What gave spiritual strength to tens of thousands of knights in white cloaks? Who were they? For hundreds of years now, people have been wondering: are these servants of the Lord or helpers of the devil? Innocently slandered victims or malicious heretics who got what they deserved? We will not delve into this long-standing dispute, in which it is unlikely that the truth can be found. Let's talk about historical events, which took place more than 800 years ago, and we will try to lift the veil over the secrets of the Order of the Temple.
At the very end of the distant 11th century, events occurred that turned the course of world history in a new direction. The era of the Crusades began. It began with the Council of Clermont, held in the south of France in 1095. Its many thousands of participants, inspired by the passionate sermon of Pope Urban II, knelt down and vowed to free the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, which had by that time been captured by Muslims. Those who took the vow sewed a cross to their clothes as a sign of fidelity, and many, in a fit of religious delight, burned the cross directly onto their bodies with a hot iron. They began to be called crusaders. Tens of thousands of people went to recapture the Holy Sepulcher - men and women, young and old, even children. Among them were monks and artisans, traders and peasants, naive poets and cynical robbers.
But, for the most part, dying on the long journey from hardships and hardships, ordinary participants in the crusades were mainly only fit to die with joy for the glory of the Almighty, having accomplished a feat of piety and thereby earning a place in heaven. The only ones who could adequately resist the dashing Muslim horsemen were the knights. Not every good warrior could be considered a knight, but every knight was obliged to become a good warrior. In those years, they did not yet wear the shiny steel armor that appeared later. The weapons were simple, morals were harsh. Many of them were sinners who wanted to wash away their sins with blood in battles with infidels. There were also fanatics among them, obsessed with sincere faith. From this fusion of scoundrels and saints the first orders of knighthood were formed. Orders arose through the fusion of the ascetic ideal with the ideal of chivalry. But not yet becoming ascetic, the knightly ideal was already a Christian ideal, for knights are “those who serve Mother of God, devoted to her with all their hearts,” were considered not only defenders of the unarmed and weak, widows and orphans, but most importantly, defenders of Christianity from infidels and heretics.
Becoming a knight meant taking an oath not to retreat a single step before the infidels. “It’s better to be dead than to be known as a coward,” said an old French proverb. Thus, the mission of protecting the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem recaptured from the Muslims and guarding pilgrims to the Holy Land, helping those who were sick or poor, this mission stemmed from the ideal of Christian chivalry. Thanks to the dominance of the ascetic worldview in the society of that time, it went well with the taking of monastic vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience.
This is how knightly orders arose - voluntary unions of the brotherhood of knights-monks. The 11th and 12th centuries were the heyday of chivalry. In the 12th century, the Christian Church no longer resembled the small Jewish sect it had been at its inception. Its influence spread to all areas of life in Western Europe, but it was still far from the time of that gloomy obscurantism that the enlightened generations of the 18th century reproached the Middle Ages. During this period, all political activity took place under the sign of rivalry between the clergy catholic church and the Holy Roman Emperors of the German nation for their influence on the lords.
The minds in those years were dominated by the talented young (he was not yet 30 years old at the time) Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, who was canonized (recognized as a saint) during his lifetime and whose fame extended far beyond the monastery entrusted to him in Clairvaux. The power and persuasiveness of his words could be the envy of orators Ancient Rome; people believed him because in his sermons he miraculously found a way to everyone’s heart and did not just retell the Scriptures, but shared his experiences. His voice sounded lonely, but the whole Christian world listened to this voice. Bernard did not like complex and obscure theories; He spoke very simply about the deepest truths, considering the moral purity of a person, and not the number of memorized psalms, to be the fundamental basis of any spiritual achievements. A mystical writer, a magnificent orator, he was the inspirer of the Second Crusade. The popes listened to his opinion, and the feudal lords feared him. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, in his essay “For the Glory of the New Army,” stated: “There is no law that would prohibit a Christian from raising a sword. The Gospel prescribes restraint and justice to soldiers, but it does not tell them: “Throw down your weapons and give up military service!” The Gospel only prohibits unjust war, especially between Christians. For those who have chosen the military life, there is no nobler task than to scatter the pagans who are eager to seize the Holy Land, than to drive away these servants of the devil who dream of taking away from Christians the sanctuary of God hidden in Jerusalem. Oh, may the children of faith draw both swords against their enemies!”
In 1099 the Christian world rejoiced. Still would! The result of the First Crusade was the liberation of Jerusalem, which means that the Holy Land ceased to belong to the infidels. And much more important than the expansion of territorial limits was the return of hope to the hearts of people who had regained the shrine. The liberation of Jerusalem became, figuratively speaking, liberation from shackles that were more spiritual than material in nature. Yearning for the real, the deep, the great, people of different nationalities, men and women, young people and old people, rushed to Jerusalem with one goal: to worship the Holy Places. Unfortunately, the religious impulse, which elevates the soul, is not sufficient protection from all the vicissitudes of the path. Having overcome many hardships of sea travel (the most accessible route from
Europe to the Holy Land passed along the Mediterranean Sea), pilgrims often became victims, first of simple gangs, and then of organized gangs of robbers. The ease of money and almost complete impunity led to a rapid increase in the number of robbers, and this, in turn, made the path to Jerusalem dangerous not only for the wallet, but also for the lives of the pilgrims themselves.
The joy and relief with which King Baldwin II of Jerusalem greeted the appearance in 1118 at his court of nine knights of different origins and from different cities - “men of sword and spear”, led by Hugh de Payen, a poor lord from Champagne, is understandable. They were united by one common goal: to protect the pilgrims from attacks by the Saracens and to guard the tanks with drinking water from robbers. Nine knights invited the king to take under his protection the caravans of pilgrims in the final and most turbulent part of their journey: from the port city of Jaffa through the Chateau Pelerin gorge to Jerusalem.
Unfortunately, there are no surviving historical documents describing this moment, and therefore we can only guess at the motives that motivated the knights and forced them to take on such an unsafe task without any visible benefit for themselves. It is officially believed that they were trying to achieve remission of sins and earn eternal salvation. Let's leave this without comment, especially since further events so far only confirm this version.
King Baldwin II of Jerusalem provided the knights with housing in his palace (they had no housing in Jerusalem), and the next year - in the house of canons, located on the site of the former temple of the legendary Jewish king Solomon. It is believed that this is why the knights who formed the backbone of the future order are popularly called templars, knights of the Order of the Temple. Temple in French is “temple”, and therefore we know them as the Templars. In the face of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the knights declared their spiritual brotherhood and swore “in obedience, chastity and poverty” to tirelessly fight the infidels, and to these three monastic vows they added a fourth, their own: to protect pilgrims.
This is how the Order of the Templars arose, the full name of which was: “brothers of the army of the Temple, knights of Christ, fighting together the poor of the temple of Solomon.” The Templars were not the first. At the end of the 11th century, the Order of St. John the Hospitallers appeared in Palestine. But it was the templars who most fully embodied the image of a warrior - a monk, the ideal of a fighter - a religious ascetic, which became a role model for all subsequent knightly orders. With their personal courage and courage they quickly gained respect and recognition. The Templars not only guarded the pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land, but also accompanied the king on his trips, making them safe. Very soon, romantic legends began to be created about the order - about selfless and fearless knights, ready to come to the aid of a person in trouble. Numerous pilgrims spread the news of these glorious warriors to all corners of Europe, and after a few years there was no place in Europe where the exploits of the Templars were not admired.
