The Knights Templar Chronology:

Tracking History’s Most Intriguing Monks

By George Smart

Excerpts

George Smart has taken on the task of writing The Knights Templar Chronology to give all future researchers a framework on which to build -- but he has done more than that.  In this absorbing work, he has whetted our appetite for even more information about the poor warrior monks who, paradoxically, belonged to the richest Order in Christendom.  

-- From the Foreword by Niven Sinclair

According to the faithful, we have no record of the life of Jesus, other than the Bible, and that account is unfalteringly true. Jesus is God and above and beyond any sort of earthly procreation.  Fundamentalists reject any other source than the Bible or works by adherents of that orthodox story.  Other accounts, including the Nag Hammadi scrolls, are considered not just false, but completely without credibility.  Jesus is God, period, and the whole marriage/children thing with Mary Magdalene is impossible, sacrilegious, and perhaps subversive. 

 -- From the Introduction by George Smart

Between the lifetime of Jesus and the beginning of the Knights Templar, the Western world goes through the Dark Ages, a largely self-imposed isolation from science, from learning, and from other cultures, especially in the East and Far East.  Prohibitions on Catholic pilgrimages to Jerusalem cause the Pope to break this cultural exile and declare a Holy war on Islam which is successful.  Christianity retakes Jerusalem and establishes rule.  About 15 years later, Knights Templar surface in France in the Middle Ages as a monastic order established under the guidance of history’s most famous monk, Saint Bernard.  Conventional historians such as Barber, Burman, Partner, and Sanello cite the Templars’ primary purpose as protection of Catholics on pilgrimages from Europe to Jerusalem.  However, it makes no sense that this was their real function.  For nine years there were just nine guys and even as fierce knight/warrior/monks, nine guys simply cannot protect the hundreds of pilgrims along hundreds of miles to Jerusalem.  Whatever they were doing, they were doing it without growing in numbers as there is no evidence Templars recruited during the first nine years.  

-- From the Introduction by George Smart

Since they were not protecting any pilgrims, what was their actual purpose? So far, the most likely explanation is archeological, that they were digging for something under the Temple Mount – and found it.  Various theories include:

·        Treasure taken from the Jews or others by the Romans;

·        A cache of original scrolls (including Gospels that did not make the Bible’s final edition) by or about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the apostles;

·        The body or other parts of Jesus, preserved in some form since the crucifixion;

·        The head of John the Baptist;

·        Relics of Jesus, such as the cross upon which he was crucified, his burial shroud, and, the crown of thorns;

·        The body of Alexander the Great, preserved since its disappearance after his death;

·        Scrolls from the Library of Alexandria saved from various attacks;

·        Early Hebrew sacred literature xe "Jesus"possibly contained in the fabled Ark of the Covenant.

-- From the Introduction by George Smart
 

Over the ensuing 180 years, the Templars experienced unprecedented growth in wealth, power, influence, and property across England, the Continent, and the Middle East.  Various Popes granted the Order immunity from all taxes and accountability to other rulers.  With circular preceptories (like branch offices), their work as bankers, statesmen, and military advisors/trainers exerted control over warehousing, commerce, politics, and even Papal appointments. Their Paris preceptory was the central bank of Europe.   They invented the check and the prototype of the banking system we use today.  Templars were among the first Westerners to use a magnetic compass.  They were arrogant (and powerful) enough to even defy the Papacy at times.  Contrary to Papal policy, the Templars established good relationships with the “infidels” (Muslims and Jews) and learned xe "Jews"their advancements in science, cartography, and philosophy.  Templars especially immersed themselves in Muslimxe "Muslim" knowledge, for example, adopting the Atbash cipher for coded communication.  Their acceptance of other religions extended beyond secular interests to the theological as well.  According to Andrew Sinclair’s The Sword and the Grail, the Knights Templar believed in "the One God, the Architect of the World, in whom the members of all religions, Christian and Muslim and Jew, might believe.”  This makes them one of the most spiritually progressive groups of their time -- perhaps of all time. 

-- From the Introduction by George Smart

Whether the Templars were simply monks carrying out the work of the Church or guardians of secret bloodline – or both -their tale has captured imaginations for centuries. 

