TEMPLARS. - The Order of the Temple owes its origin to Hugh of Payns, who persuaded a group of knights to go to Jerusalem to make safe the passage of pilgrims from Jaffa to the Holy City. The new arrivals settled ca. 1119, in a part of the royal palace called Templum Salomonis, whence their name of T. Subsequently, all the numerous houses they erected, both in the Holy Land and in the West, were designated by the name of "Temples." The Council of Troyes (Jan. 1128) regularized their juridical situation, and St. Bernard drew up for their use a severe rule (cf. H. de Curzon, La règle du Temple, Paris 1886; G. Schnitzer, Die ursprüngliche Tempelerregel, Freiburg im Br. 1903).
The members of the Order were divided into three different classes: the knights, recruited from the nobility; the sergeants, or squires, drawn from the bourgeois classes; the chaplains, charged with the service of worship. The knights wore a white mantle, and the sergeants a black or reddish mantle. Eugenius III added a red cross to it. Besides the three religious vows, the T. took an oath to undertake the defense of the Holy Places. Recruited, as they were, from among the knights, they had their good qualities and their defects. Of exemplary courage, disciplined with respect to their leaders, they fought the infidels and performed feats of arms that filled their contemporaries with admiration. The grand master William of Beaujeu fell heroically in the disaster of St. John of Acre (1291). However, these valiant warriors sinned by mad audacity, because too often they let themselves be massacred by the enemy, hurling themselves against it before waiting for the arrival of the bulk of the Christian troops. Proud of their exploits, they yielded to haughtiness and pride and, following a policy entirely their own, pursued interests contrary to those of the kings of Jerusalem; they imprudently broke useful truces, and, instead of concluding a advantageous alliance with the Mongols, they drove them to war. They also committed the imprudence of entering into conflict with the Hospitallers and of taking sides with the Venetians against the Genoese. All in all, they contributed, by their manner of acting, to the collapse of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.
The T. also had another misfortune; they earned, it is true, the reputation of skillful financiers in administering the considerable properties they possessed in Christendom, whose revenues provided them the means indispensable for maintaining their troops, but they also passed for egoists, indeed for misers. Economical with their treasures, they refused, on May 6, 1250, to advance to St. Louis the money necessary for the ransom of the prisoners who had fallen into the hands of the infidels in the disaster of Damietta; Joinville recounts that the King, seizing an axe, threatened to break open their chests; which reduced them to capitulating (cf. ed. of N. de Wall, Paris 1838, §§ 380-85).
Driven out of Syria and failing to establish themselves on the Island of Cyprus, the T. settled in the West and rendered important services to merchants and kings, transforming themselves into bankers who assured, without risks, the transfer of the sums deposited with them, or amounistered the royal treasury judiciously (cf. Borelli de Serres, Recherches sur divers services publics du XIIIe au XVIIe siècle, III, Paris 1909, pp. 1-45). Indeed, since they no longer waged war, the T. had lost their reason for being; therefore a union with the Hospitallers would have been opportune; but it did not succeed (cf. E. Baluze, Vitae Paparum Avenionensium, ed. G. Mollat, III, Paris 1921, pp. 450-58).
On Friday, Oct. 13, 1307, all the T. of the Kingdom of France were suddenly arrested and imprisoned (cf. E. Baluze, op. cit., I, Paris 1916, p. 8). Philip the Fair's jurists justified that arrest on the pretext of infamous crimes. After much tergiversation, Clement V ordered (July 1308) that a double inquiry be made: one against the persons of the T. under the care of the Ordinary, the other against the Order itself by means of pontifical commissioners. The fate of the individuals would then be determined by the provincial Councils; that of the Order by a general Council to be held at Vienne in the Dauphiné.
The double inquiry produced contradictory results; in England, Scotland, Ireland, Aragon and Castile, and Germany, the T. were recognized as innocent of the crimes imputed to them; whereas in France and in the countries subject to its influence, such as Provence, the Kingdom of Naples and even in the States of the Church, they were proclaimed guilty. Their capital execution, which took place on the Island of Cyprus, was a political assassination. On Apr. 3, 1312, in a conciliar session, Clement V pronounced the suppression of the Order, but using formal terms that deserve to be weighed, that is, by way of a measure and not of a condemnation. On May 3 the goods of the Order were assigned to the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, except in Aragon, Castile, Portugal and Majorca, where they were devolved to the national Orders, which were conducting the crusade against the Saracens. The fate of the great dignitaries of the Order was reserved to the Holy See. Brought into the presence of three cardinals, in Paris, the grand master James of Molay protested his innocence. Philip the Fair did not permit that proofs be brought forward; indeed by his order that unfortunate man was burned at the stake (March 18, 1314).
The question of knowing whether the T. were guilty or innocent arises only with respect to France; and at present it is still controversial. Some historians maintain the good faith and religious zeal of Philip the Fair; others, on the other hand, think that he committed an abuse of power and a denial of justice. It seems that the truth lies on the side of the latter. If the T. made confessions, this happened only under the pressure of fear of capital punishment. The orders given by the King of France to his officials were peremptory: "he promised them pardon if they confessed the truth, returning to the faith of Holy Church, otherwise they would be condemned to death" (cf. G. Lizerand, Le dossier de l'affaire des Templiers, Paris 1923, p. 27). On the other hand it is known with certainty that the prisoners underwent frightful tortures. The friar Ponsard de Gisi "confessed that he had been placed in a pit, his hands bound behind his back so tightly, that the blood came out even from his nails... protesting that, if he were still subjected to torture, he would deny everything he had said and say everything they wanted" (G. Lizerand, ibid., pp. 157-59).
The application of torture explains the great quantity of confessions collected by the royal officials. As soon as, however, the T. appeared before the cardinals in charge, they retracted them. On the other hand there exists no material proof of their alleged crimes. The royal sergeants did not find a single copy of the alleged secret rule that proclaimed heresy and infamous customs, nor even any copy of the idols, to which their accusers claimed that the T. rendered an idolatrous cult. Without doubt Philip the Fair wanted the destruction of the T., because, always short of money, he coveted their riches. In any case, he exercised such pressure on Clement V, that the latter suppressed the Order without however condemning it.
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Guglielmo Mollat