The history of the order of the templars is filled with many mysteries about their appearance, activities in the east and financial transactions in Europe. The secrets of the Templars become an occasion for all sorts of hoaxes - from The Da Vinci Code to The Iron Knight. Did the order exist after the dissolution? Did its members practice magic and were they the keepers of the Holy Grail?

Where did the treasures of the order go?

The main problem in different time worried both historians and adventurers alike, is the fate of the treasures of the Templars .

On their coat of arms, the knights were depicted as being so poor that they could not even afford their own horse. Two riders were on the same horse. But in reality, by the time the order was dissolved, thanks to their successful financial activities, they had accumulated significant wealth, some of which, according to legend, was taken out and hidden by them somewhere outside of Paris. Wealth was never found, but the very idea of ​​their existence gave rise to many other legends - about the financing by the Templars of Masonic organizations, English banks, and even the construction of the New World with these funds.

Another cycle of legends was initially associated with the American continent - about the sources of the order's wealth. According to the hypothesis of Jacques de Maillet, the American Indians were well acquainted with the Templars as early as the 12th century. The knights allegedly sailed to the opposite shores of the Atlantic and actively developed local silver mines there. The path to the American continent was their main secret, hidden from the "uninitiated".

What did the Templars have?

The main knowledge, the possession of which is often attributed to the Templars, is the location of the Holy Grail and the use of the benefits that it brings. The latter include inexhaustible abundance, eternal life, and sometimes just an image of an unattainable ideal goal. According to biblical legend, Christ ate from the sacrificial cup at the Last Supper. And in Dan Brown's famous novel The Da Vinci Code, it contained the blood of the descendants of Christ and Magdalena, who were the medieval Templars.

Another legendary relic is the Ark of the Covenant. Real historical circumstances are connected with the legends about him (as well as with the story of the Holy Grail). During the period of foundation and the beginning of its activity, the Knights Templar stayed in the east - in the Temple of Solomon. It was there, according to the Bible, that the Ark was kept. The famous tablets with the Ten Commandments, the manna from heaven, which the Jewish people fed in the desert, and the staff of Aaron, were allegedly taken out by the Templars from the Temple upon their return to Europe.

In the battle at the foot of the Hattin horns in the late 12th century, the Templars, according to other versions, also got a piece of the life-giving cross. According to some testimonies, they also owned the head of the Christian Saint Euphemia the All-Praised, who is especially revered in Orthodox Church. According to legend, during one of the early medieval cathedrals, the relics of this saint were used to determine who shares the correct beliefs about the nature of Christ - the Monophysites, who denied his human principle, or the Orthodox. A scroll was placed on the body of Euphemia. After the coffin was re-opened, it ended up in her right (pre-set for the Orthodox) hand.

The image of Euphemia in the story with the Templars arises from the “head”, which, according to the materials of the Inquisition, the knights allegedly worshiped.

To whom the Templars paid honors was never found out.

In some descriptions, the two-faced Janus was guessed, in others - Pan, in the third - just something demonic, in the fourth - a cat. One of the variants of the "head" of the Templars was the head of "Euphemius". But several times in the description of the accusation the word Baphomet appears, which is called either one of the names of the devil, or an incorrectly transmitted or distorted sound of the name of the Muslim prophet.

Who did the templars worship?

The third, largest, block of mysteries of the Templars is connected with the religious component. Were they a Christian, Catholic, or occult organization with elements of ancient pagan, native, or Eastern teachings? The basis for various kinds of hoaxes were the materials of the case, in which the Templars “deny Christ,” “spit on the crucifix,” and give many other “signs” that this spiritual order belongs to satanic cults. But so the arrest of the Templars was in the interests of the king, and the method of accusing them of heresy and connections with the devil under torture was a popular tool of the Holy Inquisition , it is not possible to trust these versions.

But similar conjectures were already actively used by European mystics in the late Middle Ages, modern and recent times. Many founders of the occult teachings exploited the symbolism and secrets of the Templars in substantiating their doctrines. And after the designated historical continuity of the Rosicrucians and the Portuguese templars, the legends about the role of the Templars in the organization of Masonic lodges became even more established, since they found some confirmation in reality.

Another speculation based on real historical conditions- the possible connection of the Templars not only with Islam, but also with European Christian sects. Especially often they are prescribed Manichaeism and agreement on a number of positions with the Cathars, who professed a dualistic doctrine of the struggle in the world of good and evil principles and the possible salvation from the earthly “devilish” life through the sending of Christ.

However, most historians agree that the Templars were precisely the Catholic spiritual and knightly order.

Although, it is quite possible that some of the organizations also practiced some mystical practices “on the ground”, which was the emerging trend of the time.

Legacy de God

Like many other medieval orders, the Templars had their own system of signs, with which they transmitted to each other, including secret (for example, on the movement of capital) information. The walls of Chinon Castle, covered with these signs, became the basis for the emergence of new legends. In the 18th century, a German archivist reported that he had discovered documents containing information about the treasures of the Templars. According to them, the jewels and secret archives of the order before his death, his last master Jacques de Molay handed over to the nephew of his predecessor, Guichard de Gode. A descendant of de God allegedly took out and hid the received inheritance, which later, already in the middle of the 20th century, was discovered in the castle of Arginy and awakened the "spirits of the Templars." But this was not the last hoax of the history of the medieval order….