Saint Bernard, then still a simple abbot, wrote a Charter to the order, which forbade the Templars from any contact with those excommunicated from the church, much less there could be any question of admitting them to the order. (However, this rule was later changed, allowing the brothers to go to knights excommunicated from the church, and also to admit them into their ranks - for the sake of saving their souls.) The brothers chose the meek Mother of God, Saint Mary, as the patroness of the order.
The Order's Charter itself reflected the spirit of the traditions of the Cistercian monks. St. Bernard emphasized that the vow of poverty was fundamental to the Templars. Paragraph two of the Charter even ordered two templar brothers to eat from the same bowl. Bernard also made sure that nothing distracted the Templars from serving Christ. Any secular entertainment was prohibited - attending shows, falconry, playing dice and other pleasures of life. Laughter, singing, and idle talk were forbidden. The list of prohibitions consisted of more than 40 items. Free time these “monks in spirit and fighters in arms” were to be filled with prayers, the singing of sacred psalms and military exercises.
The official seal of the new order was the image of two knights riding on one horse, which was supposed to mean not only brotherhood, but also extreme poverty.
A unique symbol of the templars was a white cloak, worn over other clothes of the same color. The knight - a monk who took three obligatory vows: poverty, chastity and obedience - with white robes symbolized the pure holy life that he led, dedicating his soul to the Lord.
Convinced that the divine order in the world order should be reflected in the internal structure of the order, the Templars paid special attention to its structure. At the top reigned the Grand Master, elected by an assembly of representatives from nine provinces of Western Europe. The Grand Master had absolute power, with the exception of issues related to the admission of new knights, the sale of the order's property, and the appointment of senior provincial leaders - these were decided by the assembly. The Templars did not recognize any other authority over themselves. The Order of the Temple enjoyed the right of extraterritoriality and did not fall under the jurisdiction of the authorities of the lands on whose territory it was located. The Order did not pay any taxes to anyone, including church tithes, as well as customs duties. He had his own police and his own tribunal. Formally, the Grand Master obeyed only the pope, who in fact feared him himself.
The order itself consisted of three categories of brothers: knights - all of noble birth or - very rarely - elevated to the nobility, from among them the leaders of the residences were elected; confessors - monks who were under the masters or served in churches; sergeants, from among whom the knights recruited squires and infantry on military campaigns and who ran the household and managed the property of the order, among them were free peasants and artisans.
There was also a category of Temple guests who provided temporary services to the order. The Order also took under its protection those who adhered to it: lords who showed loyal feelings towards it; traders who used it commercial services; artisans who settled on his lands, and many others.
At the bottom of this hierarchical pyramid were dependent peasants, attached to the land by feudal dependence, and dark-skinned slaves taken from Palestine.
However, no matter what more or less complex and responsible positions people occupied in the order, they all had, as indicated by the Charter, the same duties and enjoyed the same privileges. The reason for occupying a particular position was solely the person’s own merits, for, as Bernard writes, “among them there is no difference between individuals, and the difference is rather determined by the merits of the knight than by the nobility of blood.”
Simple novice brothers wore black cloaks and camisoles, and therefore, when the Templar warriors rushed to attack, their first line was made up of horsemen in white, and the second - horsemen in black. Apparently, this is where the famous black and white standard of the order, the so-called “Beaucean”, came from, the battle banner of the Templars, the combination of colors symbolizing the constant struggle in the Cosmos and in man between Light and Shadow. On the banner there was a cross with an inscription in Latin addressed to the Lord: “Not to us, not to us, but to your name.” The word "Beaucean" became the battle cry of the knights.
It still remains unclear why, despite the incredibly rapid growth of fame and the natural desire of many noble people of their time to serve faithfully the cause begun by the Templars, no new members were accepted into the order during the first nine years.
Now, eight centuries later, there are a huge number of opinions on this matter, often controversial and contradictory. One thing is certain: this could not be an accident. And if we do not know the true reasons, this does not mean at all that these reasons did not exist. They were, just as there were deep philosophical concepts and wisdom gleaned by the Templars in the East. Only being realists and well understanding the impossibility of publishing many truths due to the danger of profanation, the knights learned to preserve this wisdom, and from the very moment of its founding the order could be likened to an iceberg, in which we can see only one tenth of its true size. Only by looking at some of the most striking events in the history of the order can we now guess about that part of the “iceberg” that was under water, about those ideas and principles that guided the “poor knights of Christ”.
One such event occurred in 1128. This year, by the decision of the Church Council - the highest body that met not on any occasion, but only in exceptional cases - the official status of the Templars was approved: a knightly monastic order. The pope himself personally took under his protection the new order, whose members not only served the cause of Christ, but also had to defend the interests of this cause wherever they were. The same Council also approved the Charter of the Order, written, as mentioned above, by the famous Bernard of Clairvaux.
In 1139, the Pope granted the order significant privileges: the Templars henceforth became independent from any authority - secular or ecclesiastical, political or religious.
The cathedral in Troyes was destined to become a turning point in the history of the Templars, for it began the rapid growth of the number and wealth of the order. Despite the strict requirements for origin, lifestyle and behavior, more and more knights are accepted into the order.
Seven years later, under Pope Eugene III, a red cross with forked clawed ends appeared on the white cloak of the Templars. This cross of scarlet material, located on the left, under the heart, is claimed by the pope as their coat of arms. Such a “triumphal sign,” says the pope, will become a shield for them so that they do not take flight before the infidels. However, the knights never ran away and always showed themselves worthy of their reputation - proud to the point of arrogance, brave to the point of recklessness and at the same time amazingly disciplined, unmatched among all the armies of the world.
The knights were united into "commanderships", small autonomous republics who had their own fortresses and were independent of the laws of the region in which they were located. By the 13th century, the Templars had about five thousand commanderies, covering almost all of Europe and the Middle East with their network. In the Holy Land alone, the order had 600 knights, 2,000 sergeants and more than 5,000 ordinary horsemen. Such a force had to be reckoned with, especially since
The order's charter prohibited its members from retreating before the enemy unless the enemy outnumbered them three times. The charter required complete and unconditional heroism from the knights. Together with the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, the Templars constituted the standing army of the Christian states of the East. They were in the most difficult areas. During the assault on the next fortress, the knights-monks were the first to break into it.
But in 1291 the Crusaders were finally expelled from Palestine and the Holy Land was irretrievably lost to the Christian world. The Templars moved to Europe, where they quickly created a kind of international state for which there were no national borders. This was an era of prosperity for the order, when its grand masters spoke with kings as equals.
From the very beginning, the order firmly established itself in the lands of Western Europe, divided at that time into nine provinces: France, Portugal, Castile, Aragon, Mallorca, Germany, Italy, Sicily and England with Ireland. By the beginning of the 14th century, the Templars had almost ten thousand possessions throughout Western Europe, of which about a thousand were in France. The possessions, as well as military posts and fortifications of the Templars, covered Europe with a dense network. They owned hundreds of castles and a huge amount of land. The order, created as a symbol of poverty and simplicity, became the richest organization. The Templars invented the bill of exchange and became the largest moneylenders of their era, and the Parisian Order House became the center of European finance.
Due to constant contact with Muslim and Jewish cultures, the Templars possessed the most advanced technology of their time. The Order did not skimp, allocating funds for the development of geodesy, cartography and navigation. It had its own ports, shipyards, as well as its own fleet, the ships of which were equipped with a curiosity unprecedented in those distant times - a magnetic compass.
