Chapter 16
In This Chapter
● Sightseeing in Templar territory
● Discovering the Order’s castles, churches, and villages
The Templars were the “Bob the Builders” of the crusading period. If your job was to protect pilgrims, hold the Holy Land, and conceal cash, you needed someplace to do it from. Or in the case of the wide reach of the Templars, you needed a couple of hundred places to do it from.
A few surviving Templar sites are in the on-again/off-again war zones of the Middle East, and depending on the day of the week and the prevailing winds of international politics, places like Syria aren’t really tourist-friendly for Westerners. But in spite of the daily reports of suicide bombings, air strikes, and ongoing battles between Palestinians and Israelis, pilgrims still flock to the holiest sites of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, literally by the millions.
It adds an extra touch of swashbuckling adventure to risk your life for a great photo of you standing in front of a 12th-century Crusader castle in the middle of a war zone, but there are plenty of places outside the Middle East where Templar castles still stand. You can walk the battlements and imagine life in a very different time and place, without risking being the subject of potential hostage negotiations. When the Templars were dissolved, their castles across Europe didn’t just fall down; in many cases, the Knights Hospitaller got handed the deed and the keys to the drawbridge, made improvements, and kept the old commanderies functioning for several hundred more years.
Despite the devastations of eight centuries of war, neglect, adaptive reuse, natural disasters, and urban development, some dazzling Templar buildings have survived, either intact or relatively so. Here are ten of the best.
Where It All Began: Temple Mount (Jerusalem, Israel)
The Temple Mount in Jerusalem (shown in Figure 16-1) is where the order was born. King Baldwin II turned over much of the Temple Mount to the Poor Knights of Christ in 1119, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which became their headquarters, along with the subterranean area that came to be known as Solomon’s Stables.
Figure 16-1: The Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
The Crusaders who came to Jerusalem and found the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, both standing on the Temple Mount, assumed that they were seeing the King Solomon’s Palace and the Solomon’s Temple described in the Bible, and not more-recent buildings constructed by the Muslims. Whether the Templars believed this or not, no one can say.
The place called Solomon’s Stables is actually below the upper level of the mount, and is a large area made up of arched passageways that acted as sort of a supporting sub-basement for the area of the temple above, probably constructed when King Herod rebuilt the temple. The mount itself is a wild combination of natural rock, monumental stonework, and clever engineering, and the stables were part of an extensive attempt to make the top of the plateau level. During the period of the Crusades, they were actually used as stables, with room, it was said, for 2,000 horses or 1,500 camels. (Humps take up more space.)
Today there is little visible evidence of the Templars’ presence on the mount — and some Muslims today deny that the Temple of Solomon was ever on the mount to begin with. This the official position of Adnan Husseini, director of the Islamic waqf, the trust that oversees the Dome of the Rock. It is also the official position of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), stated by Yasser Arafat, that, “historically, the Temple was not in Palestine at all.” Such is the battle between politics and archeology. If the Muslims admit that the temple existed before the arrival of Islam, then it would mean that Jews could claim first dibs on the mount, yank down the mosques, rebuild the temple, and trigger Armageddon, as prophesied in Revelation 16. And, politically, whoever controls the top of the mount has psychological and spiritual control over Jerusalem, regardless of what the United Nations may say. It’s sort of an ecclesiastical game of King of the Hill, and they all take it very seriously.
The Islamic waqf absolutely forbids any messing about in the foundation of the site, while engaging in a feverish building program themselves up top. In 1996, Israeli archeologists opened a subterranean tunnel’s entrance, which erupted into riots by enraged Muslims. Eighty-five Palestinians and 16 Israelis were killed, and more than 1,200 Palestinians and 87 Israelis were wounded. The Palestinian press frequently reports that the Israelis are attempting to weaken the structure of the mount, in order to cause the collapse of the mosques and the Dome of the Rock and, therefore, start a new war.
As for Solomon’s Stables, in 1996 they were converted into a mosque capable of holding 7,000 people. Ham-fisted excavation was carried out hastily by the waqf, and many archeological critics say that much archeological material was destroyed by the Arabs, further obscuring evidence of the original temple. The Arab authorities say this isn’t the case.