Ksenia Zharchinskaya

Orders of chivalry are semi-military, semi-monastic organizations that were destined to leave a noticeable mark in the history of not only the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. The history of the knightly orders themselves, especially the orders of the templars or the Templars, also turned out to be extremely interesting. It seems that the very creation of the order was initially kept in complete secrecy. According to legend, the Knights Templar originated in Palestine after the First Crusade. In 1118 or 1119 (it is not known exactly), the Burgundian knight Gottfried Saint-Omer, in company with eight other knights, founded a small military brotherhood to guard the roads leading to Jerusalem. Yes, this order was founded by nine French knights, among whom was a certain Hugo de Payne from Champagne.
After some time, all members of the brotherhood made a vow to the Jerusalem patriarch and adopted a number of articles of the Benedictine monastic rule. King Baldwin of Flanders, the head of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, organized by the crusaders in Palestine, gave the order a building next to the mosque, which seemed to stand on the spot where Solomon's temple had been in biblical times. From that time on, the order began to be called the Order of the Poor Brothers of Christ from the Temple of Solomon, or simply the Order of the Templars (Templars). For nine years they kept complete silence about the new knightly brotherhood - in any case, not one of the chronicles reports about the Templars in these years. But it is known that in 1127 the knights returned from the Holy Land to their homeland, where they announced a new order. This organization, surrounded by a dense veil of mystery, quickly became as powerful as the Order of the Hospitallers. But the knightly order of the temple, which began its history in the sands of Palestine, went through a very special path. The following year, the order and its charter were officially recognized at a church council held in the city of Troyes, the center of Champagne. The residence of the templars, as well as the hospitallers, was at first in Jerusalem itself. King Baldwin II gave them a place in the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, which the knights themselves began to call the Temple of Solomon. Hence, I repeat, the name of the order is the Secret Knighthood of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. In French, the temple is tample, which is why the word “Templar” took root in Europe in the meaning of “templar”, “knight of the Order of the Temple”.
The Knights of the Temple chose the Meek Mother of God as their patroness. Entering the order, they swore "to devote their swords, hands, strength and life to the defense of the sacraments of the Christian faith, to render complete obedience to the Grand Master, to be exposed to the dangers of the sea and war, when ordered, out of love for Christ, and not even to retreat when meeting one with three unfaithful enemies."
Like the Hospitallers, the Knights Templar took vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty. Historical fact: Hugo de Payne, proclaimed Grand Master of the Order of the Temple, and another knight named Gottfried St. Omer initially had one war horse for two. For this reason, and as a symbol of poverty, two knights riding the same horse were depicted on the coat of arms of the order.
The templars wore a plain white cloak with a red cross on the chest. The banner of the order was striped, white and black, and therefore was called Bosean - in Old French this word means "skewbald horse." On the banner were a cross and an inscription-motto: "Not to us, not to us, but to Your name."
The Order of the Temple quickly became a powerful, disciplined military organization. It was based on the principle: "Everyone does not follow his own will at all, but is more concerned about obeying the one who orders." The Knights of the Temple obeyed only their Grand Master and the Pope.
The fame of a new knightly order, whose members fought against the infidels, guarded pilgrims and trade caravans, skillfully healed wounds, spread throughout Europe. The order, which professed poverty, quickly grew rich. Everyone who joined it donated all his fortune to the brotherhood. The order was given land by the French and English kings. Already by 1130, in addition to castles and fortresses in Palestine, the Templars had possessions in France, England, Scotland, Flanders, Spain, and Portugal. Ten years later, possessions in Italy, Austria, Germany, and Hungary were added to them.
In the XII century, along with vast lands, castles, fortresses, the Templars owned shipyards, ports, had their own powerful fleet conducted trade operations. The Grand Masters happened to lend money to the kings themselves; and the templars completely forgot that their charter implies poverty and the rejection of all earthly joys, prohibits any secular pleasures and even laughter and singing. The Knights Templars did not create their own state, like the Teutons - they already owned vast lands in almost all European countries. They did not seek their fortune on the sea roads, like the knights of Malta, although the Order of the Temple had its own huge fleet.
The Templars received from the Pope, who saw in the order their main support, all new privileges: exemption from church taxes, complete independence from local secular and ecclesiastical authorities, jurisdiction exclusively of the papal curia. Templars one after another established commanderies in Europe, and in the Holy Land they fought with Muslims. In battles with the infidels, the knights of the Temple showed treachery, especially cruelty, causing the hatred of Muslims. It is no coincidence that in the future, the great commander of the East, Salah ad-Din, treated mercifully with all the captured Christian knights, with the exception of the Templars.
And since then, the popes of Rome, as if competing with each other, did not get tired of showering favors on the templars. The Templars received the right to build their churches, to have their own cemeteries. They could not be excommunicated from the church, they also received the right to remove excommunications imposed by the church. All property of the Templars, both movable and immovable, was exempt from church taxes, and the tithe, which they themselves collected, went entirely to the treasury of the order. The knights of the temple had their own clergy, independent of church authorities. Bishops were forbidden to interfere in the life of the order, to sue or fine the people of the order. Not a single spiritual and knightly order - and there were many of them founded in Palestine - was not endowed with such broad rights and privileges. They intervened in the affairs of states, acted as arbitrators, resolving conflicts between monarchs. The Templars, by the way, were the first to introduce accounting documents and checks, and encouraged the development of sciences. And in addition, in their centuries-old activity, there are many mysteries that still cannot be solved ...
The activities of the order and the life of its knights were mysterious, hidden from the rest of the world. The life of the knights was reliably hidden and protected by the powerful walls and ditches of the preseptoria - that was the name of the centers of the order in each of the commanders. And rumors spread all over the world about the luxury and extravagance of the templars, about the mysterious ceremonies that took place in their castles.
It was said that one of the members of the order who betrayed its secrets to outsiders, even if inadvertently, was doomed to end his life in terrible dungeons. It was said that during the ceremonies in the main order church, the Grand Master solemnly renounces not only the power of the Pope, but also Jesus Christ himself; that the templars consider a certain Baphomet to be their true god, in front of whose idol they drink wine mixed with the ashes of the burned dead ...
And there were also rumors that in their churches the templars spit on the crucifix, sing obscene songs in front of the icons, that the knights of the Temple know the mysterious signs with which they call the dead from the other world, that they enchant hidden treasures so that no one can find them ... In addition, alas, the comparison “drink like a Templar” came into use,
Regardless of all this, shortly after its founding, the Knights Templar began to flourish rapidly. As already mentioned above, its center was in Palestine, but in Kingdom of Jerusalem was only one of the priors of the order. The same priories were located in Tripolitania, Antioch, Poitou, England, the lands of the French kingdom, Portugal, Aragon, Hungary, Ireland and Poland.
The wealth of the templars already in the second half of the XII century was amazing. The "Brothers of Christ" owned lands, fortified castles, houses in cities, various movable property and innumerable amounts of gold. Suffice it to say that the Templars bought the island of Cyprus from the English King Richard I for an unimaginable sum of 100,000 Byzantions (880,000 gold rubles) at that time.
The source of these unprecedented riches was not only military booty, donations of believers and gifts of monarchs, but also usury, set by the templars to a level unattainable for their time. Having priories in all the states of Europe and the Middle East, the Templars invented a cashless money transfer, when gold was not physically transported, but transferred from account to account according to letters from priory treasurers.
In addition to cashless money transfer, the templars came up with many other banking innovations. They invented a system of banking representations, separated banking proper from merchant trade, invented a system of checks and letters of credit, and introduced the "current account". All basic banking operations, in fact, were invented and tested by the Templars. The famous Florentine and Jewish bankers of the Renaissance were nothing more than mere imitators of "the poor brothers of Christ from Solomon's temple."
It is not surprising that the Templars began to deify the yellow metal. The damage to the gold coin, which the French kings tried more than once, they perceived as sacrilege and prevented this in every possible way, realizing what enormous damage a decrease in the gold content in a coin could cause to their well-established financial system. No wonder it was in the Temple of Paris that the reference gold livre was kept. Perhaps not far from the truth are those researchers who suggest that in the Middle East the Templars learned some esoteric teaching, rooted in the ancient Phoenicians and Carthaginians, who sacralized gold, endowing it with the magical ability to accumulate lay and good luck.
The templars issued money loans, usually secured by collateral. If it was about kings or influential feudal lords, the pledge for the sake of decency was formalized as a “transfer for safekeeping”. In 1204, for example, English king John the Landless "transferred for safekeeping" the crown jewels to the Temple of London, and in 1220 even the great royal seal of England was "stored" by the English Templars. Often the Templars took important government documents for safekeeping. So, in the Temple of Paris, the original of the agreement concluded in 1258 between the French king Louis the Saint and the ambassador of the English king Henry III was kept; in 1261, there was also the crown of the English kings, which was kept by the Templars for ten years.
It is possible that, by accepting important state documents for safekeeping and issuing loans to kings against them, the Templars unobtrusively threatened them with blackmail: in case of non-payment of the debt, the disclosure of the contents of some documents could cause grandiose scandals in the royal houses of Europe. This is exactly what happened with the secret treaty between John Landless and his aunt Berenger. Since 1214, the treaty was kept by the London templars, and was later made public by them. So the kings trembled before the powerful and rich order. The inner chambers of the Templar castles were more luxuriously decorated than the royal palaces. It is no coincidence that the English kings, who visited Paris, stayed with their retinue not in the royal castle-palace of the Louvre, but in the Temple Castle - the Parisian residence of the order. In the capital of the French kingdom, for several decades this castle belonged to the order, which was considered absolutely impregnable. Its walls and seven towers, surrounded by a deep moat, were made of huge boulders. An iron-bound drawbridge led only to one of the towers. The gates opened and closed with an ingenious system of levers that the uninitiated would not have mastered.