And all of them, from masters to ordinary knights, were bound together by iron bonds of obedience, discipline and secrecy. For, among other things, there was also a secret that united them. The secret that allowed the “poor knighthood of Christ and the Temple of Solomon,” created in 1118 by nine crusaders, to rapidly spread throughout Western Europe and become the largest landowner and owner of untold wealth, significantly exceeding the treasury of any then sovereign. The residence of the Templars in Paris became something like the Wall Street of the Middle Ages, and the order itself in the 12th–13th centuries was nothing more than the then IMF, which issued loans to European monarchs and merchants who financed the crusades and other super projects. The Templars had significant military strength, had their own fleet, and had at their disposal numerous castles and fortresses in Europe and the Middle East. Like all monks, the Templars took vows of obedience, chastity and personal poverty. But the order itself, as an organization, could have property. Its charter directly obliged the accumulation of valuables and prohibited the sale of property without the permission of the high council.
The reasons are so rapid growth The financial and military power of the Order of the Temple of Solomon still does not have a satisfactory explanation. Historians mainly talk about significant donations from European monarchs and aristocracy to the treasury of the order, but they donated not only to them, there were already at least a dozen Catholic orders, but not one of them in the 12th–13th centuries could compare in strength and wealth with the Templars .
Or another mystery: the Templars generously paid with silver coins, which were in great short supply in Europe at that time, which did not have significant deposits of silver. In this regard, some researchers make a rather fantastic assumption that the Templars, long before Columbus, discovered America and organized trade with the local aborigines, and they supplied them with silver. This is allegedly supported by some frescoes in surviving Templar castles, which seem to depict people of clearly Indian appearance.
Other historians believe that the Templars owe their unheard-of wealth to the trade they established with the Muslim East, in which they were monopolists, since because of the Crusades, all of Western Europe was at war with the Muslims, and the Templars, with the help of secret diplomacy, maintained normal relations with the Saracens relationship. In any case, European chroniclers more than once accused the knights of Solomon’s Temple of often helping the enemies of the Christian faith through their actions or inaction, as was the case during the Second Crusade during the siege of Damascus. There are even more fantastic assumptions about the sources of the Templar treasures: the Templars supposedly received the secret of the philosophical alchemical stone in the East and used it to turn lead into gold and silver.
There is an opinion that it was financial transactions that occupied a significant place in the activities of the Templars, the almost monopoly mining of silver and other “manipulations of material values,” as well as secret rituals and hidden disagreement with the official church (which in itself was terrible crime) played a fatal role in their fate and caused the death of the Order of the Temple.
On October 13, 1307, Friday, at the same day and hour, throughout France, the governors of Philip the Fair, breaking the seals, became familiar with the contents of the king's secret dispatch. The order was clear and subject to immediate execution. And so, in the morning twilight, several thousand Templars were arrested, the order's houses and castles were placed under the supervision of the royal authorities, and all the order's property was confiscated. An armed detachment of royal guards led by Chancellor Guillaume de Nogaret burst into the Parisian residence of the order, the Temple. Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who was there, and one and a half hundred other templars did not offer any resistance and allowed themselves to be taken to prison. The Order of the Templars, having existed for almost 200 years, was destroyed: on April 3, 1312, it was dissolved by a bull of Pope Clement V, and its leaders, led by Jacques de Molay, were burned at the stake after a long trial.
What was the reason that a powerful military-religious organization, which had enormous influence, resources and authority, practically ceased to exist within 24 hours? And without any resistance! Why did professional warrior-monks, who were fluent in all types of weapons, meekly allow themselves and their master to be captured? There is something inexplicable about this! Obviously, this is another of the many mysteries of an already quite mysterious organization - the Order of the Templars.
Those arrested were brought to trial and many were tortured. At the same time, terrible confessions were obtained, but the accusations brought forward were even more monstrous! The Templars were accused of not recognizing Christ, the Holy Virgin and the saints, spitting on the cross and trampling it underfoot. They stated that they worshiped in a dark cave an idol depicting a human figure, that this idol was covered with human skin, with shiny diamonds instead of eyes. At the same time, the Templars smear him with the fat of fried small children and look at him as if he were a god. They were accused of worshiping the devil in the form of a cat, burning the bodies of dead Templars and mixing the ashes into the food of their younger brothers. They were accused of various crimes, of terrible debauchery and superstitious abominations, of which only madmen can be guilty.
To force them to confess to these crimes, the Templars were tortured not only in France, but also in England, since the English king Edward II supported his father-in-law Philip the Fair in order to destroy this order. Many knights, under torture, confessed to the crimes of which they were accused; hundreds died without making any confessions, and many starved themselves to death or otherwise took their own lives in prison. The process lasted for seven years. The persecution spread to other countries. In Germany, Spain and on the island of Cyprus the order was justified. But V Italy, England And In France, his fate was sealed, although at one time there was hope for salvation, because the pope, seeing that Philip and Edward had seized all the money and all the property of the Templars and, apparently, did not intend to share the spoils with him, took the side of the order. When both kings made concessions to him, he again began to support them, although he complained about the small share of the spoils that went to him.
What happened the real reason the defeat of the once so powerful order? A lot can be assumed...
The Templars truly possessed enormous monetary and military power, and most importantly, they had far-reaching plans for its use. Some modern researchers say the following about these plans: the Templars tried to implement what current politicians have only now, 700 years after the defeat of the order - to create a united Europe with a single economy and under a common political leadership. The unified economy was to be based on the advanced credit and financial system of the Templar Order itself, even from a modern point of view.
But as for the unified political leadership of Europe, they believe that this should have been ensured by the Merovingian dynasty restored by the Templars, the first rulers of France in the 5th–8th centuries. The point of view is quite controversial and ambiguous, it is adhered to by the authors of the book “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” (another name is “The Sacred Riddle”) Michael Baigent, Richard Ley and Henry Lincoln. At the same time, these authors propagate a rather strange, and from a church point of view, simply heretical, idea that the Merovingians were direct descendants of Jesus Christ. It must be said that modern fictionalized alternative history, and cinema, sometimes subtly, and sometimes directly, promote the idea that the Savior did not die on the cross at all, did not resurrect and did not ascend to heaven, but somehow escaped death, then lived like an ordinary person, got married and had children.
However, such views are not new. Many heretical movements of medieval Europe set forth something similar in their teachings. Denial of the divine nature of the Savior was the main point of such teachings. By the way, one of the charges brought against the templars by the French king Philip IV the Fair was renunciation of Christ, mockery of shrines christian church, idolatry. And the arrested highest hierarchs of the order pleaded guilty, although some later retracted their confessions. Of course, most modern historians, who have great sympathy for the Order of the Temple of Solomon, believe that the Templars made all their confessions under torture. However, the same historians very often, following the refutation of the Templar confessions of 700 years ago, suddenly begin to prove that even if the templars mocked Christianity at their secret meetings, there is nothing wrong with that, this, they say, precisely confirms the super-progressiveness of the knights Temple.
What we can really agree with these historians is in recognizing the merits of the Templars in creating a credit and financial system that was far ahead of its time with its interest on loans, debt obligations (bills of exchange), which could be traded like ordinary goods, etc. That is, the Templars built a pan-European usurious network, almost similar to the system of modern banking capital. At the same time, they actually had to violate the rules of the church, which forbade Christians to give money on interest, since profits from usury were considered unearned income, a deviation from the commandment of God: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread until you return to the land from which you were taken.” "(Genesis 3:19).