Temple Church (London, England)
When walking through the old capitols of Europe, you come across the word Temple in the names of streets and neighborhoods, even subway stations. In almost every case, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’ve come across property held at one time by the Knights Templar. Not every Templar commandery or preceptory was enormous, but two of the biggest chunks of the Order’s real estate were in Paris and in London.
Hidden behind the walls of the Inns of Court in London, just off Fleet Street at Chancery Lane, stands the Temple Church, with its distinctive circular design and stone effigies of buried Templar knights. The oldest portion of the church is the round end at the west, said to be patterned after the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the place of Christ’s burial, in Jerusalem.
The Templars’ original home in London had been up the hill at the north end of Chancery Lane near High Holborn Street, but they quickly outgrew it. Templar holdings in London covered a massive area, from the Thames River north to High Holborn Street. The Temple Bar, where Fleet Street turns into the Strand, was the western boundary of the City of London (literally marked by a gate or bar) and the beginning of the Templar property.
The church was completed and consecrated in 1185, and such was the prestige of the Templars that Heraclius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, came all the way to London for the ceremony.
Well, not exactly. Heraclius had a lousy reputation as being ignorant, degenerate, and something of a crook, and he was really in town looking to give his blessing to anyone who would be willing to come back and be king of Jerusalem (and his willing stooge). As protection, Heraclius brought with him the Grand Masters of both the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller. While in London, he offered the job to King Henry II, who wasn’t impressed. Phillip II Augustus of France had been offered the job before him and had turned it down, and Henry didn’t much like being second on anyone’s list, but especially any list that started with the king of France — not a big surprise given that Henry owned more of France than Philip did. He, too, refused the job.
Nevertheless, the consecration of the new headquarters of the Knights Templar in England was a momentous event. The interior of the church looked different than it does today. Stretching east of the round portion was a rectangular chancel, much like what is there today, but considerably shorter. The stone walls and carvings seen these days were lavishly painted in bright colors.
The church has been altered and rebuilt many times since the Templars were dissolved and the property handed over to their rivals, the Knights Hospitallers. Eventually, the Templar holdings were rented out to two different colleges of lawyers, and the area is known today as the Inns of Court. The church is jointly used and maintained by the colleges, known as the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple. When the area became home to the legal profession and the Inns of Court, the term passing the bar literally meant crossing the old city boundary at the Temple Bar into the judicial section of town.
World War II was not kind to the church. Nazi bombings of London destroyed the roof and gutted the interior. The architect Christopher Wren had constructed a detailed choir, pulpit, and other pieces after the Great Fire of London in 1666, but these had been removed during a remodeling in the 1840s. Wren’s old pieces had been displayed in a museum for a full century, and were reinstalled in the 1950s to replace what the German bombing had destroyed.
The Temple Church is a key player in The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, and scenes from the 2006 film were shot on location.
The marble effigies of knights in the floor are the clearest reminder of the Knights Templar themselves. The Temple Church remains a working church, and concerts are often performed there.
The church can be a devil of a place to find, and its hours are very haphazard; it’s usually open Wednesdays through Sundays. Even worse, the Temple and Chancery Lane Tube (London Underground, or subway) stations are generally closed on Sundays, so plan your visit carefully, and still expect the occasional
disappointment. Consult the church’s Web site (www.templechurch.com) for the latest schedule — it can change at the drop of a hat.
After you visit the church, walk a few blocks up Chancery Lane and have lunch at the Knights Templar Pub, built in a former bank.
Royston Cave (Hertfordshire, England)
We talk about the many unique underground tunnels that crisscross under Hertfordshire in Chapter 17, but the Royston Cave in particular has been well explored and contains no gold or silver. It does, however, contain another kind of enigmatic treasure of the Templars.
In 1742, a mysterious underground shaft was discovered underneath a large, flat stone in the marketplace in Hertfordshire. Excited discoverers did what they usually do any time this sort of thing gets found — they sent a kid down to see what was there. What he found was a man-made cave, a few human bones, and walls covered with religious drawings.