In the courtyard, along the walls, stretched living quarters, services, stables. A whole knightly army with squires, servants, pages, grooms, gunsmiths could hide in the Temple. A donjon (the main, impregnable tower) rose high above the walls, the thickness of its walls reached eight meters. Here was the residence of the Grand Master. The only way to get here was by another drawbridge leading from the roof of one of the buildings inside the courtyard to the doors in the wall of the keep high above the ground.
The meeting place of the Chapter of the Knights Templar was a church with thick walls and tiny windows. The two belfries at the entrance looked like fortress towers and were also able to withstand a siege.
The altar in the eastern part of the church was surrounded by statues of saints, and behind it was an oak pew, shaped like a horseshoe. The members of the chapter, headed by the Grand Master, were seated on this bench during their meetings. What they discussed, what decisions they made, no one knew ...
In 1306, the arrival in Paris of the Grand Master - the Frenchman Jacques de Molay and the chapter of the order was a huge event and a majestic spectacle. Thousands of Parisians who took to the streets admired Jacques de Molay in a white cloak with a red cross on his shoulder. Despite his sixty-something years, the head of the order, as eyewitnesses describe, was firmly in the saddle and was strong. In cloaks with crosses, sixty knights, members of the chapter, entered Paris behind him.
The procession was continued by dozens of knights, not yet awarded the most high degrees, but shone with expensive weapons made by the best masters of Europe and the East. Further, endless wagons with oak chests bound with iron and leather bales stretched, accompanied by strong guards. The chests contained the gold of the order, and the leather bales contained silver.
Magnificent, solemn was the entry of the highest knight brothers into Paris. King Philip IV the Handsome himself met the Grand Master Jacques de Molay. But their meeting had another, special meaning: the head of a powerful knightly order was met not only by the French king - the biggest debtor of the order met his creditor. And welcoming the Knights of the Temple, the King of France made far-reaching plans. If, in fact, the templars had mystical knowledge, as rumor attributed to them, if they could read in the past and the future, it is unlikely that Jacques de Molay strengthened his mind to transfer the residence of the order to Paris...
The secret knighthood of Christ and the Temple of Solomon was, in contrast to the Teutonic feudal formation, a state in all states. “They say that their possessions, both on this and on the other side of the sea,” reports the chronicle of the XII century, “are so great that there is no area in the Christian world that would not give part of its possessions to the mentioned brothers.”
The number of knight brothers also grew rapidly. By the end of the twelfth century, the Order of the Temple had thirty thousand members, mostly French. At that time it was a huge army capable of conquering countries.
Many and many were attracted to the order, although those who entered it had to take vows of obedience, poverty and chastity. Landless knights found support here for life, a secure existence; noble lords - protection from powerful enemies, including from their own sovereigns. But, to be honest, greedy people who forgot everything sacred and ready to do any cruelty joined the order. They were attracted by one of the main commandments of the Templars: "No crime committed for the benefit of the order is considered a sin."
And is it any wonder that on account of the Templars there are many such "feats" as raids on neighbors and even robbery on the roads. Moreover, it happened to them to enter into alliances with infidels - mortal enemies, uniting against their own Christian brothers ...
While the Templars were accumulating wealth and buying up land in Europe, the affairs of the crusaders in Palestine went from bad to worse. After Sultan Salah ad-Din inflicted a crushing defeat on the Christian army at the Battle of Lake Tiberias and captured Jerusalem, the expulsion of the crusaders from Palestine became a matter of time. In 1291 the Crusaders surrendered their last fortress in the Middle East and moved to Europe.
The time has come, and the Secret Knighthood of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, like the Hospitallers, had to leave the Holy Land forever. Both orders settled on the island of Cyprus. For a few more years, these knightly brotherhoods followed the same path and, finally, parted forever: the Hospitallers, leaving Cyprus in 1307, conquered the island of Rhodes, and the Templars, having retained both land and castles in Cyprus, moved their main residence to Paris a year earlier. Unlike other spiritual and knightly orders, the Templars took the loss of Palestine quite calmly. Their possessions in Europe were quite large, and their wealth was enormous. The positions of the templars in France were especially strong: a significant part of the knights of the order came from the French nobility. And, as you already know, they were so experienced in financial affairs who often headed the treasury of their kingdom, acting as modern finance ministers.
It seemed that nothing threatened the well-being of the order, but the clouds were already gathering over the heads of the arrogant templars. That was the period of the reign in France of King Philip IV (1285-1314) from the Capetian dynasty, nicknamed the Handsome. The monarch is smart, cruel and power-hungry, he devoted his whole life to the struggle for a united, powerful, centralized France. And, of course, in his plans for arranging the state there was no place for the Order of the Templars, in whose possessions neither royal nor general church laws were in force. The king was also worried about the growing influence of the order on the finances of the kingdom. By the end of the 13th century, the income of the order in France was several times higher than the income of the royal treasury, that is, the Templars, in fact, began to determine the financial policy of the state. After all, King Philip IV the Handsome, who fought endlessly to push the boundaries of his possessions, always needed money. Every now and then it was necessary to increase taxes or indulge in dubious scams.
At the Paris Mint, gold coins were turned in deep secrecy, reducing their weight, and new ones were minted from sawdust. From a hundred coins, one hundred ten - one hundred and fifteen were received. But this was not enough, the king was forced to borrow huge sums at interest. However, the king paid his creditors in a peculiar way. Having owed money to the Lombard usurers, he imprisoned them when the due date came. Later, Philip IV the Handsome took a loan from Jewish bankers, and instead of repaying the debt, he issued a decree on the expulsion of Jews from France with the confiscation of their property ...
The debt of the French king to the order of the templars, growing over the years, reached, in the end, an astronomical figure. The debtor would never be able to pay off the creditor. It was necessary either to completely submit to the order, or, as the king had already done, to destroy the creditor.
But the order of knight brothers with a numerous army, tested in battles, with huge land plots, fortresses, with its own fleet and its ports, subordinate only to the Pope, seemed invulnerable. None of the European sovereigns would have dared to enter into an open struggle with him. King Philip was looking for another way. He waged a secret war with the order long before Jacques de Molay moved to Paris. The king and his council decided to put an end to the hegemony of the order in the territory of the kingdom...
Popular support was on the side of the king. The reputation of the order among the common people was by that time badly damaged. In the minds of a man of the Middle Ages, the nobility of origin and military prowess were incompatible with usury. That is why the attitude towards banker knights was then much worse than towards ordinary usurers. The arrogance of the templars, their contempt for local customs and traditions, as well as the atmosphere of secrecy with which they surrounded their activities, led to the fact that the darkest rumors began to spread among the people: they said that the Templars had contracted some heresy in the East, that they had renounced from Christ and serve a "black mass", that at their secret meetings the knights of the order indulge in unnatural orgies.
First of all, the king decided ... to replace the Pope on the Holy See. Boniface VIII was an enemy of Philip IV and patronized the order, seeing him as his support. The king began the war with the Templars precisely with actions against the pope. First of all, Philip IV ordered that church lands in France be taxed in his favor. The pope refused to pay, believing that church taxes should only go to Rome. Then the king forbade the export of gold and silver from the country, and the pope stopped receiving money from France, although they made up a large part of the income of the Holy See.
The conflict was resolved by the fact that the advanced years of Boniface VIII died at the most suitable moment for the French king. Ten days later, as expected, a conclave of cardinals met at St. Peter's in Rome to elect a new pope.
However, the conclave lasted ... eleven months, during which the Christian church was deprived of its head. The king tried to bribe all the cardinals so that they would elect a person pleasing to him as pope. The cardinals bargained with the agents of the king for a long time, but, in the end, the protege of King Philip Clement V became the new pope. Long before the election, believing in success, the future pope gave Philip IV a written promise in advance to ban the Secret Knighthood of Christ and the Temple of Solomon.
But, apparently, the new pope also played his own game and hoped to use the order for his own purposes. In any case, when Jacques de Molay decided to settle in Paris, since the templars were getting close to the hospitallers and the Cypriot king Lusignan, Clement V cautiously hinted to the Grand Master in a letter that the treasury of the order should not be transported to France ...
And yet too strong, independent of anyone in the world, including the Pope, felt at that time the brotherhood of the Templars. The treasury of the order, like the residence itself, is located in Paris. The Grand Master, of course, was confident in his complete power over the king - according to legend, he even showed him somehow the treasury of the Templars. And as if in order to once again demonstrate to the king how great the power of the order is, it was the templars who hid the monarch behind the impregnable walls of Temple Castle when a formidable popular uprising broke out in Paris, which the royal troops failed to quickly pacify.
This happened in the same year 1306, when Jacques de Molay moved to Paris. And a year later, in October 1307, having lulled the suspicion of the knights of the Temple, the king ordered the arrest of the Grand Master and several other brothers who stood on the most high steps the hierarchical ladder of the order, including, of course, the Grand Treasurer.
All other knights of the templars who were in Paris were also taken into custody. The order to capture the Templars, their homes and property was sent throughout the kingdom. The entire brotherhood, including the Grand Master, was accused of heresy, rejection of the Christian faith, and worship of idols.
