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Have you ever been sorry you asked something? Don’t be! PLSJ’s Reference Librarian J.L. finds the answers to questions you thought might not even have an answer.
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Speaker 1 00:00:08 Welcome to PLS Jay's podcast, where the public library of Steubenville and Jefferson county shares with you. Our favorite quirky questions finds out what leaders in our community are reading interviews, local authors, and so much more. This podcast is part of the ask us series where the reference librarian shares answers to some of our favorite questions from the past and provides information on topics you've pondered, but didn't know who to ask. Now you do
Speaker 2 00:00:39 Hello. Welcome to the PLS J podcast. I'm your reference librarian JL lash. And this is I'm sorry. I ask today, we're asking about the Knights Templar or more properly, the poor fellow soldiers of Christ and the temple of Solomon. The history of the order of the Templars is very tied to the crusades for it was because of the crusades that the Knights Templar were founded. Once the kingdom of Jerusalem had been established in the early crusade period, pilgrims began to go down to Jerusalem. The trip from say, France to Jerusalem is not an easy one. Even if one manages to catch a boat. And that was not as common as it in later periods, the route was still fraught with a lot of trouble. You could be robbed or worse. Not necessarily everybody who the pilgrims would find their way through would necessarily be happy to see them.
Speaker 2 00:01:51 And so it was decided that these pilgrims might need a little protection. And so some of the nights, especially some of the less wealthy and younger and needing of prestige nights decided to form an order to help protect these pilgrims. The Templars were one of these orders. There were quite a few of them. This also included orders such as the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights, but the Templars, the one that comes to mind first, they were founded in the 12th century, somewhere between 11 30, 9 and 1190. I know that that's a lot of time, but every article I read while does agree on century gives me a different year. What we do know is that the person who signed the charter was king Baldwin, the second of Jerusalem. And he did give them space on the temple Mount to set up their first headquarters, temple mountains, cuff course alleged to be the site of the first temple of Solomon, thus the name, the 10 soldiers of the temple of Solomon.
Speaker 2 00:03:09 And because they were on the temple Mount, it was shortened to templates. Their symbol was two nights sharing the same horse because initially they were indeed a poor order. These were not the rich nights. These were, as I said, the nights that we're looking for right now, but the order would become far more wealthy as it went on, as you will see, but they retained that and the members of the order would maintain a valid property. Later on. They would begin to have an individual night would be given several horses, the clothing, the armor, the weapons he would need, but these were considered to belong to the order. The Knight himself would still take a vow of poverty. These Knights were essentially fighting monks. And to join you, couldn't just drop your kid off at the temple. You had to be a fighting age and have already been knighted.
Speaker 2 00:04:10 And you would give your possessions to the order. You would again be taking a vow of poverty. But if you were say a younger son of a nightly family had been knighted, but maybe your older brother inherited all the family's good armor and lands. It certainly seemed like an attractive thing within the Templars. It wasn't just the Knights. Yes. The Knights themselves formed the basis of their military might the heavy cavalry. And within the Knights, you would find such people as the grand master and the master who were in charge of the entire order, a shawls who were the people who would run a local castle or the lands attached to that castle standard bearers, Drapers, who would've been responsible for the clothing that was given to the Knights and marshals, who would've been responsible for the weapons, given the Knights, the bulk of their military force, a light cavalry were called the sergeants sergeants were not nights.
Speaker 2 00:05:24 They would have been laymen attached to the Templars. They would not have been noble birth. They only got to have one horse. They weren't allowed to have Squires, but still, they were also providing such things as the blacksmiths, the builders, the artisans. So while they would have been a lower military class, they would have still been doing fairly well for a military man of the day. And as I said, the Knights did start accumulating lands. And castles is for the order that had to be taken care of by people that were farmers who were not of the fighting class, they would have basically been peasants. And of course their spiritual life was overseen by chaplains. These were ordained priests within the order. All members of the order were expected to follow something called the Latin rule. This rule would cover everything from dietary restrictions. And yes, there were those, there were certain things you were not allowed to eat as per religious orders.
Speaker 2 00:06:36 Certain times of year, such as when, when you weren't allowed to eat them, the ways that the Knights were supposed to dress, they were not allowed to dress overly fancy. The uniform you think of as the Knights Templar with a white cross and the armor, if they were in battle, the white mantle with the red cross and all those things, those were treated by the Knights as essentially their monks habits and the black rule covered with that. That could be, and the Draper would have checked them to make sure that they were not showing any outward ostentation. And they weren't even allowed to have pointy shoes or shoes with laces. They weren't allowed to wear their hair long though, in the holy land, many of them did wear very full beards because they felt it made them look more manly to their Muslim opponents. And yes, they were very manly.