Researchers believe the circular design, combined with certain construction techniques and the nature of the drawings, are the work of Knights Templar in the 13th century. The carvings are extensive and detailed, and include the signature symbol of two knights sharing a horse, the seal of the Templars. It may have been a chapel used in secret after the suppression of the Order, or even a hiding place. No one knows.
For more information on the Royston Cave, check out its Web site at www.roystoncave.co.uk.
Rosslyn Chapel (Roslin, Scotland)
We discuss Rosslyn Chapel in many places throughout this book (see especially Chapters 8 and 12), so it seems almost superfluous to reiterate it here. The legends wrapped up with this place are so numerous that it’s hard to separate sense from silliness, but we try to keep the qualifying statements to a minimum.
Its full and proper name is the Collegiate Chapel of St. Mary, and it’s located just south of Edinburgh in the little village of Roslin. The chapel was built by William Sinclair (or St. Clair, depending on who’s doing the spelling), Third Earl of Orkney, Baron of Roslin, and First Earl of Caithness. Started in 1446, it took 40 years to complete. Some have suggested that the small chapel was intended to be part of a larger cathedral to be built later, while others claim it was intentionally small, for use as a family chapel, or even a Gothic representation of the Inner Chamber of King Solomon’s Temple.
Although an inscription in the church identifies William Sinclair as a Knight Templar, even that has never been proved conclusively — the inscription is a fairly recent addition. His descendant, also named William, became the first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, and it’s entirely possible that the inscription was added to strengthen the theoretical story of a Templar origin of Freemasonry (see Chapter 8).
The principal points of fascination within the chapel for most people are the many carvings that detail every nook and cranny: pre-Christian, pagan, leaf-covered, Green Men faces; knights on horseback; men in postures that resemble Freemasonic rituals; American plant life carved before Columbus ever got there — the list goes on. Many of these descriptions seem far-fetched when you see the actual carvings in person, but go and judge for yourself.
Present-day visitors to the chapel may be startled to discover a supremely ugly temporary roof erected over the building. Previous attempts to preserve the delicate carvings and stone walls with sealant resulted in more harm than good, sealing water within the stone, and causing hairline cracks to develop. The goal is to dry out the entire building — difficult in Scotland’s soggy natural state.
Since the publication of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, the little chapel that is the location of the book’s finale has been choked with visitors. Code fans are a little disappointed to discover that the chapel does not have a six-pointed Star of David (or Seal of Solomon) in the floor, that the Knights Templar didn’t build the place, and that Rosslyn is not the Scottish form of Rose Line. (Ross means “cliff,” and lyn means “running water” in the language of the Scots.)
Kilmartin Church (Argyll, Scotland)
In their book The Temple and the Lodge (1989), Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh traveled to the Scottish village of Kilmartin and closely examined some unusual headstones in the churchyard there. In amidst the many family gravestones are 80 curious ones, unmarked and anonymous, except for the carving of a sword. The authors believe that these graves are solid evidence that the Knights Templar really did escape from France and come to Scotland to seek safe haven from arrest, and that the namelessness of the slabs reveals their origin. Templars fleeing arrest could not use their real names and might very well have been buried in this manner.
Some people scoff at this theory. They claim that Templar headstones were never designed in such a way. Of course, this presupposes that Templars in Scotland escaping the dark days of excommunication and arrest would want to be identified in their graves. Go, visit, and decide for yourself.
Chinon Castle (Chinon, France)
Chinon Castle (shown in Figure 16-2) in France’s Vienne River Valley is an important place at several stages in French history. A fortified pile of some sort has existed on this plateau overlooking the river ever since the Romans wandered through (and back when “all Gaul was divided into three parts”). In the fourth century, it was a monastery, but it was expanded into an extensively fortified castle. Over the centuries, it has been held by both English and French kings, as those who get their history from movies like The Lion In Winter will quickly attest. England’s King Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their son King Richard the Lionheart were buried nearby. And followers of the Joan of Arc story know it as the place where the young Joan recognized the dauphin as the heir to the throne, Charles VII, and implored him to declare himself King of France and pitch the English out on their collective arses. The English burned her at the stake for her trouble.
Figure 16-2: Chinon Castle overlooking the Vienne River.