So, after a long struggle, Philip the Handsome demanded from Pope Clement V consent to initiate an inquisitorial inquiry against the Knights Templar on suspicion of heresy on the basis of "bad rumors." On the night of October 13, 1307, all the Templars in France were arrested. At the same time, the government seized all the possessions and property of the order. During the investigation, which was conducted for more than one year, most of the knights under torture confessed to the most terrible sins for a Christian: worshiping the devil, desecrating the sacrament, sacrificing newborn babies to Satan, Sodom sin, and much more.
But one can imagine that many of the accusations leveled against the Templars are absurd and dirty lies. Confessions torn from their lips under torture have no more weight than feverish delirium, for the torment to which they were subjected was unbearable. However, having returned to a sane state of mind, they all, as one, rejected the dirty slander erected on them by Pope Clement V and the king's henchmen.
You may not be aware, but the Templar trial was never able to reach a guilty verdict. On May 2, 1312, Clement V issued a bull declaring the Knights Templar abolished. So the order was abolished by the papal bull “Vox clamanfis”: “Given the bad reputation of the Templars, the suspicions and accusations against them ...” Even the Pope did not dare to say that what the knights of the temple were accused of was true!
However, what they were not accused of, what neither the inquisitors nor the royal judges mentioned, was true. A little more time would pass, and all of Europe, from the cold waters of the North Sea to the warm Mediterranean, would be a huge single empire, led by the Grand Master of the poor brothers of the Order of the Temple of Zion. Through the lands of France, Castile, Aragon and other kingdoms in those days it was already possible to travel from end to end without ever setting foot on land that did not belong to the order. Yes, besides the Holy Land, Commanderies of the Order of the Temple appeared in Cyprus and Sicily, in Portugal, Castile, Leon, Aragon, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, England, Ireland and many other places. And his wealth was enormous - up to hundreds of millions of livres a year. Of course, they built a lot, bought all new land holdings, launched ships. But do not forget that all this, in turn, brought them new profits, huge profits. After all, the possessions of the order were not subject to any duties. All this incalculable wealth settled in the impregnable commanderies of the Templars. Each commandery, to a greater or lesser extent, served as a banking office.
Shortly before his arrest, the last of the Grand Masters of the Order, Jean Molay, lent half a million livres to Philip the Handsome, without burdening the order's treasury too much with such a loan. And this was not the king's first duty. There was nothing to give them to the crowned counterfeiter. On the contrary, money was needed more and more, and there was nowhere to take it, except from the Templars. This sovereign, by that time, had already robbed everyone he could. He ordered even his own coins to be minted from gold and silver of the worst standard and, moreover, of lesser weight. Who else could be boiled in boiling oil for this, but the king of France is above earthly court. It was then that he decided to plunder the riches of the order.
Together with Pope Clement V, as already written above, not long before he had placed the vicar of St. Peter on the throne, he concocted a treacherous decree on the arrest of the Templars and the seizure of their treasures. “We, who are put by God on guard of justice and freedom,” the royal edict said, “after maturely discussing with prelates and barons and other advisers, ordered the arrest of all members of the order in our kingdom; all, without exception, to be brought to trial by the Church, and their movable and immovable property to be confiscated and transferred into our hands.” The blow was unexpected, precisely calculated, and seemed so incredible to the Templars that they practically did not resist. In the dungeons, with torture, long interrogations of several thousand templars began. And according to the papal bull of 1312, all the real estate of the templars in France was transferred to the Order of the Hospitallers, and all movable property, including the order's treasury, was subject to confiscation and transfer to the disposal of the king. His own keeper of the seal, the Archbishop of Narbonne, Gilles Eslin, refused to affix this ordinance with the sacred symbol of royal power, for which he was removed.
It was from him that Mola became aware of the vile conspiracy. At first, he could not believe in such treachery. The Templars have always supported Philip IV. But soon lists began to arrive from various commanderies in Paris from a decree sent by the king to all the possessions of France. It was forbidden to open the double package in which this accursed parchment was kept until the hour indicated, but the power of the crown is powerless where there is no respect for the monarch. Shortly before the start of the arrests, most of the treasures left the Temple, and the cash desks of the commanders were hidden in pre-prepared caches. In something, and in this matter the Templars knew no equal.
So among the confiscated property of the order there were much less treasures than Philip IV expected. And for many centuries, starting from 1307, those wishing to find the disappeared treasury of the Templars were not translated. Yes, the booty did not justify the aspirations of the treacherous king. A little later, he complained that only his own contributions to the order's treasury had decreased by one hundred and fifty thousand livres. The riches you longed for have disappeared. Most of them have never been found. So, alas, the cruelest disappointment awaited the persecutors of the Templars: the Templar treasury disappeared without a trace! Searches for the treasures of the order were carried out in many French castles and in the residence of the order in Cyprus, but in vain. The archives of the Templars, which should keep considerable secrets, were not found anywhere. For scientists, these documents would be no less valuable than all the treasures collected by the Templars... Historians argue about the fate of the Templar gold and archives to this day, and to this day, treasure hunters and researchers are looking for both...
What happened next is clear. Imprisonment, torture, quarrels between sovereigns and Clement V over the possessions of the Order... Refusing to acknowledge the accusations against the Order, many knights locked themselves in their fortresses, from where they sent an appeal to the pope, where they listed the great merits of the templars to the Church and the Christian world. It didn't work. Their castles were besieged and taken. Most of the members of the Order of the Templars were sentenced by the Inquisitorial Tribunal to life imprisonment, and the leading core, during the trial, who refused their previous testimony as forced by torture, was sentenced to be burned for a second fall into heresy. Some of them, unable to withstand the torture, confessed to heresy, especially since the judges took care in advance to find witnesses to the secret rites of trampling the cross and worshiping idols. Others starved themselves to death without confessing to anything. Later, executions began: from time to time, by order of the king, knights were burned in small groups at the stake in Paris itself or in other cities of the kingdom. Without waiting for the end of the investigation, Pope Clement V announced the dissolution of the order and its ban throughout the Christian world. The same tragic fate was in store for the last Grand Master of the Order, Jacques de Molay, and his colleague, Prior of Normandy, Geoffroy de Charnay. The Grand Master and Prior of Normandy spent five and a half years in prison, subjected to sophisticated torture. At last the day came when they walked barefoot in the yellow caps of heretics for the last time through Paris, accompanied by guards and monks. On an island in the middle of the Seine, a fire had already been lit. The French king Philip IV the Handsome, the biggest debtor of the Knights Templar, came to watch the execution. The Grand Master and his colleague went up to the fire in the square in front of Notre Dame in Paris on March 18, 1313 in the presence of the king, bishops and many citizens. Already from the fire, according to legend, Jacques de Molay cursed the King of France, Pope Clement and the royal legalist Guillaume Nogaret, the military leader who took the most active part in the persecution of the Order, who arrested the Grand Master and personally tortured him. Yes, his last words were curses addressed to them. The curse turned out to be effective: within a year, one after the other, all three died ...
But the order of the templars itself ceased to exist. Castles and lands of the Templars passed to the crown, ships were confiscated. Most of the property of the Order was transferred to the Hospitallers, eternal rivals, and the Temple Castle in Paris also went to them. Centuries later, they again remembered the terrible curse of the Grand Master - it was in the former residence of the order that the last French king Louis XVI spent the night before his execution ...
But it was far from everywhere and not always, however, only in Spain and Portugal, where there was a struggle with the Arabs, the monarchs did not give offense to the Templars: they needed the knight brothers as a powerful allied military force. True, in order to formally fulfill the ban of the Pope, new knightly orders were established, to which both the property of the templars and themselves were transferred. The possessions of the templars on the island of Cyprus have been preserved intact. In these places, the Templars were fully justified and joined other knightly orders. In others, although they were arrested under pressure from the papal authorities, their treatment was very humane.
Little now reminds of the order, which was not inferior to the kings in power and influence. There remains, for example, the name of the Parisian Rue Temple, laid on the site where the Templar castle once stood, although it itself was demolished long ago. And there are many mysteries that have not yet been answered. They still excite the imagination of many people to this day.
The religious beliefs of the templars are mysterious. Special studies are even devoted to this - both quite scientific and complete mystics. For example, researchers are trying to explain what the Baphomet idol personified, which the Knights of the Temple supposedly worshiped. It is suggested that in the beliefs of the knights, who for decades created the traditions and attributes of brotherhood, hatred for the infidels and ... for the Pope himself was bizarrely mixed. After all, the templars valued nothing as highly as absolute independence and power over everything and everyone. They believed too much in their power, and just for this reason they were defeated so easily and quickly. In general, it is assumed that the names of the prophet Mohammed and the title of the Pope are bizarrely combined in the name of Baphomet. And the fact that the knights considered themselves beyond the control of the pope is confirmed by one of the formulas of the order: the dedicated templar was called "The Friend of the Lord and could Speak with the Lord if he wanted." In other words, in order to communicate with the Almighty, he did not need the mediation of the pope and the Christian church ...
What can I say, in the entire history of the Crusades, part of which is the history of the Knights Templar, there is also a lot of unknown. Probably new interesting discoveries archaeologists' excavations in ancient cities and battlefields will bring, perhaps, ancient manuscripts, still unknown until now ... And, of course, any person is interested in seeing the holy places with their own eyes. These days, getting to them is much easier than during the Crusades...

