Sean Martin - The Knights Templar

Gilbert Erail was the only Grand Master to be excommunicated (later rescinded by Pope Innocent III).

In the nineteenth century, a Masonic document surfaced claiming to list all the Grand Masters of the now-underground Templar movement, starting with Jean-Marc Larmenius, who is alleged to have taken over from Jacques de Molay in 1314. It is generally regarded as extremely spurious, and is not quoted here.

Although by June 1308 127 charges had been made against the Templars, the initial charges of the previous October fall into these nine basic categories:

1.That during the reception ceremony, new brothers were required to deny Christ, God, the Virgin or the Saints on the command of those receiving them.

2.That the brothers committed various sacrilegious acts – trampling, spitting, urinating – either on the Cross or on an image of Christ.

3.That the receptors practised obscene kisses on new entrants, on the mouth, navel, base of the spine or buttocks.

4.That Templar priests did not consecrate the host, and that the brothers did not believe in the sacraments.

5.That the brothers practised idol worship of a cat or a head, called Baphomet.

6.That the brothers practised institutional sodomy.

7.That the Grand Master, or other high-ranking officials, absolved fellow Templars of their sins.

8.That the Templars held their reception ceremonies and Chapter meetings in secret and at night.

9.That the Templars abused the duties of charity and hospitality and used illegal means to acquire property and increase their wealth.

For an exhaustive study of the trial, see Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge University Press, 1978). Edward Burman’s Supremely Abominable Crimes (Allison & Busby, 1994) focuses on the Paris hearings of 1310.

Barbara Frale’s book on the Chinon Parchment, which should throw considerable new light on the trial, is forthcoming.

Orthodox

Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge University Press, 1978); The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Malcolm Barber & Keith Bate (translators & editors), The Templars: Selected Sources (Manchester Medieval Sources Series, Manchester University Press, 2002)

Edward Burman, Supremely Abominable Crimes:The Trial of The Knights Templar (Allison & Busby, 1994); The Templars: Knights of God (Inner Traditions, 1990)

Helen Nicholson, Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights: Images of the Military Orders (Leicester University Press, 1993); Love, War and the Grail:Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights in Medieval Epic and Romance, 1150–1500 (Brill, 2000); The Knights Templar: A New History (Sutton, 2001)

Peter Partner, The Murdered Magicians (Oxford University Press, 1981)

Piers Paul Read, The Templars (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1999)

Desmond Seward, The Monks of War: The Military Religious Orders (Penguin Books, 1992)

Judi Upton-Ward (trans.), The Rule of the Templars:The French Text of the Rule of the Order of Knights Templar (Boydell Press, 1992)

Speculative

Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (Jonathan Cape, 1982)

Michael Baigent & Richard Leigh, The Temple and the Lodge (Jonathan Cape, 1989)

Françine Bernier, The Templars’ Legacy in Montreal, the New Jerusalem (Frontier Sciences Foundation, 2002)

Alan Butler & Stephen Dafoe, The Warriors and the Bankers (Templar Books, 1998); The Templar Continuum (Templar Books, 1999)

Erling Haagensen & Henry Lincoln, The Templars’ Secret Island (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2002)

Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Second Messiah (Random House, 1997)

Keith Laidler, The Head of God: The Lost Treasure of the Templars (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1998); The Divine Deception (Headline, 2000)

Jean Markale, The Templar Treasure at Gisors (Inner Traditions, 2003)

Lynne Picknett and Clive Prince, The Templar Revelation (Bantam, 1997)

Karen Ralls, The Templars and the Grail (Quest Books, 2003)

Andrew Sinclair, The Sword and the Grail (Century, 1993); The Secret Scroll (Sinclair Stevenson, 2001)

Related Interest

W.B. Bartlett, The Assassins: The Story of Islam’s Medieval Secret Sect (Sutton, 2001)

Nigel Bryant (trans.), The High Book of the Grail: A Translation of the Thirteenth-Century Romance of ‘Perlesvaus’ (D.S. Brewer, 1978)

Edward Burman, The Assassins (Crucible, 1987)

E. Christiansen, The Northern Crusades: The Baltic and the Catholic Frontier 1100–1525 (Macmillan, 1980)

Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum (Secker & Warburg, 1989)

Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival (Trans.AT Hatto Penguin Books, 1980)

Malcolm Godwin, The Holy Grail (Bloomsbury, 1994)

Joinville & Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusades (Penguin Books, 1963)

Helen Nicholson, The Knights Hospitaller (Boydell, 2001)

Mike Paine, The Crusades (Pocket Essentials, 2001)

Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Knights of St John in Jerusalem and Cyprus 1050–1310 (Macmillan, 1967) The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford University Press, 1995)

Sir Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades (3 Vols) (Penguin Books 1990–91)

Yuri Stoyanov, The Other God: Dualist Religion from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy (Yale University Press, 2000)

Idries Shah, The Sufis (Octagon, 1964)

William Urban, The Teutonic Knights: A Military History (Greenhill Books, 2003)

William Watson, The Last of the Templars (Harvill, 1978)

Internet

www.templarhistory.com