Prologue
Celtic Song of Spring
I am the unopened bud, and I the blossom,
I am the lifeforce gathering to a crest,
I am the still companion of the silence,
I am the farflung seeker of the quest.
I am the daughter gathering in wisdom,
I am the son whose questions never cease,
I am the dawn light searching out glad justice,
I am the center where all souls find peace.
from Give Us This Day, the Story of Prayer
Rufus Goodwin
The Mameluks had driven the Crusading Franks from the Holy Land during the campaign of 1291. The decisive battle was for possession of the coastal city of Acre. When Acre fell the remaining cities and fortifications toppled like dominoes.
Europe blamed the military orders for the ignominious end of the Crusading era. A more accurate appraisal would implicate the emergence of nation-states. The Crusades required a common cause and a common leader for all of Europe, which in effect was the Pope -- a latter-day Roman emperor. The Cluniac popes held to this image of the Roman pontiff, but as each country began to develop an identity, as each king began to invest himself with the divine right to rule, and as the feudal system gave way to a more centralized national system, the Crusading ideal was fatally undermined.
What, then, were the military orders to do? What use were they? And, perhaps more importantly, what would happen to the vast economic empires they developed over the Crusading centuries?
The Knights of the Hospital solved these problems by securing their own base of operation on the Mediterranean island of Rhodes. From there they built a maritime fleet to protect Christian interests at sea. They also continued their humanitarian efforts with hospitals and medical services throughout Europe.
The Teutonic Knights also secured a base of operation in Prussia. From there they battled the northern pagans, which the Pope considered a Crusade. To help support themselves, they secured a monopoly on amber found along the Baltic Sea.
The Knights Templar, however, suffered a different fate. King Philip IV of France, called the Fair, for greed and authority, brought suit against the Order in 1307 with charges of heresy, sorcery, sodomy and over 120 other violations of law. The Templars were to be one of the casualties in the birth of the nation-states.
Complicating this drama of death and rebirth on European soil was the religious legacy of the Crusades themselves. The Jews, Christians and Moslems, all of whom agreed the God of Abraham was the One True God, were now faced with the atrocities of two centuries of internecine warfare. Spiritual cousins remained locked in a blood feud with no end in sight.
Both Sir William the Fearless and his cousin, Sir Robert the Risen, fought at the battle of Acre. William returned to Europe and assigned a task by Grand Master Gaudin. Robert was captured by the Mameluk Emir Bektash al-Fakhri. For seventeen years, Robert served the emir through all the wars with the Mongols, through the internal purges of the Mameluk ranks, through the suppression of local rebellions, through all the turmoil preceding the ‘golden age’ Sultan al-Nasir would eventually preside over.
Bektash died in 1306, just as al-Nasir was coming into full power. In Bektash’s will, he manumitted Robert and bequeathed him a substantial fortune in pearls. Robert packed up his household and headed for Tunis on the North African coast. Once there, he hired on as a mercenary in the continuing battle between the Hafsid sultan and caliph. At the end of the campaign, in the autumn of 1307, Robert was returning to Tunis by way of the Atlas Mountains where he intercepted a caravan. Three members of his household were traveling with the Tuareg caravan to Tunis.
All of them continued towards Tunis, chattering about their various adventures. Eventually, they entered the walled port city, sold the pearls, and booked passage for Europe. During this time, however, Robert found out the French king had arrested all the Templars in France -- on Friday, October 13, 1307. With the news, Robert felt a sense of betrayal he wasn’t sure he could overcome.
On the night before their departure to Europe, Robert sat and stared at the clear, star-riddled sky. The knight was struggling with the jolt of the Templars’ arrest, and his Chinese friend, Chiang, was attempting to help.
The Buddhist monk stood to make his final point, “The God-within is really a Goddess, Robert, as you know. When we go within, dive into the dark depths of our souls, we can find this Black Madonna. It is she who frees us from all of our fears -- fears we didn’t even know we had. And, if you’re like me, accepting her embrace will be the hardest thing you do in your spiritual journey.”
It was hard, Robert knew. It was hard because She loved him -- faults and all. He wanted to hide from Her, but to do so would prompt him to revenge against the Pope and the French king.
Chiang left about then, and Robert continued to sit in the sand outside the city walls. He sat until dawn paled the bright stars.
The only liege-lord Templars bowed to was the Pope. Templars answered to no other master. Since Philip the Fair ordered the arrests, and since Pope Clement V had not intervened to set them free, Robert decided this betrayal of his Order demanded he kill the Pope. Determined to do so, he set out for Poitiers where the Pope was living.
Captured along the way, he ended up in the Pope’s dungeon instead. His companions affected an escape, however, and during the escape Robert had the opportunity to kill the Pope. He found he could not do it. Chiang pointed out the reason Robert chose not to kill the Pope was an indication of a spiritual awakening.