In the twelfth century, the Christian church was no longer like the small Jewish sect that it was when it began. Its influence extended to all areas of life in Western Europe, but it was still far from the time of that gloomy obscurantism that the enlightened generations of the eighteenth century reproached the Middle Ages. Over the minds in those years ruled the abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, who during his lifetime was canonized as a saint. A mystical writer, a great orator, he was the inspiration behind the Second Crusade. Popes listened to his opinion, and the feudal lords were afraid of him. During this period, all political activity took place under the sign of rivalry between the clergy of the Catholic Church and the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire for influence on the lords.

Under these conditions, Bernard founded in 1128 the military-monastic Order of the Knights of the Temple - the Templars (templars). The core of the order was the knights who returned from Palestine. His development was swift. More and more volunteers, or rather novices, poured into the ranks of the Templars. From the very beginning, the order firmly settled in the lands of Western Europe, divided at that time into nine provinces: France, Portugal, Castile, Aragon, Mallorca, Germany, Italy, Sicily and England with Ireland. By the beginning of the XIV century, the templars had almost ten thousand possessions throughout Western Europe, of which about a thousand were in France. The possessions, as well as the military posts and fortifications subordinate to them, covered Europe with a dense network.

Three categories of brothers made up the order itself: knights - all of noble birth or - very rarely - elevated to the nobility, the leaders of the residences were elected from among them; confessors-monks who were with the masters or served in churches; sergeants, from among whom the knights recruited squires and infantry in military campaigns and who ran the household and managed the property of the order, among them were free peasants and artisans. There was also a category of Temple guests who provided temporary services to the order. The Order also took under its protection those who adjoined it: seniors who showed loyal feelings towards him; merchants who used his commercial services; artisans who settled on his lands, and many others. At the bottom of this hierarchical pyramid were dependent peasants, attached to the land by feudal dependence, and dark-skinned slaves exported from Palestine. At the top reigned the Grand Master, elected by a meeting of representatives of the nine provinces of Western Europe. The Grand Master had absolute power, with the exception of issues related to the admission of new knights, the sale of the Order's property, the appointment of the highest leaders of the provinces - they were decided by the assembly.

The Templars did not recognize any other authority over themselves. The Order of the Temple enjoyed the right of extraterritoriality and did not fall under the jurisdiction of the authorities of those lands on whose territory it was located. The order did not pay any taxes to anyone, including church tithes, as well as customs duties. He had his own police and his own tribunal. Formally, the Grand Master was subordinate only to the pope, who himself was afraid of him.

The military power of the order was significant. In its ranks there were about 15 thousand knights and 45 thousand sergeants, not counting priests, peasants, artisans, guests of the Temple and vassals. This army was scattered throughout Western Europe and could not fight. But on the other hand, she could control the values ​​​​of the order over vast territories, the wealth that the Templars collected with incredible greed in the spaces from the Atlantic Ocean to Palestine, using methods hitherto unknown in medieval Europe.

Like all monks, the Templars took vows: obedience, chastity and personal poverty. But the order itself, as an organization, could have property. Its charter directly obliged the accumulation of valuables and forbade the sale of property without the permission of the supreme council. The stinginess of the templars reached the point that they refused to ransom their brothers from captivity, as was customary everywhere at that time. In every possible way, the templars collected their treasures.

In addition, the order created a fleet and achieved a monopoly in sailing the Mediterranean between Europe and the Middle East. His ships carried troops of the crusaders, pilgrims going to the Holy Land, among whom were rich princes who generously paid for their services.

Merchants also used the Templar fleet to transport their goods. Weapons, horses, food were brought from Europe. To Europe - wine from Palestine, spices and sugar from India, fabrics from Damascus, carpets and silks from Persia, as well as Arabic perfumery.