Speaker 2 00:07:29 As a matter of fact, one of the parts of the law rule said that they were not allowed to interact with women, even those women within their family, how strongly that was, depends on who you talk to, but the Templars were an all male order. And those, you know, the nights were taking about celibacy. So it might not have been as fun as the more romantic notions will tell you, as the Knights began, participating in war and more battles, some victories, some as the battle of Hatton were not victories that they did gain prestige. And as they gain prestige, of course, they gained wealth, many Nobles as they died would will part or in some cases, all of their lands and money to the order of the temple. So the Knights began accumulating Lenz and castles, and of course gold, and because they were so prominent, the Pope's set them apart from the regular clergy.
Speaker 2 00:08:35 And they were exempt from any taxes on their lands, which means if you were a noble and you ruled over a large section of a European country, or if you were a king in a European country, and there were Templar lands within your area, they weren't paying taxes. They weren't even paying the tie to the church. They were exempt from that while they did have prestige. Obviously people thought enough of them to will lands and money to them. The church wasn't happy with this at all. There was a lot of resentment from the rest of the clergy, but it did allow them to accumulate a lot of money. Another way that they put this money to use and began accumulating more. The Templars basically became the first bankers in Europe because they had large castles that were well fortified. And because they had a lot of money.
Speaker 2 00:09:38 If you were going on crusade and wanted to take your money with you, but were afraid you would get taken away, Templars established that you could deposit an amount of money with one of the temples. They would give you a receipt, which you could take with you. And then when you came to another possession of the Templars, if that possession had enough money to pay you back, they wouldn't give you the money on the receipt. They would of course, levy a fee for this, but they began accumulating large amount of money through that as banking tends to do. And does banking tends to do since they had a lot of money, they lent a lot of money with interest and they became some of the richest people in Europe. Now, of course, and individual night, or even the grand master was not rich. He was of course taking about with poverty, but the Knights themselves, he began as an order accumulating a lot.
Speaker 2 00:10:38 So they started loaning it out. And a lot of people began owing them a lot of money. And this wasn't just nobleman or businessmen. These were Kings and they would have things such as a country's crown jewels. In one case, they are dead to have had a piece of the true cross held as collateral. There are other relics and religious items that they are believed to have either taken as collateral or come into the possession of during their time in the holy land. And on the temple Mount, there was of course, even more resentment. This came to a head with king Phillip, the fourth of France, 1309 Philip not only, oh, the order, a ridiculous amount of money, he wanted to borrow more. And they felt that he was a bad risk because of how much money he owed them. They wouldn't loan him more.
Speaker 2 00:11:35 He didn't like this. So taking advantages of the resentment that was already existing against the order that I've mentioned. And because the order was very secretive about their rights and what was going on. There were a lot of rumors of such things as devil worship packs made with demons, sodomy and other UN tasteful things, king Philip decided that he would accuse the order of this had jock de Molay, the grand master of, of the Templars who was headquartered in France at that time, arrested along with any of the other Templars, especially the higher level ones that he could catch. He then had them tortured and executed. And of course their blends and money confiscated even had Pope Clement, the fifth reluctantly, but he saw the way the wind was blowing disbanding the order. So as of 1309, officially the Knights Templar ceased to exist. Obviously there were Knights Templar all over Europe and they weren't able to catch all of them.
Speaker 2 00:12:50 Some of them fled. There are of course talking about how some of them's pled to places such as Scotland and England, and there, of course, many organizations, some calling themselves the nighttime player, others such as the masons say that they are descended from members of the order of the Knights Templar that their organization and the ending of these organizations are modern day descendants of the order. Not well, some of them may individually be descendants. What I mean is the organizations themselves claim descent from the order. But that said as a 1309, if you wanted to call yourself one of the poor Knights of Hempel of poor fellow soldier of Christ and the temple of Solomon, you couldn't after 1309 rumors and legends persist, of course, during their time on the temple, Mount the tempers as said to have accumulated a lot of treasure and items of interest throughout the holy land.
Speaker 2 00:13:57 These include such things as the holy grail, the Ark of the covenant, obviously, as I mentioned before, the true cross, a man named Dan brown wrote a book about how they held dire secrets that could ruin the Catholic church and certain TV channels will devote entire shows about how the Knights Templar and whatever conspiracy theory and hidden artifact and the art, the grail, the library card of John, the Baptist in whatever were taken by the Templars and never found and hidden any number of places behind that wall. You're not allowed to knock down under the temple Mount, which they seem to be rather reluctant to let people dig under nowadays. And of course, that island in Nova Scotia, that they keep trying to dig it and find something, of course, as all good conspiracy theories tend to, they believe that the Templars have hidden something under there, whether you believe the Templars still exist today in some way, whether you believe that hidden treasures exist, the best thing is a good story and order of fighting monks with mysterious writes a long history and rumors makes a good story. Who could be sorry. They asked about that.
Speaker 1 00:15:34 Thanks for listening to PLS Jay's podcast. Visit us in person at your library, branch or [email protected]. Have a question you want the answer to visit the libraries website@steubenvillelibrarydotorgoremailthereferencedepartmentatshopperbridgeatseolibraries.org. That's S C H I a PPA, B R a N C [email protected].
