Monastic orders were scrupulous in preserving documents, both their own and those left with them for safekeeping such as deeds and wills, and the Templars were no different. Indeed their entire banking system with its record keeping, credit notes and statements was an elaboration of the archival activities of monasteries. The Templars were also landlords, traders and shipowners, activities that required documents to be filed and maintained over long periods of time. And then there was the Templars’ military, religious and diplomatic activity, all of it requiring continuous correspondence and archiving. Yet today the only surviving documents which point to the existence of the Templar archives are copied transcripts from the originals which were held in Outremer and are to do with the granting of property in the East.
The Templars kept their archive at their headquarters on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem-that is in the al-Aqsa mosque, which the Crusaders assumed stood on the site of Solomon’s Temple. At the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187 the archives would have been removed to Acre where most likely they would have been held in the tower by the sea where the Templars stored their treasure; or perhaps they used their castle of Athlit, south of Haifa, which was a secure alternative. The archives were at least as valuable as any portable wealth that the Templars possessed, for they contained the evidence for the Templars’ mortgages, loans, possessions and even their right to exist which was granted In the form of Papal charters. As Acre fell In 1291 the Hospitallers managed to get their archives out to Provence, and so there Is no reason why the Templars should not also have succeeded, probably taking them to Cyprus, which became the new Templar headquarters.
James of Molay had no reason to bring the Templar archives with him to the West just before his arrest; Indeed the Grand Master was looking forward to the day when a new crusade would return the Templars, with their archives, to the Holy Land. Nor have searches of the French royal archives and the Papal archives turned up a hint of the Templar archives. The most likely explanation Is that they remained on Cyprus where they were taken over by the Hospitallers along with the Templars’ possessions on the Island In 1312. The Hospitallers moved their headquarters to Malta In 1530, but the Templar archives and those archives of the Hospitallers that specifically related to Cyprus were not taken with them, and both archives were probably destroyed when the Ottomans overran the Island In 1571. The Hospitaller’s documents relating to Cyprus have never been found either.
That explains why almost everything we know about the Templars, apart from their Rule Itself, comes from sources other than themselves-from bodies like the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, the Italian trading communities, the
Hospitallers, and the various chroniclers and pilgrims in the Holy Land, from the Papal archives and the prosecution documents of Philip IV’s lawyers.
The loss of the Templar archives is a blow for serious historians of the order, but it has been a boon for those who prefer their speculations to be uninhibited by facts. For more on which, read on.
World History