Usury in medieval Europe was equated with theft and robbery, and it was tolerated only by non-believers, in particular Jews (remember Pushkin’s “The Miserly Knight” or Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”). By the way, there is a similar ban on usury in Islam, where it remains in force to this day.
The Templars still failed to make a radical breakthrough at the beginning of the 14th century - Europe was not yet ripe for such advanced transformations.
Even if Philip the Fair did not know about all the plans of the Templars, he considered the colossal influence that the order was gaining every year dangerous. It was not just about the untold wealth accumulated over two centuries. The political influence that the Templars had in Europe and beyond was dangerous. Talking on equal terms with kings, the templar masters maintained direct contacts with distant eastern rulers and with representatives of secret teachings and sects. In particular, with one of the most secret sects of the East - “hired political assassins”, assassins. Maybe in the future they wanted to create some kind of order superstate, not knowing borders and national differences, going beyond the boundaries of ordinary states? Philip IV, who dreamed of crowning his head with the crown of the “Holy Roman Empire,” could rightly fear that his dreams might well be dashed by the Secret Holy Empire, represented by the military and financial power of the Templars. And finally, an important circumstance may be the fact that Philip the Fair was literally deeply in debt. The French treasury was empty, the people were rebelling, and there was simply nowhere to get money from. The Templars, to their misfortune, were not only monstrously rich, but were also the main creditors of the French king.
Rebels in economics and politics, the Templars were also rebels in theology. The very name of the order in some way indicates rebellious ambition. The temple is a more majestic, more extensive and deeper concept than the church. The temple is higher than the church! Churches fall, but the Temple remains - as a symbol of the kinship of religions and the eternity of their spirit. During their stay in the East, the Templars learned to interpret the canons of Catholicism quite freely. Moreover, in their rituals they dared to interpret in their own way the attitude towards God, the Holy Spirit and the Pope. The Church can be called the house of Christ, but the Temple is the house of the Holy Spirit! This is the religion of the spirit that the Templars inherited from the Manichaeans and the Albigensians.
With their rituals, the Templars expressed their independence from the official church. One of the secrets of the order was that an initiated member of the order was called a “friend of God” and could speak with God whenever he wanted, that is, without the mediation of the Pope and the church. This was a clear heresy, subject to cruel eradication.
All these, as well as many other circumstances, together made up an amazing combination, which Philip the Handsome simply could not help but take advantage of. Accusing the order of heresy, atheism and other crimes, he acted in the noblest role of a champion of justice. The royal power proved that, by confiscating the property of the Templars, it strives not for booty, but for the punishment of attackers, for the greater glory of religion and for the triumph of the law! The Grand Master of the Order, Jacques de Molay, and the Prior of Normandy, Geoffroy de Charnay, were burned on March 18, 1314. They stood on piles of brushwood, wearing paper caps of heretics, opposite the royal palace, from the window of which Philip the Fair gave the signal to the executioner. Both of them - the master and the prior - renounced their testimony given under torture at the trial. Both spoke of their innocence and that of the order! At the last moment, the thunderous voice of the Grand Master rushed through the flames over the curious crowd:
- Papa Clement! Knight Guillaume de Nogaret! King Philip! Not even a year will pass before I call you to God’s judgment and you will be given just punishment! A curse!! A curse on your family up to the thirteenth generation!!!
And then a month later the Pope died from abdominal pain and terrible convulsions. In November of the same year, Philip the Handsome died of an unknown illness. The chief judge of the trial, Nogare, was executed. The curse was working! Four and a half centuries later, during the Great french revolution When the blade of the guillotine fell on the neck of Louis XVI, a man jumped onto the scaffold, dipped his hand in the blood of the dead monarch and showed it to the crowd, shouting loudly:
- Jacques de Molay, you are avenged!
The unfortunate Louis was the thirteenth descendant of King Philip IV.
But let's return to the moment of the death of the order. The Templars were not persecuted so cruelly everywhere; many knights of the order survived, since nowhere except France were they subjected to such severe persecution. Scotland even granted them asylum. They were acquitted in Lorraine. Many former Templars joined the two other powerful military monastic orders, also established in Palestine at about the same time as the Order of the Temple of Solomon. These were the Order of the Hospitallers, or Johannites, now better known as the Order of Malta, and the Order of the House of St. Mary of Teutonia, or simply the Teutonic Order. Quite a few of them ended up in Livonia, with which they had maintained close ties for a long time. In Portugal, the Templars were acquitted by the court and in 1318 changed their name, becoming the Knights of Christ. Under this name the order existed there until the 16th century. Vasco da Gama was a knight of the Order of Christ, and Prince Henrique the Navigator was its Grand Master. With funds from the order, the prince founded an observatory and a nautical school, and contributed to the development of shipbuilding in Portugal. He equipped ocean expeditions that discovered new lands. Their ships sailed under eight-pointed (clawed) Templar crosses. Under the same symbols, Christopher Columbus's caravels - "Santa Maria", "Pinta" and "Nina" - crossed the Atlantic. The great discoverer of America himself was married to the daughter of his associate Enrique the Navigator, a knight of the Order of Christ, who gave him his nautical and pilotage charts.
But there is one problem that has not yet been solved. Although Philip the Fair took advantage of the moment of surprise, he did not achieve his main goal - the king did not receive the treasures and documents of the order. Of course, he got unheard of riches! But the priceless archive of the Templars, their secret relics, were not found. One can only speculate and make the most fantastic guesses about what the Knights Templars kept in their hiding places.
Shortly before the arrests began, Jacques de Molay managed to burn many documents and manuscripts. The Grand Master managed to send a letter to all order houses, in which he ordered not to provide even minimal information about the customs and rituals of the Templars. Allegedly, one night before the wave of arrests, the Templar treasures were taken from Paris and delivered to the port of La Rochelle, where they were loaded onto eighteen galleys that departed in an unknown direction. Obviously, the Grand Master knew something about the impending danger. But where were the relics of the order taken? Today we cannot reliably answer this question.
after King Phillip's negotiations with the Pope, she steadily led them towards sunset. and the fate of the Templar Order was sealed. The capture of the Templars began on Friday, October 13, 1307 (perhaps this is where the concept of “unlucky” on the 13th originates). In any case, for the Templars the 13th turned out to be truly unlucky. The knights were surrounded, captured and, after interrogation under torture, burned alive at the stake. But, despite all efforts to keep the plans to attack the Templars secret, individual knights were nevertheless warned, as a result of which they managed to evade persecution and hide the wealth of the order. The treasures that were kept in the Parisian Temple have disappeared. The Templar fleet also mysteriously disappeared. And although Rome ordered that the Templars be put to death throughout the Christian world, the crusade against the Knights Templar was carried out without much zeal. Even King Philip's son-in-law, King Edward II of England, did not want to fight against the Templars. However, despite the reluctance, he was still forced to submit as a concession. England was at war with Scotland at the time, and another war, now with the Templars, was an unwelcome obstacle. For the Templars, this war turned out to be salutary, since due to this circumstance, the order to destroy the Templar Order never reached Scotland. It remained the only country in the Christian world where the Templars existed legally.
