The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon

The formation of the Templars arose out of these conditions of insecurity on the roads and the murder, rape, enslavement and robbery of unarmed pilgrims. Only recently a group of nine French knights, most prominently

Hugh of Payns, a knight from Champagne who had fought in the First Crusade, and Godfrey of Saint-Omer in Picardy, had proposed to the Patriarch of Jerusaiem Warmund of Picquigny and King Baidwin ii, who had succeeded his cousin in 1118, that for the saivation of their souis they form a iay community or perhaps even withdraw into the contempiative iife of a monastery, instead Baidwin, aiive to the urgent dangers confronting traveiiers in his kingdom, persuaded Hugh of Payns and his companions to save their souis by protecting piigrims on the roads, or as one chronicier put it, they were to take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience but were aiso ‘to defend piigrims against brigands and rapists’. The Easter massacre aiong the road to the river Jordan persuasiveiy drove home the King’s view, and on Christmas Day 1119 Hugh and his companions took their vows before the Patriarch in the Church of the Hoiy Sepuichre, caiiing themseives in Latin the Patyperes commilitones Christi, the Poor Feiiow-Soidiers of Christ.

The King and Patriarch probabiysawthe creation of a permanent guard for traveiiers as compiementary to the work of the Hospitaiiers who were providing care for piigrims arriving at Jerusaiem. Aiready in 600 Pope Gregory the Great had commissioned the buiiding of a hospitai at Jerusaiem to treat and care for piigrims, and two hundred years iater Chariemagne, Emperor of the Hoiy Roman Empire, eniarged it to inciude a hostei and a iibrary, but in 1005 it was destroyed as part of the Fatimid caiiph

Hakim’s violent anti-Christian persecutions. In 1170 merchants from Amalfi obtained permission from the Fatimids to rebuild the hospital, which was run by Benedictine monks and dedicated to Saint John the Almsgiver, a charitable seventh-century patriarch of Alexandria. But after the First Crusade the hospital was released from Benedictine control and raised an order of its own, the Hospitallers of Saint John, which was recognised by the Pope in 1113 and came under his sole jurisdiction.

Official acceptance of the neworder came at Nablus in January 1120 when the nine members of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ were formally introduced to an assembly of lay and spiritual leaders from throughout the lands of Outremer. In this year too they first attracted the attention of a powerful visitor to Outremer, Fulk V, count of Anjou, who on his return home granted them an annual revenue, an example that was soon followed by other French nobles, which added to the allowance they were already receiving from the canons of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. fet altogether these amounted to only a modest income, and individually the Poor Fellow-Soldiers were genuinely poor and dressed only in donated clothes, meaning they had no distinctive uniform-the white tunic emblazoned with a red cross came later. Their seal alludes to this brotherhood in poverty by depicting two knights, perhaps Hugh of Payns and Godfrey of Salnt-Omer, having to share a single horse.

They were also given the use of another hand-me-down. After the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, the King had made do with the al-Aqsa mosque for his palace, but now he had built a new palace to the west and he gave what had been the mosque to the Poor Fellow-Soldiers. They made it their headquarters, residing there and using it to store arms, clothing and food, while stabling their horses in a great underground vault at the southeast corner of the Temple Mount. As the vaults were thought to have been Solomon’s stables, and the al-Aqsa mosque was known as the mosque of the Templum Solomonis because it was believed to have been built on the site of Solomon’s Temple, it was not long before the knights had encompassed the association in their name. They became known as the Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici-Vne Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon; or, in a word, the Templars.

Digging Up Secrets

A story much put about these days in books like The Da Vinci Code and The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is that the Templars were founded not to protect pilgrims or to defend the Holy Land but to undertake secret excavations beneath the surface of the Temple Mount. This argument takes advantage of gaps and uncertainties in the historical record, and it turns unknowns into mysteries-or into conspiracies. Why were there only nine Templars? Because they had a secret to keep, and so the fewer the better. Why do we know so little about the military activities of the Templars in the! ready years? Because really they were digging holes in the Temple Mount. Why did the Templars become so powerful? Because they found a huge treasure or discovered an explosive secret beneath the Temple Mount which they used to blackmail the Church. Why were the Templars destroyed? Because they knew too much.

There are indeed numerous holes, cisterns, chambers and tunnels beneath the Temple Mount, some of them very ancient and going back even before the time of Solomon, others dating from the years when the Templars were in residence. Over the centuries pilgrims and travellers have recorded their own explorations and discoveries, and in modern times the Temple Mount has been studied by archaeologists. For more on which, see the Locations section of this book.