What makes Chinon important to Templar mavens is that its dungeon, known as the Coudray Tower (or keep), was where King Phillip IV tossed many members of the order — including Grand Master Jacques de Molay — when they were arrested in 1307. The cylindrical structure still stands today, and graffiti attributed to the knights can barely be made out among the modern defacement of centuries of tourists.
In 1308, Pope Clement V ordered a team to travel to Chinon and interrogate the Templars. The results of their questioning and subsequent absolution of their confessed sins were revealed in a document referred to as the Chinon Parchment, which remained hidden from researchers until the 1700s. Templars were kept at Chinon for seven years, as King Phillip slowly meted out torture and death sentences, and Clement did nothing to stop him. (We discuss the Chinon Parchment in more detail in Chapter 6.)
The castle later became a state prison for more than 200 years. Today it is a fascinating complex to explore, in case you needed an excuse to go visit the Loire region of France — apart from beautiful scenery, magnificent chateaux, great food, and fine wine.
Templar Villages (Aveyron, France)
The Templars didn’t just build castles and churches. A Templar preceptory or commandery was often a self-contained village, with homes, farms, and other services for the many people who lived and worked there. These areas have not survived undisturbed over the last 800 years, but there are still places to catch a glimpse of what life in a medieval European Templar community was like.
Probably the best can be found in the Aveyron region in south-central France — the villages of La Couvertoirade and Sainte-Eulalie-de-Cernon. The area was part of the busy pilgrimage trail that led from Paris to the Mediterranean, and on to the Holy Land, so it made sense for the Templars to establish settlements there. The farmland was perfect for raising crops and grazing horses and sheep — all essential goods needed to support the long journey to Jerusalem. The villages developed in the classic style of the period — a castle was built for defense, and the supporting community grew up around it.
Like most of the Templar property in France, the villages were turned over to the Knights Hospitaller when the Templars were dissolved. The new landlords added to them, but the general feel and flavor remain much as they were when the Templars built them.
Nearby, the village of La Cavalerie was also a Templar town, although little remains of the Templars’ influence apart from the ruins of a Templar church. Its fortifications largely came from the Hospitallers. The other major ruins of the period are in Viala du Pas de Joux, where a tall tower built by the Hospitallers still stands. And in the village of Sainte-Eulalie-de-Cernon, on every other Sunday in July, a procession passes through the tenth-century village carrying relics from the Crusades, including one of the sacred thorns from Christ’s crucifixion crown.
The Aveyron region is famous for Roquefort cheese, in case your traveling companion has no interest in Templar stuff. And try not to get completely white-knuckle terrified while driving over the world’s highest bridge, the Millau Viaduct, on your way there.
For more information on the Templar villages in the Aveyron region, check out www.aveyron.com/english/travelinfrance.html.
Tomar Castle (Tomar, Portugal)
The mother of all Templar sites in Europe is Tomar Castle in central Portugal, about 85 miles northeast of Lisbon. The Templars came to the aid of the Spanish and Portuguese Christians in an effort to push the Moors off the Iberian Peninsula. Muslims made other attempts to reoccupy the area, but the Templars’ defense succeeded.
Muslims continued to occupy the southern portion of Spain and Portugal from 711 until 1492, but the defensive line drawn in the sand by the Templars prevented the Moors from mounting any more serious incursions north. The infamous Spanish Inquisition was actually started to root out both Muslims and Jews who may have falsely converted to Christianity in order to stay in the country. The eight centuries of battling the Moors for control of the Iberian Peninsula is known as the Reconquista.
As a reward for their victories against the Moors, the Templars were given a large fiefdom surrounding the area of Tomar in 1159, which became the Portuguese headquarters of the Order, as well as the first Templar province established outside of Jerusalem. Tomar was in a largely unpopulated part of the frontier, and the Templars had their hands full while they both defended against the Moors and encouraged new Christian settlers to move in. Continuous victories extended the Templars’ holdings in Portugal.
The castle at Tomar, known as the Convento de Cristo (Convent of the Order of Christ), was built by Gualdim Pais, the provincial Grand Master of the Templars, in about 1160. Using designs learned the hard way under battle conditions, it features round turrets at the corners — trickier to build, but simpler to defend than square ones. Central to the commandery is the large octagonal church, or charola (see Figure 16-3). Like the Templar church in London, its design is said to have been inspired by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but more likely, the Dome of the Rock, in Jerusalem. The church was used in Templar initiations of new members, who were brought in on horseback. (A similarly magnificent example of this design can be found in Veracruz, Spain.)
