Christian soldiers with a vengeance
Jonathan Sumption
THE TEMPLARS by Piers Paul Read Weidenfeld, £20, pp. 350 The Templars were founded a few years after the conquest of the Holy Land by the First Crusade in 1099, in order to guard the dangerous road from Jaffa to Jerusalem by which most European pil- grims reached the Holy City. They took their name after the Temple, said to be Solomon's, in Jerusalem, where they had their headquarters throughout the century- long history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Their importance lay in the fact that they were a tightly organised and high- ly disciplined military force, whose mem- bers provided the only standing army in the Christian East. Without them, the security of the Latin kingdom would have depend- ed on part-time warriors owing feudal ser- vices, who had to be summoned when the need arose, not a satisfactory state of affairs for a kingdom surrounded by ene- mies. The Muslim kingdoms rightly regard- ed them as sinews of the intruder state in Palestine. Their courage was legendary. Their casualties were high even by the stan- dards of Middle Eastern warfare: six of the 23 Grand Masters died in battle or as pris- oners of war.
For all their importance, the Templars were not loved. Although they were a reli- gious order, they made use of their influ- ence with successive popes to obtain privileges which removed them almost entirely from ecclesiastical control. Because of their military strength and their wealth, the result of prodigiously successful fundraising in western Europe, they became equally independent of the Latin kings and their ministers. They controlled some of the major fortresses of the king- dom. They devised their own war strategy without consulting or even informing out- siders. They operated an independent for- eign policy which was often at odds with that of the government.
None of this would have mattered if they had used their power more cautiously. But the Templars were headstrong, and in spite of their long political and military experi- ence in their region, their judgment was persistently poor. Their advice contributed largely to the disaster at the battle of Hat- tin in 1187, at which Saladin destroyed the army of the kingdom of Jerusalem. The fact that they fought with characteristic ferocity in impossible conditions, losing most of their numbers in and after the bat- tle, hardly made up for it.
When, in 1291, the Christians lost Acre, their last foothold on the Levantine main- land, the Templars were left without any raison d'être. They had accumulated great properties in Europe, whose wealth sup- ported two or three thousand professed members and several times that number of auxiliaries and dependants. They had noth- ing to do, unlike the Hospitallers, whose charitable activities had always been more significant than those of the Templars, and who carried on the holy fight (after a fash- ion) from Rhodes. Even now, they busied themselves adding to the number of their enemies. They obstinately resisted sugges- tions to merge with the Hospitallers, which sincere advocates of the crusading ideal had proposed. Their banking operations continued, but were not calculated to win them friends. The popes, who had protect- ed them from the outset, were losing power to the resurgent monarchies of western Europe. The time was ripe for their destruction. When, in October 1307, Philip the Fair ordered the arrest of all the Tem- plars in France, and then laid hands on their assets, there was a feeble protest from the Pope. No one else lifted a finger. By the time that Philip had got round to burn- ing their leaders alive, even the Pope had been reduced to complaisant submission.
Most books about the Templars fall into one or other of two familiar categories. The first comprises sober, scholarly accounts, written by professional historians. These are necessarily episodic, for the Templars were not equally important at all times; and the sources, except at the very beginning and the end, are patchy. This can make them a trifle tedious to non- specialists. The second category is far from tedious and dominates the field. It consists of wild fantasies, scurrilous gossip and speculative reconstructions of unknowable facts, the sort of things that have always tended to be written about rich, powerful and secretive communities. Most works in this class are concerned with tales of secret treasures, grails, codes, tunnels and other mumbo-jumbo.
Piers Paul Read's account falls into nei- ther category. He is a novelist, not a pro- fessional historian, but he has written a reputable history of the order which covers the whole story from its foundation at the beginning of the 12th century to its spec- tacular destruction 200 years later. He makes no claim to originality and has based his work entirely on secondary sources, but he has skilfully digested the existing learn- ing on the subject. He is judicious. He con- sistently rejects fantasy, and ignores the unprovable. He manages to weave together a balanced and coherent narrative in spite of the long periods of Templar history when little or nothing of importance happened. And his book is a pleasure to read.
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