TEMPLARS, a famous military order, which, like the Hospitallers and the Teu tonic Knights, owed its origin to the Cru sades. In the year 1119 two comrades of Godfrey de Bouillon, Hugues de Payen and Geoffroi de Saint-Adhemar, bound themselves and seven other French knights to guard pilgrims to the holy places from the attacks of the Saracens, taking before the patriarch of Jerusalem solemn vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. King Baldwin II. gave them for quarters part of his palace, which was built on the site of the Temple of Solomon close to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Hence they took their name as Templars, and the houses of the order, as at Paris and London, that of the Temple. At the Council of Troyes (1128) Bernard of Clairvaux drew up its rule in 72 statutes, substantially the ground work of the statutes as finally revised in the middle of the 13th century. The order at first consisted of knights alone, but later its members were grouped as knights, all of noble birth, chaplains, and men-at-arms (fratres servientes), be sides mercenaries, retainers, and crafts men affiliated and enjoying its protection. The knights took the vows for life or for a certain period, and they alone wore the white linen mantle, with the eight-point ed red cross on the left shoulder (granted by Pope Eugenius III.), and white linen girdle; black or brown garments were worn by all others. The seal of the order showed the Temple, later two riders—a Templar and a helpless pilgrim—on one horse.
The discipline of the order was austere, excluding all needless luxury or display in food, dress, or armor, and all worldly pleasures were forbidden. At the head of the whole order stood the Grand-mas ter; under him Masters, Grand Priors, Commanders, or Preceptors ruled the various provinces of Jerusalem, Tripoli, Antioch and Cyprus, Portugal, Castile and Leon, Aragon, France and Auvergne, Aquitaine and Poitou, Provence, Eng land, Germany, Italy (Middle and Up per), Apulia and Sicily. Second in com mand to the Grand-master stood the Seneschal, his deputy; next the Marshal, whose business, moreover, was to pro vide arms, horses, and all the material of war. The Templars were by a papal bull in 1172 rendered independent of the authority of the bishops, owning alle giance to the Pope alone. Their houses
enjoyed right of sanctuary, and they often preserved the treasure of kings and nobles.
The Templars, at once knights and monks, realized the two dearest of medimval ideals, and men of the highest courage and purest devotion flocked into their ranks, bringing with them their wealth to fill their coffers. Already by 1260 the order is said to have numbered 20,000 knights, and these perhaps the finest fighting men the world has seen. Charges of pride, of immorality and im pieties, of secret heresies, and even of be traying Frederic II. to the infidel (1229) and St. Louis to the Sultan of Egypt (1250) were yet to be hurled against the order; never, from the beginning to the end of their two centuries of history, was a Templar charged with cowardice be fore the enemy. The most famous suc cessors of Hugues de Payen (died 1136) were Bernard de Tremelai, who fell at Ascalon in 1153; Eudes de Saint-Amand (died 1179), who won a glorious victory over Saladin at Ascalon (1177), only to fall next year into the Sultan's hands after a disastrous battle; Gerard de Riderfort, who suffered a terrible defeat near Nazareth in 1187, a second at Hit tin two months later, and died in battle under the walls of Acre in 1189; Robert de Sable, who aided Richard Cceur de Lion to gain a glorious victory in the plain of Arsouf (1191), and bought from him the island of Cyprus, which was soon transferred to Guy de Lusignan, whereupon Acre became the seat of the order, the famous stronghold of Pilgrim's Castle being built, whose stupendous ruins exist to this day; Peter de Mon taigu, whose courage helped to take Da mietta in 1219; Hermann de Perigord, who rebuilt the fortress of Safed; Guil laume de Sonnac, slain beside St. Louis at the Nile in 1250; Thomas Berard, an Englishman, under whom Safed was lost in 1266, Jaffa and Antioch in 1268; and Guillaume de Beaujeu, who lost Tripoli in 1290, and fell in the bloody capture of Acre in 1291. The remnant of the Tern plars sailed to Cyprus, and the latest dying gleams of the order's vigor in the East were the rash attempts to capture Alexandria (1300), and to establish a set tlement at Tortosa (1300-1302) under the last and most ill-fated of its grand masters.