The nearby Church of Santa Maria do Olival was the first Templar church in Tomar and became the burial place of more than 20 knights of the order. In and around this church, as well as on several Templar gravestones, can be found the image of the five-pointed star, or pentagram. Though associations between the pentagram and witchcraft and Satanic worship are common today, such a connection is largely a modern invention, in spite of hysterical claims otherwise. The Templars may very well have brought the symbol to Tomar from Jerusalem, where early Christians attributed the symbol to the five wounds of Christ’s crucifixion.
Figure 16-3: The octagonal church at Tomar, Portugal.
Tomar is the largest European Templar settlement still standing today. It is also unique because of Portugal’s treatment of the order after their suppression in 1312. Unlike many other European nations, Portugal did not arrest the knights. Instead, the new Order of the Knights of Christ was created in Portugal, with the express encouragement of King Dinis, and the Templars simply changed their name (see Chapter 7). Tomar never fell into the hands of the Hospitallers, so it has retained its original Templar structure and character.
Domus Templi — The Spanish Route of the Templars (Aragon, Spain)
In the Aragon region of Spain, about 200 miles south of the border with France, where the Iber River flows into the Mediterranean Sea, the Templars assembled a string of Commanderies, known as the Domus Templi (Dominion of the Templars). The stream of Spanish pilgrims traveled the path down the Iber toward the sea for passage across the Mediterranean. The seaport at Peniscola became a strategic point from which the Templar fleet could ferry knights, pilgrims, and supplies.
For Templar fans, the Spanish Domus Templi is a gold mine of medieval castles, towers, houses, churches, and more. Commanderies of the order were clustered in Gardeny (known in Templar days as Lleida), Monzon, Miravet, Tortosa, and Peniscola; all are worth visiting today. The tenth-century castle at Tortosa is especially impressive, while Peniscola’s castle on a peninsula overlooking the ocean is the best preserved (see Figure 16-4). It was the location used in the film El Cid (1960) starring beefy Charlton Heston.
Figure 16-4: Peniscola Castle.
For more information on the Domus Templi, check out www.domustempli.com.
Where It Ended: Isle de la Cite (Paris, France)
Paris is a place where only ghosts of the Templars can be found. The vast portion of the city — nearly one-third of it — once belonged to the order, no doubt a contributing factor to King Philip IV’s jealousy of them. The mighty Templar Preceptory with its tall, fortified citadel, is long gone. It survived as a dungeon until after the French Revolution, when Napoleon had it destroyed. (The royal family had been imprisoned there during the Revolution before meeting Madame Guillotine, and Bonaparte didn’t want it to become a shrine for royalists.) Today, there is a quiet park on the site, and the Temple Metro station is on nearby Rue du Temple.
The order’s last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, died on a tiny isolated island adjacent to the Isle de la Cite, called the Ile-des-Juifs (Island of the Jews) in the middle of the Seine River west of where the magnificent Notre Dame Cathedral stands. The island itself, now part of the Isle-de-la-Cite, is shaped almost like the prow of a ship, and there is a park there now, the Square du Vert Galant. It was there that de Molay and his friend Geoffroy de Charnay were tied to a stake on March 18, 1314. (The plaques on the island say the 19th, but historians agree that it was the 18th.) The old Grand Master, weary after seven long years of imprisonment, asked to be faced toward the cathedral and his hands tied such that he could fold them in prayer. As the fire was lit, he called out for both King Philip and Pope Clement V to join him before God’s tribunal within the year. The pope obliged and died a month later, followed by King Philip on November 29th.
There is a legend that, when the fires died and the ashes settled, the bones of the Grand Master were taken away and kept. Believers in the tale of the Larmenius Charter (see Chapter 9), a secret document that passed control of the order onward to the present day, say that when the document was rediscovered in the 1700s, the charred bones of Jacques de Molay were still contained in the box with it, wrapped in white cloth.