Interesting stuff, aside from the movie.
Following the colossal success of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, two new thrillers, The Last Templar and The Templar Legacy, have remained firmly planted on the New York Times best-seller list. These books don’t chase the chimera of the Holy Grail, so breathlessly pursued by the two protagonists of the Code; instead they focus on one of the links in the chain of clues in Brown’s book—that of the extraordinary Order of the Knights Templar.
The real Templars bear little resemblance to their fictional re-creations. They were founded in the Holy Land in 1119 by two French knights, who swore to devote themselves to the protection of Christian pilgrims visiting Jerusalem and the holy places. Crusaders had captured Jerusalem in 1099 and then struggled to establish an effective military and political structure to protect their conquests. The contribution of these founding knights was tiny, but they quickly captured the imagination of the Western Christian world. Soon, they were given a base in the al-Aqsa Mosque, which Christians believed had been the site of the Temple of Solomon. They received papal recognition at the council of Troyes in Champagne in 1129, where they were described as a “military order,” a quite unique institution at the time, for they not only swore the usual monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience but made a fourth key promise—to defend the holy places from the infidel.
Hmmm, I guess with the popularity of all things Templar, there will be errors in describing them. This article offers some misinformation regarding the Order.
First of all, with Hugh de Payens taking the lead, there were 8 other French knights who were founding members. Where did this ‘2 knights’ thing come from? Also, when referring to them, they are best described as ‘warrior monks’ as when they weren’t fighting or working in support of the Crusading Knights, they were more or less Catholic monks answerable only to the pope which eventually lead to their downfall upon the betrayal of the corrupt Pope Clement and the man pulling his strings, Philip the Fair, the king of France.
And to say that the Order’s contribution were ‘tiny’ is a serious understatement if not a blatant misrepresentation of the facts. They were the Special Forces of the day and were quite often the vanguard and ‘tip of the spear’ when it came to military action. The respected Saracen leader, Saladin, feared the Order and usually revised his planning due to the role of the Templars. The Templar Rule said, among other things, that a Templar couldn’t retreat if the odds were less than 3 to 1. In fact, there are many instances of the Templars fighting the Saracens with odds of 50 to 1 AGAINST them. They fought to the death and really didn’t care if they lost their life as it equalled a free trip to heaven as promised by the pope. It is safe to say that without the Knights Templar, the Crusades wouldn’t have gone very well for the Franks and their allies.
And their history in banking is extremely rich, excuse the pun. They even came up with an early ATM like system for pilgrims and soldiers – well ahead of the times. They are also rumored to have been involved in early Freemasonry and although there is no definitive connections, there are countless similarities in things like oaths, lodge set up, symbols, the ‘Rule’ of both as well as other othings.
Another example of religious indoctrination. The Muslims have never had a monopoly on this.
Mr. Trying Fusion;
If you look into the Janissaries or where term ‘assassin’ came from, you’ll find out that the Muslims had many military orders and castes. Western citizens fail to under stand other cultures in some many areas, that they set themselves to be manipulated by these foreign cultures. You should also read about Napoleon’s conquest of Eqypt and Mamelukes.
It’s only been since the west has tried to co-exsist with Muslims that we’ve started to have problems with Muslims. Islams believes in a perpetual state of war. It doesn’t take two to make war. It only take one to believe it and make it, although when it’s only one making it it’s called genocide, ie the genocide of the Dafur Christians. No one is willing to interfere for them, although much Christian blood and money has been spent to save Muslim lives in Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.