In August 1308, the Inquisition brought forward a number of accusations against the Templars, which were as follows: “It is accused that in every province idols were present at the meetings of the order, namely, heads, some of which had three faces, and some one. Some had a human skull. They are accused of worshiping these idols, especially in their main meetings and sittings. They are accused of having revered (them). They are accused of (they worshiping them) as God. They are accused of (they revered them) as their Savior... They are accused of saying that the head could save them. They are accused of saying that [she could] give wealth. They are accused of claiming that she makes trees bloom. They are accused of believing that [it makes] the earth fertile. They are accused of surrounding each head of the above-mentioned idol and touching it with small pieces of rope, which they then carried with them on the chest or close to the body. The accusation is that, upon admission to the order, the above-mentioned ropes or a small part of them were given to each person entering the fraternity. They are accused of doing this as a sign of idol worship. They are accused of the fact that they (those accepting into the brotherhood) took an oath from those (who joined) not to reveal to anyone everything previously mentioned.”
In a number of European countries, the Knights Templar managed to escape and even continue their activities, dissolving in such secret societies x, like the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, the Order of the Teutonic Knights, etc. In Portugal, the Templars did not join other societies, but changed their name to the “Order of the Knights of Christ.” In 1314, the last Grand Master of the order, Jacques de Molay, was arrested and burned. Molay became famous for adding elements of another heretical teaching - the “Johannites” - to the belief system of the Knights Templar. Representatives of this doctrine argued that John the Baptist, and not Jesus, was the messiah. The legend of the Templars says that de Molay cursed his executioners at the time of his execution. He predicted that by the end of the year Pope Clement and King Philip would pass on to another world. And indeed, less than a month later, the Pope died of dysentery. King Philip died less than a year after de Molay's execution, and the cause of his death is still unknown.
The history of the Templars does not provide reliable information about the fate of the knights. There is a version that some of them crossed the Atlantic and came to North America (two hundred years before Columbus). Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, in The Key of Hiram: Pharaohs, Freemasons, and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus, tell the following. The Templar fleet stopped in Portugal and then headed west to what they called La Mensa before landing in Massachusetts in 1308. There are facts confirming this version. At Westford there is an engraved image of a Templar with a shield bearing a ship and one star. Another evidence that the Templar ships sailed to the New World and returned back is Rosslyn Chapel, built in 1486. On its ceiling are images of cactus and corn, North American plants that, theoretically, were not yet known in Europe. . Based on this, it is assumed that Columbus married the daughter of one of the “Knights of Christ” and gained access to secret documents his father-in-law.
Currently, in the twenty-first century, there are at least three secret societies that call themselves “Templars” and claim to have been founded in the Middle Ages. In addition, in some Masonic lodges one of the degrees is called “Knight Templar”...
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Already during its active existence, the Order of the Templars was seen in the eyes of contemporaries as a kind of magical institution. The Knights of the Temple were suspected of magic, witchcraft and alchemy. (In an earlier era they would have been suspected of shamanism). Many of the Templars were believed to be associated with “dark forces.” Back in 1208, Pope Innocent III called the Templars to order due to their “unChristian actions and conjuring of spirits.”
It is known that the Templars dreamed of establishing the Kingdom of Peace and the Unity of all peoples on earth, for which they engaged in esoteric research and the search for inter-confessional churchliness based on Gnostic teachings. “Churchfulness” was understood in its original sense - from the Greek “ekklhsia”, that is, a “community” of people united by an idea.
A few words about the Gnostics. The Gnostics were an Alexandrian sect based on the secret doctrines of early Christianity. The Gnostics interpreted the Christian mysteries in accordance with pagan symbolism. They hid their secret information and philosophical achievements from outsiders and taught only a small group of specially initiated individuals.
The Gnostics sought (and believed they had found) Truth with a capital T. They considered its basis to be Gnosis (Greek “gnosis” - “knowledge”), that is secret knowledge about God, the world and the true spiritual nature of man, revealed by the prophets and preserved by the esoteric tradition. Possession of such knowledge, which only a select few could receive, in itself leads to Salvation. Evil in the world was considered to have arisen initially as a result of a “failure of technology.” Its destruction occurs only gradually, during the world process of restoring the planned harmony, which, again, prophets and divine messengers help to accelerate. God, according to the teachings of the Gnostics, is hidden and unknowable. But at the same time, this is the supreme true God. Most people (not related to Gnostics) worship an untrue God, whose image they capture in the form of icons and frescoes. Meanwhile, this is just a derivative of the true God, the father not of the world, but of “the lies of this world,” that is, the Devil. However, for the Gnostics, the Devil was not the father of evil, but just a loser, a victim of his own delusions.
The Templars, in particular, borrowed the Androgyne symbol from the Gnostics. For them it was an occult image of universal unity. He was depicted as a figure with wings sitting on a cube. On the head is a torch with three flames. The right hand is male (with the Latin inscription “solve” - “allow”), the left hand is female (with the inscription “coagula” - “thicken”). The trouble is that the Androgyne had a goat's head; her horns, beard and ears form a PENTAGRAM (known to us as a five-pointed star). Christian hierarchs, of course, associated this head with the Devil. And subsequently the fact of worshiping Androgyne was blamed on the Templars. Meanwhile, even among the Pythagoreans, the pentagram was a symbol of health and an identification sign of the community.
The Gnostic androgyne of the Templars had his own name, called Baphomet.
Baphomet is the word "Temophab" read from right to left, meaning "Templi omnium hominum pacis abbas", that is, "Abbot of the temple of the world of all people." By this term, the Templars understood the emanation of the world “We”, an astral vortex that could lead people along the path of improvement, to universal peace and brotherhood.
All this was in plain sight. However, later research showed that, most likely, within the Templar Order there was a narrow circle of initiates who developed and protected from outsiders a much deeper occult doctrine than the persecutors of the Templars could imagine.
In the 18th century, two documents dating back to the Middle Ages were found in Hamburg. They contained a secret code for templars who had reached the “inner circle” of the Order, and supplemented the church charter. These were the “Charter of the chosen brothers” and the “Charter of the comforted brothers”. In his book “History of the Order of the Templars and the Crusades,” Gerard Sebanesco comments in detail on these texts and argues that they are about instructions, the purpose of which was to preserve the secrets of the occult hierarchy, strictly separated from the rest of the Order.
There are many versions of the esoteric secrets so jealously guarded by the Templars. And today, works devoted to this topic continue to appear. In his amazing book “Jean de Fodoas,” occult writer Maurice Magre puts forward a hypothesis according to which the Templars used a magically charged figure of Baphomet during battles. It allegedly ensured their victory until it was stolen from them during one of the battles of the Christian army with the Mongol invaders in Bohemia.
Maurice Magre adds:
“It is likely that all the great conquerors who have left their mark on the destinies of various nations have used magic, which enabled them to control the forces of the world to their advantage.”
We do not believe in magic, and therefore will not seriously consider this last thesis, but it seems that the highest rank templars did have esoteric knowledge. While in Touraine, in the keep of the Chinon castle, they painted symbolic graffiti on the walls of their cells, which entire generations of scholars are trying to decipher.
Modern alchemist Eugene Canselier, author of the book “The Two Dwellings of the Alchemists,” believes that he was able to interpret the most mysterious and complex of these drawings. According to his version, the Templars knew how the earth's cycle would develop until the Apocalypse.
