Volume 8, Number 3 · February 23, 1967
Is It True about the Templars?
By R.C. Smail
The Guilt of the Templars
by G. Legman
Basic Books, 308 pp., $8.50
The trial of the Knights Templars is one of the causes célèbres of medieval history. Of all the spiritual and military Orders that flourished in the Europe of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, none stood higher in reputation and influence. The Knights, who took monastic vows, were also pledged to the defense of the Holy Land against the Saracens. Fostered in its early days by St. Bernard himself, protected and privileged by popes, enriched by the gifts of kings and magnates, the Order soon became a wealthy landowner not only in the crusader states, but in every country of Latin Christendom. It also developed the greatest single banking organization of its time, with the kings of France as the most illustrious of its many royal and noble clients. The wordly wealth and greatness the Knights had achieved by the thirteenth century was a far cry from the poverty of their two founders, so poor, it was said, that they had but one horse between them. Like all the great Orders, they seemed to a growing number of satirists and critics to have forgotten their early ideals. But while other Orders survived, the Templars were brutally suppressed.
Review, 2504 words
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