The order accumulated even greater wealth in Europe itself. To enlist the support of the knights of the order, monarchs and wealthy feudal lords gave the Templars lands and castles. In one way or another, he took possession of entire counties with their lands, rivers, forests, fields and peasants.

The Templars set up their own bank. Each possession had its branch. Merchants placed gold and other precious metals in the bank, and in return received exchange notes. The Templar Bank also accepted for safekeeping the treasures of monarchs, lords and bishops. Monks put gold into circulation. They offered it at a high percentage to kings, feudal lords, bishops, communes and merchants. The Order became the largest usurer in Europe.

Among the borrowers of the temple were the episcopates and communes, which, starting from 1140, began the construction of churches in the Gothic style. At that time, most French cities had very limited funds for development. If their magistrates had free money, then first of all they spent it on strengthening the city walls.

It is all the more surprising that within a few years, money was found throughout France for the construction of huge Gothic cathedrals. The only organization capable of giving them was the Knights Templar. In less than a hundred years, eighty huge cathedrals and seventy smaller temples were built.

Construction required the involvement of a large number of people. But workers cannot be paid their wages in promissory notes. Loans given to bishops and communes were to be backed by money. However, money, especially metallic money, was then a rarity. There were almost no silver ones. That silver, only about a ton, that the Templars took out of Palestine, was clearly not enough. There was practically no mining of precious metals in Europe. And deposits in Germany, the Czech Republic and Russia have not yet been discovered. Gold was also not enough.

And yet the Templars minted their coin, silver, not gold. During the XII - XIII centuries, such an amount of silver money was produced that they became a common means of payment. With this money, a campaign was launched to build temples.

But where did the metal come from? Nobody knew this. Rather, those who knew remained silent. The Templars were generally silent about many things. So, the charter of the order was known only to the knights, but they could not keep it at home, so that it would not fall into the hands of the uninitiated, even among the members of the order. Masters made decisions in deep secrecy. The archives of the order have mysteriously disappeared.

There are many more unexplained, and sometimes inexplicable, facts in the history of the order. Some of them concern the Templar fleet. For contacts with England, they had ports on the Atlantic coast. The location of the ports cannot be logically explained based on the needs of the Templars in Europe. This is La Rochelle. Located 150 kilometers south of Nantes and 70 kilometers north of Rouen at the mouth of the Gironde River, on the banks of a deep bay, it is well fortified and impregnable both from the sea and from land. (As Cardinal Richet-Lieu later became convinced.) From this point of view, the choice of the Templars does not surprise us. Another thing is not clear, why did the order need a port located far south of England and north of Portugal, the road to which was safer and more convenient by land? However, La Rochelle was by no means a secondary point for the Templars. The residence, located there, controlled a vast area, and from all sides of France, seven "roads of the Templars" converged to it.

The power of the order grew, its influence increased in many countries of Western Europe. For 200 years, the Templars were not afraid of anyone or anything. This continued until October 12, 1307 - until the day when the King of France, Philip the Handsome, launched a sudden and well-prepared operation against the order. The Templars were accused of heresy, their possessions were destroyed, the brothers were arrested, and their property was confiscated. The Pope issued a decree dissolving the order. Those arrested were handed over to the hands of the Inquisition. Among the many confessions, one is especially interesting for us - the protocol of the testimony of the knight Jean de Chalon. He claimed that on the night before the arrests, three covered wagons came out of Paris, loaded with chests of Temple treasures. The wagons were accompanied by a convoy of forty-two knights, led by Master Hugh de Chalon and Gerard de Villiers. The knights and cargo were supposed to arrive at one of the ports, where seventeen ships of the order were waiting for them. The disproportion between the number of ships and the contents of the three wagons is striking. But perhaps there were other convoys heading to this port? We don't know what was in the chests. The word "treasure" can be misleading. Now it means "an accumulation of gold, silver and other precious things." In the Middle Ages, it also had this meaning, but it was also used to refer to the secret archives of kings and communes. We have no doubt that the treasures of the Temple, taken out of Paris, are the secret archives of the Order, which had to be hidden in a safe place.

To which port could the knights have gone on that troubling night? Of course, to the port that belonged to the Templars. Others were unreliable, and there were no Chapter ships. Remains La Rochelle. Reliably fortified, it could withstand the siege of the king's gendarmes. A road guarded by the Templars led to it, on which replacement horses could be found. But we do not know whether the cargo has reached its destination. It is only known that the archives of the order do not appear in the lists of the property seized by the people of the king, and the names of the knights who accompanied the cargo are named along with those who fled from arrest. Among the ships that took refuge in Portugal, there were no ships from La Rochelle. They disappeared forever. Researchers face three questions:

1. Where did the Templars get silver - a metal not found by that time in Europe, with which they literally flooded the countries of the Holy Roman Empire?

2. Why did they need the port of La Rochelle?

3. Where did the ships loaded with the "treasures" of the order, which they managed to save in 1307, go?

Jean de la Varande, a historian from Normandy, says through the mouth of a character in one of his books that the Templars brought a lot of this metal from ... Mexico, where the expression “to be rich” came from, where the word “silver” is a synonym for the word “wealth”, while how natural it would be to speak of gold in such a way! Unfortunately, Varand does not indicate the source of his information. Therefore, we will try to find confirmation of this hypothesis ourselves.

One of the evidence can be found by carefully examining the painting of the pediment of the Temple of the Templars in the city of Verelai in Burgoni, which is opted for in the 12th century. Among the people surrounding Christ, in the image you can see a man, a woman and a child with disproportionate large ears. The man is dressed in a Native American-style feather attire and wears a Viking helmet on his head. The woman is bare-chested and in a long skirt. Perhaps medieval painters heard something about people with big ears. We now know that the Incas and their predecessors, whom they imitated, had the habit of retracting their ears, inserting heavy rings of gold, copper or stone into their lobes. This is hard to imagine. They certainly knew about the Vikings, as indicated by the helmet on the man's head. Mixing these two concepts, they drew an "idealized" Viking. There is further evidence that the Templars were aware of the existence of the continent we now call America; recently, the seals of the order were found in the National Archives of France, captured by the people of Philip the Handsome in 1307. On one of them, attached to the Document relating to the jurisdiction of the Grand Master, the inscription "The Secret of the Temple" is visible. In the center is the figure of a man who can only be an American Indian. He is dressed in a loincloth, on his head is a feather headdress, the same as that worn by the Indians. North America, Mexico and Brazil. AT right hand he holds a bow, below, under | bow, a swastika is depicted - a cross with curved ends, a symbol of the Viking Age, common in Scandinavia.

Varand was right on at least one point. The Templars knew about the existence of the New World. And that was their big secret. The secret is so important that its preservation was entrusted to the highest hierarchs of the order and the Grand Master himself. It was the secret of secrets, which even the knights of the 1st rank were not privy to.

We know the origin of this mystery. In the 10th century, the German-Danish Vikings spent 22 years in Mexico before heading to Peru, where they founded the Tiahuanaco empire. The Irish by that time had already firmly mastered the east coast of the current United States. At the beginning of the 11th century, the Norwegian Vikings created prosperous colonies in the territory of the modern state of Massachusetts, which did not lose touch with Scandinavia. At the same time, the Norman king Rolland captured the northern coast of Europe and began to rule in Normandy. Here the legends about the campaigns of the Vikings across the ocean have been preserved. Hence, the secret services of the Order, more than 100 years later, could learn about the existence of a continent across the ocean.

But did the Templars really get their silver from American mines?