“On the wall of one of the cells,” writes Canselier, “the Templars, sitting in the donjon of Chinon Castle awaiting execution, left, among other equally interesting graffiti, a brief diagram of the development of nature. On the side of the doorway there is a circle scratched with a stiletto on the soft stone, the right side of which is barely outlined and strongly shaded with vertical lines. Indeed, the Golden and Silver Ages ended when, in 1308, the adepts of the Order of the Temple presented to posterity an image of the relentless passage of time. That is why the gnomon on the cosmic dial, drawn from a smaller circle with the letter "S" in the center ("S" is the first letter of the French word "soleil" - sun), divides the upper sector, that is, the Bronze Age, into two halves. One half is the past three hundred years, and the other is the future three hundred years, it still bears the letter “B”, which the Romans denoted the number 300. These six centuries are also marked with the letters A, B, C, D, E, F. The letter The "A" is larger than the others and is connected by a brace to another "A" located directly above it, symbolizing the two centuries mentioned. To the right and slightly above the Sun we see the Moon and the Earth - a circle crossed out by a cross, a life that will end with the end of the Iron Age, indicated in the lower quarter of the circle. The stiletto of the unknown Templar moves inexorably further in order to, having reached the vertical, mark great confusion in the noise of the trumpets. Then the Chosen will be able to repeat the prophetic words of the soothsayer from Patmo:
“I saw a new heaven and a new earth; because the first heaven and the first earth disappeared, and the sea no longer existed.”
Quite a free interpretation, don’t you think? We will see more than once how occultists freely interpret the acts of their predecessors. In the meantime, let’s try to answer the question: what exactly did the Templars achieve by strengthening and expanding their Order?
Conspiracy theorist Jean Marques-Rivière, in his book “History of Esoteric Doctrines,” defined the political aspect of the activities of the inner circle of the Order of the Temple:
“It seems that within the Order itself there was a group inspired by strict esotericism that had a secret goal of seizing power.”
So, the Templars needed power in order to unite the Western world and become its true occult rulers. What means were they going to use to carry out their plan? A de facto union of secular and religious power? However, for this it was necessary to reconcile the Cross of Christianity and the Crescent of Islam, turning the Mediterranean from a dividing chasm into a center of unity for world religions.
The Templars, who were not limited to just dreams of an ideal society, understood perfectly well that in order for the confrontation between the Christian world and the East to disappear sooner or later, it was necessary to methodically develop commercial contacts between the two sides. The leaders of the Order tried in every possible way to take control of industry, trade and financial relations between the Christian and Muslim worlds. The Templars' plan meant the undermining of existing norms, a complete reorganization of the traditional structure of human society, with Europe being only an intermediate stage towards the implementation of this project.
Although most of the political leaders of that era were treated by the secret circle of the Templars only as pawns and blind executors of their will, there were some exceptions. In particular, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II Staufen was perhaps one of the privy to the daring plan. In particular, despite the strong indignation of Rome, he established contacts with Muslim adherents, instead of going on a crusade against them. Without a doubt, this Emperor of Germany was not a pawn in someone else's game - on the contrary, he reached the highest circles of initiation. It was he who presided over the “round table” in Acre in 1228, where representatives of all knightly orders, both Christian and Muslim, gathered.
To this day, in the most mountainous and least visited place by tourists, in the Italian province of Apulia, on the outskirts of the city of Andria, there is a huge fortified castle built by Frederick II. Some people call this building the Castle of the Master of the World. This massive fortress, Castel del Monte, was built in full accordance with the octagonal plan, like the Templar chapels. Although the castle subsequently served as the residence of high-ranking persons, it was clearly intended for other purposes; it did not have a single room with a utilitarian purpose: no bedrooms, no dining rooms, no living rooms. During the life of the emperor, Castel del Monte was certainly used only on special occasions for meetings and ceremonies. The octagonal plan is also preserved inside the castle: all the rooms are located around one central, also octagonal, master's room. This room was probably the Middle Room - the most hidden and therefore the most sacred.
The First Crusade was organized by Pope Urban, a power-hungry and cruel man, as an aid to the Byzantine Emperor Alexius, who requested military support because he was very concerned about the growing pressure from the Seljuk Turks. The cry of the campaign was to protect the Holy Land and make it possible for religious pilgrims to visit it. But the true purpose of this campaign was to weaken the positions of the eastern Orthodox Christianity, with its center in Byzantium, which does not provide the opportunity to expand the sphere of influence of the Roman Papacy to the eastern countries.
The army, which received remission of past and future sins, consisted of all sorts of dubious personalities, and even real thieves and bandits, and was driven solely by the thirst for profit in future possible robberies. In 1099, the campaign reached the city of Jerusalem, destroying more than one city in a bloody massacre along the way. History knows the unimaginable atrocities committed by the defenders of the Holy Sepulcher from Europe in cities such as Lycia, Antiochus, Marratus, the population of which, by the way, was Christian!
Jerusalem at that time was a city of peaceful existence of three religions - Orthodox Christianity, Judaism and Islam, a prosperous, cultural, commercial city, without military protection. The population of the city desperately resisted the bloodthirsty “liberators” storming it for several weeks, but were still forced to surrender. The fallen city was plundered and covered in blood, which was the end of the First Crusade. The so-called “knights” departed little by little to their homes, loaded with numerous trophies and telling tales about their exploits in the liberation of Jerusalem. And defenseless religious pilgrims, who saw their duty to God in visiting the Holy Land, remained absolutely defenseless against the revenge of the Seljuk Turks for the desecrated and devastated lands. The busy roads of Asia Minor, along which streams of pilgrims flowed, became the scene of action for armed small detachments. On some days, hundreds of pilgrims became victims of the Turks, they were captured for ransom, to be sold as slaves in eastern markets, and simply killed.
During this difficult period, the French nobleman Hugo de Payens and his nine comrades organized a military-religious military force to protect pilgrims from attacks.. The full name of the order is “The Secret Knighthood of Christ and the Temple of Solomon,” but in Europe it was better known as the Order of the Knights of the Temple (Order of the Templars from the French tample - “temple”). This name was explained by the fact that his residence was located in Jerusalem, on the site where the temple of King Solomon was once located. The knights themselves were called templars. The Templar seal depicted two knights riding the same horse, which was supposed to speak of poverty and brotherhood. The symbol of the order was a white cloak with a red eight-pointed cross. In 1119, the Order offered its protective and guard services to King Baldwin the First of Jerusalem.
Symbol of the Order Personal courage and bravery, the nobility of the first members of the order earned respect and recognition from pilgrims, and the news of selfless and fearless knights, ready to come to the aid of a person in trouble, was spread to all corners of Europe. Soon the Order received the blessing of the Pope and its prosperity began. Members of the order, who took monastic vows of “purity,” “poverty,” and “obedience,” were practically “saints” in the eyes of most people, and, to the best of their ability, citizens sought to donate to help people who had unselfishly and voluntarily taken on a difficult burden. In addition to monetary donations, some rich people who had no heirs left estates, castles, and estates to the Order. So, after his death, the Aragonese king Alfonso the First left to the Order part of his kingdom in northern Spain, and the Breton Duke Conan left an entire island off the coast of France.
Subsequently, this turned out to be:
- By the middle of the 22nd century, the Templar Order owned vast land resources with estates and castles managed by people appointed by the Order
- The importance of the Order exceeded many states, and in 1139 Pope Innocent granted the Order independence, which freed each unit from subordination to the local sovereign and the laws of the country where this unit was located
- Instructions to the Order could only come from the Supreme Master or the Pope himself
We also owe the creation of the first “banking” network to the Templar Order. Pilgrims, heading to holy places, were forced to take bags of money with them on the road, which was extremely difficult and unsafe. The Order provided the opportunity, having handed over money in one place and receiving a receipt in return, to receive it in any city convenient for travel, since the representative offices of the Order were very numerous. The Templars also provided services for the transportation of cash and jewelry, and there is not a single case known when a convoy guarded by them was robbed. The created network also helped to quickly pay ransom for captives, because there was no need to transport money for ransom, say, from Germany to Jerusalem, but it was enough to quickly transport only letters.