Another prisoner, Oliver de Penne, the former Templar Preceptor of Lombardy, escaped with Robert. They set sail for London, because, de Penne told them, the defense of the Order was headquartered there. In London, Robert was reunited with his cousin, William, who was the leader of the Templar defense team.
As fierce and mysterious as the Knights Templar were in reputation, the reality of their organization in Europe could only be called ‘pastoral,’ even ‘rustic.’ A prefect, a chaplain and a clerk ran each of the 9,000 manors, organized into twelve preceptories in France. Field hands were hired to plant and harvest crops. Herders tended the flocks. Tenant farmers, hedging against famine years, bequeathed their land to the Templars in return for occupying and working their land until they died.
In the country, then, Templar presence was a welcome asset to the agrarian economy. On the other hand, Templars paid no local taxes. Therefore, while the common man may have benefited from Templar presence, local nobles and clergy did not.
In the cities, where the fortified Temples of the Order were located, the financial fruits of the agricultural labors were consolidated into financial enterprises. Not the least of which was a mortgage business that placed the Order in the enviable position as the major underwriter of property in Europe.
William the Fearless, the Templar knight charged with the secret mission of finding and securing a home for the Order should it ever need one, traveled through the vast southern holdings of the Templar empire. In early 1307, William marched with the disturbing news a threat to the Order was imminent. It was William’s current task to brief the twelve preceptors in France, not only about the threat, but also on the contingency plan the Order had developed to deal with a threat of this kind.
Eventually, they arrived at the Templar house in Toulouse. After William made his presentation to the Preceptor and rested up, he and his men headed back toward Paris. In May 1307, Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay arrived in Paris as well. He had been called home to confer with Pope Clement V about the next crusade. However, on October 13, 1307, King Philip the Fair secretly ordered the arrest of all the Templars in France. Then they were tortured to extract confessions of heresy, devil-worship, and a host of other charges.
Between May and October, however, the Templar escape plan had been in effect. The treasuries were relocated; all movable wealth was stripped from the houses and sent out of France; and the arrests netted few knights or preceptors. Most of those arrested were agricultural workers. However, both Jacques de Molay and Hugh de Pairaud were captured. But this too was part of the plan -- to sacrifice some of their more visible leaders.
William’s instructions were to headquarter himself in London and orchestrate both the continuing withdrawal of Templars to safe locations, and to develop a legal defense for those brothers stuck in French prisons.
The Templars’ trial was soon to begin. Yet it was a trial not so much to find guilt for crimes committed; it was, rather, an attempt to condemn the future. The Templars had developed an international banking system, an extensive form of credit, and underwrote a capitalist economic enterprise advanced for its day. The Templar organization followed a strict military hierarchy, but the leaders achieved their rank not by right of heredity, but through election and merit. And finally, the Templars were monks in the Cistercian line. They were committed to battle against the enemies of Christendom, but they were equally committed to the inner battles against fear, hatred, bigotry and ignorance. In short, Philip the Fair recognized them as a threat to his vision of the future, a threat to the emerging worldview of the divine right of kings, and a threat to the nationalistic identity arising in the common man.
Since Philip was fiercely devout in a simplistic way, he could only see the destabilizing threat of the Templars. In other words, since they modeled an alternative to what Philip represented, they must be heretics and Devil-worshipers, and they must be annihilated. Along the way, Philip hoped to reap the economic rewards for his guardianship of Christianity.
In the trial of the Templars, 1308 was a year wherein the tortured Templars, who confessed to the charges brought against them, renounced those confessions. The French King, Philip the Fair, responded with a series of carefully staged presentations to convince university professors, the Third Estate, and Pope Clement V of Templar guilt. In the King’s presentation, he offered the testimony of seventy-two Templars, paraded from venue to venue, who announced their heresy, sorcery and so on. They also claimed responsibility, on behalf of the Order, for the ignominious loss of the Holy Land. These men were known to the Order of Knights Templar as mostly apostate brothers whose credibility was nil. Notwithstanding, the Pope, in August, agreed with Philip’s motives for having the Templars arrested. The King arrested the Templars “not from avarice,” the Pope announced in the Papal Bull, Faciens misericordiam, but had acted “with the fervor of the orthodox faith, following the clear footsteps of his ancestors.”
At the crossroads of this battle were William and Robert. The two knights managed not only the legal defense of the Order, but also secured a secret retreat for the Order in the Swiss Alps. And, perhaps, both these endeavors were easier for them than the spiritual crises they were thrown into. Betrayed by their king, abandoned by the Pope, and humiliated before the people they served for almost 200 years, they felt rejected by very God Himself. They entered into the trial of their Order as a metaphor for entering the dark night of their own souls.