Archaeologists claim that the Mexican Indians knew the technology of metal processing for about a thousand years. This is confirmed in the legends of local tribes, which say that the technique and art of metallurgy was brought in 967 AD by the white god Quetzalcoatl. From various sources it is known that the Viking Ulman arrived in Mexico this year. Until that time, metal products were not used in Mexico. They were not found either in the era of the Teotihuacan culture, or in the classical era of the Maya.

It is known that the Mexican Indians, especially the Toltecs, were great masters of gold and silver. Unfortunately, little is left of their magnificent products, since the conquistadors melted into ingots all the precious metals that fell into their hands. Copper was the rarest and most valuable metal. From it, in addition to jewelry, coins, needles, fish hooks, knives were made. And silver was considered a more valuable metal than gold.

Metallurgy in Peru was more developed than in Central America. This is logical. On the one hand, it received an important cultural impetus of Chinese and Indochinese origin, as the German historian X. Heine-Göldern showed: the Chavin culture was born suddenly, without local predecessors, many centuries before our era. She possessed high level technical knowledge, including metal smelting.

On the other hand, the Vikings, who had been in Mexico for only twenty-odd years, ruled the empire of Tiahuanaco for about three hundred years: and their followers, the Incas, for another two hundred and fifty years.

Peru processed gold, silver, shampi copper - an alloy of gold and copper, bronze and even platinum. They knew how to melt, forge, weld metals, cast them into molds. They made bimetallic products, and also knew how to cover silver with gold and copper - silver in such a way that modern metallurgical scientists can do this only with the use of electrolysis.

Gold and silver production in Peru is more famous than Mexican. Although the Spanish officers and soldiers hurried to melt down their share of the booty into ingots, numerous discoveries of unlooted burials made it possible to compile an impressive collection of magnificent examples of Inca jewelry.

Various pre-Columbian civilizations of the American continent, for all their differences, had one thing in common: stone buildings and sculpture. The bearers of these civilizations could work the most durable stones - a task that modern specialists, equipped with the most advanced tools, can hardly cope with. So far, not a single iron or steel tool dating from this era has been found. Various copper and bronze tools have been found, but none of these soft metals can handle stone. In addition, it is known that iron resists the action of time poorly and disappears without leaving a trace. Now we know that the ancient Egyptians used iron products. Although before the discovery of the burial place of Tutankhamun, not a single iron object was found either.

Archaeologists argue that the sculptors and builders of monumental structures in pre-Columbian America could not create their works using only obsidian or bronze tools. Any analysis will show that they must have used a steel tool. The peoples of America were familiar with iron and steel, at least in the territory of the Tiahuanaco empire. There is compelling linguistic evidence for this. So, in the language of the Incas and Quechua there is a word for iron, but no name for steel. And in the Guarani language there is a designation for both metals.

In addition, the Vikings, who landed in America in 967, owned, no doubt, weapons and tools made of steel. Bronze Age for them it had already ended one and a half thousand years before. During their stay in Mexico, they were never able to teach the Toltecs the art of obtaining and working iron, a craft more complex than the processing of soft metals. Those tools that could remain after their departure, in the five hundred years that separated them from the arrival of the Spanish colonialists, would crumble to dust. In Tiahuanaco, the Vikings should, logically, organize the production of iron, but this skill was lost as a result of the death of the empire.

By the time the Spaniards arrived in Peru, as in Mexico, there could not have been many steel tools left. Most likely, they have already disappeared, and even their names have been forgotten. But the name of iron has been preserved. It was found in mines and mines, but they lost the ability to smelt it from ore. On the contrary, in those regions of Paraguay and Brazil, where some of the surviving peoples of Tiahuanaco took refuge, steel tools and weapons continued to be used, albeit on an increasingly modest scale. And in the era of the conquest, the memories of this were still alive. So, the treasures of Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, accumulated over many generations, are estimated at two and a half tons of gold. Whereas as soon as the ransom for the ruler Atahualpa amounted to six tons of gold and twelve tons of silver.

In Peru, the extraction of precious metals was well organized. And gold mining by washing was carried out at an industrial level.

Now let's try to answer one more question.

Suppose that the silver used by the Templars to finance the construction of Gothic cathedrals in Europe was mined in South America. And the port of La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast of France was built to import American silver. It remains to find out where the ships went, on which the secret archives of the order, which mysteriously disappeared in 1307, were loaded?

We are in a position to answer this question: ships with Templars who escaped arrest in 1307, and possibly with secret archives orders, found refuge in Mexico.

But why did the Templars decide to go to this particular country? What they knew about existence Central America, does not surprise us. For more than one hundred and fifty years, silver bars have been shipped from South America to Europe. The Templars maintained close contact with the descendants of the Vikings who visited Mexico around 1000. It is possible that in 1194 they undertook a reconnaissance campaign in this area. But since they did not find enough precious metals there, their main goal in America, they no longer renewed their attempts.

The situation began to change when the union of the king of France and the pope began to threaten the very existence of the order. The Templars, unlike the Order of the Hospitallers, throughout their history did not acquire a completely autonomous territory in Europe, where they could be protected from pressure and threats from both secular and spiritual authorities. The case could end badly at any moment. The knights began to think about finding a safe haven in the event of a retreat. The Vikings, trading with the Templars, did not promise, however, a warm welcome on their territory. Therefore, until 1290, no attempts were made to settle in South America. And after 1290, they would have been doomed to failure: the empire of Tia-huanaco was destroyed by wild barbarian tribes. Only Mexico remained.

There is no doubt that, going to America, the Templars thought that they were talking about a temporary refuge. But their calculations were not justified. The Order is gone forever. Isolated across the ocean, the Templars could quench their thirst for conquest there and spread their faith, which in Europe bordered on heresy, among the semi-savage tribes of the Indians, but time passed, and no one took the place of the deceased. Fifty years after the arrival of the last of the Templars, not a single white man remained in Mexico.

On March 18, 1314, it was overcast in Paris. Loud-voiced heralds walked through the narrow streets, loudly announcing the trial of the vicious Templar scoundrels. On a high platform, under the protection of guards, which separated the crowd from noble gentlemen, monks and lawyers, the ecclesiastical court was held over heretics and villains. On the same day, the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, and his closest associates were sentenced to be burned at the stake. Jacques de Molay went up to the tall woodpile, took off and carefully folded the Templar cloak, and calmly climbed up. When the fire flared up, he loudly said: “Pope Clement 5, in forty days you will come to me, King Philip 4 of France, it will not be even a year before you join us.” . The predictions of the master who was dying at the stake were fulfilled exactly. On April 20, Pope Clement went to God in agony. His stomach hurt, and the doctors prescribed to drink crushed emeralds, which tore the guts of the high priest. In November, King Philip IV of France fell off his horse while hunting. Paralyzed, he was picked up and brought to the palace by the courtiers. There Philip the Handsome died, stiff and unable to move. And over the body of the lord of France, the heirs grappled. The sons of Philip IV were unable to pass the throne to their children. Their nephew, Edward of England, went to France in a war that dragged on for more than a century. The country that robbed and killed the greatest of knightly orders was itself plundered and humiliated.

AT 1118 g . nine French knights decided to create a military-monastic order - "to protect the pilgrims going to Jerusalem." It was organized along the lines of the Order of John of Jerusalem, whose members were called Hospitallers, or Johnites. As a residence, the generous King of Jerusalem gave them the territory of the former mosque of Kubbat al-Zahra - the Temple of Solomon.