-- From the Introduction by George Smart

 If in 1095 there was a Catholic most-wanted list, Muslims would be at the very top.  Muslims accept and acknowledge the wisdom of Jesus but they refuse to recognize him as God -- or the Papacy as the ultimate earthly authority from God.  Overall, Muslims tolerate other faiths, much more so than Christians.  In Muslim lands, Jewsxe "Jews", Catholics, Muslims, Greeks, and many other faiths live in relative peace.  However, Muslim rulers are not without ambition, and attacks on Byzantine Christian territory are common.  It is not until Muslims restrict Europeans from making pilgrimages to Jerusalem that Catholics get mad – and murderous. Catholic forces, ignoring their most basic tenets (‘Thou shalt not kill’ comes to mind), become exceptionally eager to kill those outside Christianity, even their own Byzantine brethren.  The massacres during the First Crusade are among the most brutal in history and establish a pattern of violence throughout the Holy Land for centuries.

-- From Chapter 2:  The First Crusade

Their publicly stated purpose was the protection of pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land.  However, there is little evidence such a common task was their real function.  Nine men just cannot protect many pilgrims along hundreds of miles of land.  And simple monks, bound to vows of poverty, did not receive the kind of rich support, housing, and recognition given by Jerusalem King Bauduoin II – or later by the Pope.  If the Templars were not protecting pilgrims, what were they up to for nine years? 

-- From Chapter 3:  Beginnings

The Templars grow dramatically in number and create multiple enterprises.  With unprecedented protection and special dispensation from the Pope, they become the world’s foremost bankers, inventing the check and the branch banking system.  They are the medieval world's most powerful ambassadors and statesmen, developing access, influence, and control matched only by the Pope.  They are the world's prime movers in real estate, eventually controlling over 5000 properties in Scotland, Ireland, Britain, France, Spain, the German states, Hungary, and virtually every country on the Mediterranean.  They finance much of the Catholic building program for 300 new places or worship including cathedrals, monasteries, and other structures.  In March 1139, Pope Innocent II writes Omne datum optimum, granting the Templars exemption from the authority of local bishops, exemption from taxation by any king, release from all obedience except to the Papacy, and other quite extraordinary privileges.  This is their official sanction to become the world’s most powerful group.

-- From Chapter 3:  Beginnings

Now fully in power, protected by the Pope, honored by nearly every landowner in Europe, and controlling what will become the world's first central bank, the Templars are in their prime.  They are the most powerful political group in the world.  It is truly their heyday.  Kings, generals, even Popes defer to them as catalysts in an ever-expanding European economy.  Their military and economic strength grows to protect extensive holdings all over Europe and the Middle East. Templar regiments attach to Catholic armies (under various national flags) in further Papal crusades against, well, just about everyone. The next few hundred years are not a good time to be non-Christian, an intellectual, a woman -- or anyone else who threatens the male Catholic power structure.  Between three and six million die in various Catholic purges, inquisitions, tortures, mobs, and other atrocities between 1209 and 1750, all in the name of Jesus.

-- From Chapter 4: Warriors, Monks, Bankers, Statesmen

A famous story chronicles the escalation of this senseless violence. As Catholic forces go into the city of Beziers in 1209, they ask their commander, a priest turned general named Arnaud Amaury, “How do we know whom to kill?  There are so many women and children.”  To which, the commander replied, “Kill them all. God will know his own.”  The gentleness and forgiveness of Jesus has been completely twisted around into a rationale for genocide.

-- From Chapter 4: Warriors, Monks, Bankers, Statesmen

Modern orders claim direct lineage to the Knights Templar.  They claim that some Templars escaped France with long-guarded documents and vast treasure; that these Templars assimilated into a native European population but continued to hide their records and treasure; that a new brotherhood sprung directly from the Templars and continues to this day, partially public, partially secret.  Those claims may be true, but they are as yet unsubstantiated.  We do know that while many groups from the Masons to the Rosicrucians borrow liberally from Templar rituals, beliefs, values, symbols, roles, titles, and structures, there is no evidence yet of any direct succession.

-- From Chapter 5, Downfall

On March 14, 1314, Philippe orders the execution of Templars Jacques de Molay, Geoffroi de Charnay (Grand Preceptor of Normandy), Hugh de Peyraud (Visitor-General), and Guy d’Auvergne (Grand Preceptor of France).    On March 18, Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charnay are scheduled to burn at the stake in Paris on the Ile des Javiaux on the Seine River. Hugh de Peyraud and Guy d'Auvergne confess and get life imprisonment.  Fear crowd reprisals against them from passionate speeches from de Molay and de Charnay, authorities delay their execution.  A few hours later, Philippe IV has de Molay and de Charnay burned privately near the convent of St. Augustine.  Legend has it that a man in the crowd curses all those associated with the executions to death within a year.  On April 20, Pope Clement V dies.  On November 29, King Philippe IV dies in a hunting accident.  The “curse” is fulfilled.

-- From Chapter 5, Downfall