During its heyday, the Templar Order found another and very powerful source of income: usury. Of course, the Templars did not lend money to ordinary citizens, but the Order secretly, and always with good collateral, provided loans to large monarchical families. This allowed the Order to have a powerful lever of influence on the rulers of many states; they were aware of almost all intimate and political secrets. Although ideological and religious power over states was still in the hands of the Pope, political and economic power was concentrated in the Supreme Master of the Order.
Analyzing the economic state of Western Europe in the 12th-13th centuries, one cannot help but notice the widespread construction of numerous cathedrals, monasteries, abbeys and churches. Only about 180 large cathedrals and churches were built during this period. The question arises, what funds were used for this construction? At that time there was a huge shortage of money. There was very little gold in circulation, and silver, which was the main metal for minting money, was completely insufficient. It is clear that silver exported from the countries of the Middle East as mining could not significantly solve this problem. Precious metals were practically not mined in Europe, and deposits in Germany, the Czech Republic and Russia had not yet been discovered. And despite this, in France alone, in less than a hundred years, 80 huge cathedrals and 70 smaller temples were built. Although it is known that most French cities had very limited funds for development, and if the magistrates had any, they were primarily spent on strengthening the city walls.
The only one who could have had the necessary money at that time was the Order of the Templars. The Order minted its own silver coin and during the period of the 12th-13th centuries such a number of cash silver coins were issued that they became a common means of payment, in particular for the grandiose construction campaign we mentioned. But where did the raw materials come from? It is known that the Templars took about a ton of silver from Palestine, which is clearly not enough. The masters of the Order were silent about the origin of the main amount of metal.
I would like to note that the Order had a serious fleet and achieved a monopoly on flights across the Mediterranean Sea, essentially controlling trade routes from Asia. But it is known that there were also ports and bases on the Atlantic coast, although the Order’s interests seemed to be concentrated in the Mediterranean.
It is known that the Order owned the notorious fortress of La Rochelle at the mouth of the Gironde River. Not long ago, Jean de la Varande, a French historian, put forward a hypothesis about the possibility of the Templars mining the said silver in Mexico. The assumption is quite probable, since the Order showed interest in various sciences and discoveries being made, studied the works of Arab scientists and Greek sages, and of course could find out about the existence of lands overseas. Having our own fleet made it possible to carry out such a trip in reality. And the answer to whether there were Templars in Mexico can be obtained by carefully examining the painting of the pediment of the Order’s temple in the city of Verelai, the construction of which dates back to the 12th century. There, among the people surrounding Christ, a group of three figures catches the eye: a man, a woman and a child with disproportionately large ears. The man's outfit of feathers is very reminiscent of the clothing of North American Indians, and the woman is bare-breasted and wearing a long skirt. It is unlikely that in those days they could have simply invented such a thing.
There is one more fact in favor of this hypothesis. The seals of the Order, captured back in 1307 by the royal gendarmes, were recently discovered in the National Archives of France. Among the papers from the Grand Master's office is one on which is written "the secret of the temple" and in the center of it is a figure in a loincloth and a feather headdress, such as that of the Indians of North America (or Mexico and Brazil), holding a bow in his right hand. So it is likely that the Templars visited the American continent long before Columbus (this theory is also confirmed) and the existence of the New World was one of the great secrets of the Order, which only the highest hierarchs knew.
Collapse of the Templar Order
The increased power of the Order served him poorly. Having risen above the world, he began to fall into the abyss. Having initially proven themselves to be noble knights, the templars begin to act treacherously with the people who have trusted them. Thus, having provided asylum to the influential Arab sheikh Nasreddin, a contender for the throne in Cairo, who wished to convert to Christianity, they, without hesitation, sold him for 60 thousand dinars to his enemies in his homeland, which led to the immediate execution of the unfortunate man.
And in 1199, a huge scandal occurred when the Templars refused to return the funds of the Bishop of Sidon, which he had deposited, for which the latter in a rage anathematized the entire Order. The interests of the Templars often did not coincide with the interests of the crusader states or other orders, which is why they disrupted diplomatic agreements, fought in internecine wars, and even raised the sword against members of their fraternal Order of the Hospitallers.
Of great importance for the further fall of the Order was the failure to defend Jerusalem from Saladin's troops. Master Gerard de Ridfort was an adviser to the last king of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan, and convinced him not to avoid participating in the battle with the Muslims at Hattin, which became decisive and in which all the Templars who took part in it died. Those who did not die during the battle were executed. And Ridefort himself, having been captured by Saladin, ordered the Gaza fortress to be surrendered to the enemy. And when, after the fall of Jerusalem, Saladin offered to ransom the lives of pilgrims and city residents from him, the incredibly rich Order, which had the responsibility to protect these people, did not give a penny. About sixteen thousand Christians then became slaves.
The accusations against the Order snowballed. And on Friday, October 13, 1307, by order of the strong, independent and imperious King of France, Philip IV (the Handsome), a simultaneous operation was carried out to capture all the representative offices and bases of the Templar Order. Since these searches and arrests were illegal, due to the legal disobedience of the Order to any rulers and laws, it took almost five years of torture and interrogation to draw up an evidence base for accusations against the Templar Order. So only in 1312, upon presentation of the collected materials, the Order was excommunicated, and the actions of King Philip were justified. What is also surprising is that, having only courier communications in those days, the royal services managed not only to keep the preparations and timing of the operation secret, but also to somehow coordinate their actions with England, Spain, Germany, Italy, since the blow was struck simultaneously in these states too.
The Templars were tried by the church court. They were accused of heresy and apostasy, as well as idolatry. Under torture, most of the Templars admitted their guilt, including Supreme Master Jacques de Mollet, but in 1314, when reading the verdict in Notre Dame Cathedral in front of a huge crowd of people, he publicly stated that all confessions were extracted by torture, the accusations were lies, and The Order is innocent. Jacques de Molay was burned at the stake on an island in the middle of the Seine, and other unrepentant Templars were hanged on Mount Montfaucon.
The Last Grand Master Jacques de Mollet And now we come to the very main secret Order of the Templars. After a simultaneous search of all the "offices", NO treasure was found. No amount of torture could loosen the tongues of those arrested in confessing where the wealth was hidden. It is a known fact that the name of Master of France Gerard de Villiers, one of the most influential dignitaries of the Order, for unknown reasons does not appear in the materials of the trial. There is an assumption that the Templars were nevertheless warned of the impending danger and had the opportunity through the dungeons of Paris (and detailed map dungeons were found) transport the most valuable and important treasures to the fortress of La Rochelle and then take them on naval ships to an unknown place.
In addition to gold and jewelry, it was assumed that the Order owned Christian relics taken from Jerusalem, among which was the notorious Holy Grail. Biblical legends say that the Grail is a kind of cup from which Jesus Christ and the apostles took communion during the Last Supper, and after the crucifixion of Jesus on Calvary, Joseph of Arimathea collected the blood of Christ into this cup. It is believed that this fact gave the Holy Grail extraordinary powers; it became the key to understanding the world, and whoever drinks from it receives forgiveness of sins, deliverance from illnesses and eternal life.
Templars
In 1117, with the aim of uniting to protect religious pilgrims in Palestine, a circle of like-minded people was formed in total - nine knights, among whom Hugo de Payen and Godefroy de Saint-Omer.
A short time later they were able to settle on the territory of the former Jerusalem Temple, due to which they were henceforth known as the Templars. Among the ruins of this temple they soon made amazing find an old Hebrew letter that was given to Etienne Harding.
The content was shocking for the knights: it was about fragments of records of some spies who, on behalf of the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem, reported "about the cursed son of the harlot Jesus" and him "speaking evil of the God of Israel". The Templars were horrified to discover that the official teachings of the church were not correct. Jehovah was not the god and father of Christ, but was revealed by him as Satan. The knights kept the secret among themselves and in 1128, under the auspices of Bernhard von Clairvaux, the formal establishment of the Order took place. The search for the truth continued. During the attack on Damascus, letters fell into the hands of the knights Ali Ibn Abu Talib(Ali Ibn Abu Thalib), which dealt with the distortion of both the Koran and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Then, among the Cathars, the knights came across fragments of the Gospel of John. Guided by this knowledge, the Templars changed their simple cross to a red cross of thorns - a symbol. The knights Roderic and Emmerant set out to search for traces of Marcion in order to obtain further evidence. In March 1235, they directed their search to the region of the former Carthage. After inspecting the shelter, the Templars discovered a huge grotto in which they set up their camp. There they noticed the flickering and luminous appearance of a woman who called herself the great angel Ishtar, the messenger of God. As the Lord has already sent his own bright angel To Ishtar, to the inhabitants of Babylon and Carthage, and to the Templars, a revelation and instruction now appeared: the creation of a new kingdom of light on earth, in the German-speaking space with two capitals. With Vienna in the South and a second city in the North, which had to be built first. In addition to this information, the great angel also showed the knights where they could find the ancient records of the Carthaginians and Marcionites, along with their translation prepared by Marcion. The Templars found a place where, according to Ishtar, a new region was supposed to arise, and founded a hidden one - which later became Berlin. There she appeared to them again in 1238 and conveyed further instructions.
Templar Knowledge
Knowledge of the Templar Order enriched with Babylonian fragments of texts and their Persian and Arabic retellings thanks to trade with the leader of the Assassins Hassan ibn Sabbah. From now on, the knights were well armed: thanks to the Babylonian and Carthaginian fragments, the basics were in their hands
Fortress of Hassan ibn Sabbah (Alamut).
pre-Christian teaching - so to speak, the “Old Testament”, as it should have been. In addition, the influence of the Templars in Western Europe grew steadily and from now on they were faced with a clear task: preparing a new kingdom of light on earth. The fact that they themselves would not have time to accomplish this, but would only lay the foundation, was predicted by the goddess, since the final victory was to be achieved only after many centuries. Another reader may ask himself the question, what was the interest of the knights of non-German origin - and these were the overwhelming majority - in achieving the creation of a kingdom of light on German soil. To do this, you need to be imbued with the ideology of that time. Members of the Order, and most of Europe in general, perceived themselves primarily as Christians, and not as citizens of a particular nationality. For them, it was not the place that was important, but the very fact of creating a new kingdom of light. And in general in their treatises it was called not "German Empire", and "New Babylon".
Threat to the dominant order
It is worth first stating a few things before going on to some purely historical details that show the tenacity of the Templars; and besides, it is so clear and simple that anyone interested can find confirmation of this on their own with the help of a small amount of still publicly available evidence - after all, the spiritual path of the Templars has always been clear, simple and unambiguous.
But first it makes sense to consider those decisive points in the teachings and ideas of the Templars, which ultimately led to the destruction of the Order. At the same time, it quickly becomes clear that the Templars, in fact, represented an elementary threat to the dominant way of life, which would certainly still be such in our time.
Here we are dealing with aspects of great political importance.
In the course of the following observations, it will become clear that the described perspective is still so relevant in our time that the balance of power among the opponents of the Templars has changed, but significant aspects, meanwhile, have remained unchanged.
But in fact, what kind of beliefs, what spiritual content and what worldview did the Templars carry with them?
The medieval West rested on three pillars: the Judeo-Christian religion, a monetary and commercial economy based on Old Testament interest rates, and the principle of absolutist leadership. The Templars were going to shake these three cornerstones as soon as time and their increased strength by that time allowed. So: the liquidation of the Judeo-Christian church and the restoration in its place of the original Christian society of faith with the complete exclusion of all Old Testament components. This inevitably leads to radical reform. The entire monetary and commodity system, as well as a ban on receiving interest. Destruction absolute monarchy and the establishment of an aristocratic-republican order. This alone shows that the ruling circles could not help but strive to eliminate the Templars as such.
Memory use and abuse
This alone already shows that the ruling power had to begin to destroy the Templars after the above-described ideas and plans of the powerful order began to spread and become known. It was nothing more than a clash between the ruling power and the revolutionary forces.
Even if the Templars did not think and feel entirely religiously, the political consequences were no less concrete and revolutionary. The combination of spiritual perception and military thinking was effective. Motto "Ora et labora" ("pray and work") acquired extremely practical significance, given secular orders.
The course of the historical development of the Order as a military order of chivalry is widely known; There is a lot of sensible literature on this topic, for example, (John Charpentier) - but still this should not be confused with the nonsense of a certain Louis Charpentier. Thus, in this place only the most important things are mentioned about the unblemished history of the Order, those points and aspects that seem to lead to the supposed ideological basis of the Order.
The beginning of the development of the Templar Order was gradual and largely unimportant. IN Lately attempts have been made repeatedly to interpret the mysteries in the form of things that sometimes represent pure disgrace. For example, the so-called background boxes and the like, which did not exist, which, however, is easily proven. In the case of such stories, we are dealing, first of all, with an attempt to use the name and memory of the Templars and deliberately abuse them in favor of precisely those forces with which the Templars fought until their martyrdom.
Speculation could be another aspect of such frivolous and slanderous literature. Those who respect the spirit and courage of the supporters of the ancient Templars can only turn away with disgust at the distortions of their beliefs and wills. In this respect, the clerical opponents of the Templars are even more revered than those who act as Templar sympathizers and propagate the opposite of what the ancient Templars gave their lives for: the sinless teaching of Christ in favor of Marcion; for the belief that in Jesus Christ God himself became man; that Christ opposed the God of the Jews, whom he fought as Satan; for the rejection of the so-called Old Testament; for referring to the ancient Sumerian-Babylonian myths as the true basis for God’s acceptance of the human image in the guise of Christ; for waiting for New Babylon in the northern country.
End of the Templars
Head worship, inverted pentagrams, satanic heads, (...) rumors about the Templars spread more and more over time. Only a few know what lies behind this in reality. The pentagrams symbolized the rejection of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. Satanic heads symbolized the Church, which saw God and the Father of Christ in the fallen angel. Eliphas Levi took them as a model for his incorrect depiction of Baphomet. In addition, it is believed that the Templars “were supposed to blaspheme the most sacred thing in the church.” This meant not only the cross, but also the Bible - for they really did not recognize this book with the writings of the Old Testament. The secrets of the Order could not remain hidden forever and soon the knights were accused of heresy and idol worship. On the morning of October 13, 1307, on behalf of King Philip IV. all the Templars of France were arrested. In other countries the Order was also soon persecuted, although there many of its members could promptly
hide in safe place. , the last Grand Master of the Order, was burned at the stake in 1314. During the assault on the last Viennese refuge, the blood of the dead Templars was supposed to paint the street red. And today in the capital of Austria you can find "bloody street".