The main residence of the Order was in France, in Paris, in the Temple Castle (“Temple”), which gave the knights a second name - the Templars. It was a powerful Order that absorbed the traditions of the early monastic orders. The Order of the Temple immediately received untold riches - secular lords donated land to it.

From the very beginning, the Order of the Temple was dual: on the one hand, knightly, and on the other, monastic. Even his seal depicted a horse with two riders in the saddle. In the Order there were monk brothers, knight brothers (they did not take monastic vows), sergeants (just warriors in the service of the Temple) and monastic and artisan brothers (people under the auspices of the Temple). Most of the knight brothers were in Palestine and fought with the infidels. They said about knight brothers: "drinks like a Templar" and "swears like a Templar." Pride and arrogance they were not to hold.

In contrast to them, the monk brothers organized a network of commanderies throughout Europe, in which the wealth of the Order was stored, which the monks used exclusively for the needs of the afflicted. So, once during a crop failure in a week, only one commandery fed 10,000 people. The Templars had two major centers - the eastern forest between the Seine and the Oba and the port of La Rochelle. In the first of them, treasure hunters are still trying to find traces of the treasures of the Templars. But the whole forest in the Middle Ages was very swampy, so it is unlikely that anyone will be able to find a hiding place in the place of dried marshes. Roads free from royal inspections led to La Rochelle. The most surprising thing is that in principle there was nothing to carry to this port - America had not yet been discovered at that time. And yet, through all of France, carts crawled to and from La Rochelle under the protection of the sergeants of the Order. Income | Templars grew steadily, and they were nicknamed the people of silver. Subsequently, versions arose that the Templars were able to get to America and extract silver from the mines of Peru and Mexico. Of course, such wealth could not but causeenvy and malice among competitors.

The richest and most powerful Order had many enemies. Bad relations developed with the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, who, after fleeing Palestine, settled first in Cyprus and then in Rhodes. The white guest cross with forked ends competed with the Templar red cross on the seas and on land. Relations with the Order of St. Mary of the Teutonic Order were also cool. The Templars quickly quarreled with the new monastic orders. Looked askance at the Order and secular rulers. Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II plundered the possessions of the Templars in Sicily. The King of France, Philip IV the Beautiful, who strengthened his power in the country, was unhappy that the Temple fortress was located in Paris, in which the Grand Master sits - a more powerful ruler than himself. The king wanted to receive tolls on the Order's roads and taxes from the Order's lands. There were only two ways to do this: lead the order and make it royal, or destroy it. AT 1305 . Philip the Handsome wanted to join the Order of the Temple. However, the chapter of the Order answered him that among the brothers there could be no crowned lords. Then Philip made a new proposal. Since the war in Palestine came to an end, and the knightly orders were outside the Holy Land, it is necessary to unite two of them - the Order of the Temple and the Order of John of Jerusalem. At the head of the united Order, in order not to belittle the honor of either the Templars or the Hospitallers, the son of the most Christian king of France, a descendant of the famous crusader Saint Louis, should stand. However, this plan also failed.

And then Philip the Handsome chose the second path. AT 1305 . for the first time accusations were made against the Knights Templar of heresy and blasphemy. It was decided to defeat the Order where it was strongest - in France. One of the tasks of the royal investigators was to seize the untold wealth of the Templars. However, disappointment awaited them here: the treasury was empty, there were not even holy vessels in the order church. There was talk that a couple of days before the arrest, carts loaded with hay left the Temple gates somewhere. Why it was necessary to take hay from Paris to the village, no one thought. And then it was too late to guess. The same thing happened throughout France. Only in one commandery was it possible to capture relics in the chapel - a bronze head with the stored cranial bones of some saint. The money of the order disappeared without a trace.

The Pope decided to take matters into his own hands. Church commissions were set up to try the Templars. They included the bishop of the city, mendicant monks; two Carmelites, two Franciscans and two Dominicans. The Commission first accused the Templars of heresy. These accusations were confirmed by the fact that the object of worship of the Knights of the Temple were idols - the so-called "heads of Baphomet." These were bronze heads, sometimes with three faces, with horns, with bright inlaid eyes. For the Templars, these heads were considered a symbol of well-being and prosperity, the fertility of the surrounding fields. But for the investigation it was a sign of devil worship. And the horns on their heads, and three faces, and a skull - all these symbols were associated with cabalism, witchcraft and alchemy, which undoubtedly spoke of the cult of Satan. Here, compromises were impossible for the Dominicans - devil worshipers, occultists and sorcerers must be destroyed.

It would seem that after the verdict of the Paris Tribunal, the fate of the Templars was decided everywhere. However, in reality, it was not even possible to seize property everywhere. After the death of Clement V and Philip IV, both the Vatican and the French kings had no time for the Templars, and in the Iberian Peninsula they were needed for the war with the Moors. Therefore, no one was particularly engaged in the persecution of the Knights of the Temple there. In Castile and Aragon, the knights of the Order of the Temple entered in full force and with all their property into the Spanish Order of Calatrava. In Germany, the process completely broke down: in Frankfurt, the Templars called for trial appeared in full combat attire, with spears in their hands. The court did not sit long and all charges were dropped. Only in remote provincial England in 1311 . the king and the inquisitors managed to hold a trial of the arrested knights.

As for the silver of the Templars, it was not possible to find it. Neither the court, nor the Inquisition, nor the investigators could get to the bottom of the truth.

There are many versions according to which the treasures of the Templars, as well as the Holy Grail, the Cross of the Lord and the Ark of the Covenant, are stored somewhere in Spain, Ethiopia, Scotland or Canada.

In the book of two historians - the Dane Erlig Haarling and the Englishman Henry Lincoln - "The Secret Island of the Templars" it is proved that the treasures of the Order of the Knights Templars destroyed in the XIII century are hidden on the small Baltic island of Bornholm, where 45 thousand people now live.

According to the theory of Baigent, Lee and Lincoln, the Templars were the guardians of the Grail (the grail in legends is considered a symbolic expression of the descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene). The connection between the legend and the legacy of the Templars seems real enough. For the Templars, Mary Mandalina was very important, their oath was addressed to "God and Our Lady". Women during the first five years took the oath of the Order and remained its members. (We will try to cover this topic in more detail in the following articles). Also, one of the relics of the Templars was the right index finger of John the Baptist, according to legend, the finger - part of a headless body, was taken to France. There is another legend that the head of John the Baptist was buried under the fortress of Herod in Jerusalem, where the Templars were excavating. What is the true treasure of the Templars: silver or their spiritual heritage, one can also argue.

However, the missing treasures have not yet been found. They are still looking for them to this day. Will there ever be a lucky person who will solve the mystery of the missing wealth?

Secrets of the Templars

A lot has been written about the Templars, but the secrets and mysteries associated with them are not getting smaller. For example, why did the “poor knighthood of Christ and the Temple of Solomon” (such is the official name of the Knights Templar) become the largest landowner and owner of untold wealth, far exceeding the treasury of any then sovereign in Western Europe? Founded in 1118 by nine knights, the Knights Templar, after only half a century, became the most powerful and wealthy organization in Europe. The Templars built roads, fought wars, financed the construction of Gothic cathedrals. They say they even sailed to America long before Columbus. But ... in 1307 they disappeared from the historical arena as mysteriously as they appeared on it.

Questions are multiplying. Where did the material and spiritual treasures of the Templars go? Why did the Templars pay so much attention to resurrecting the legends of King Arthur and the Brotherhood of the Round Table? How are the Templars and the Holy Grail connected, were they really the guardians of the sacred relic? What gave spiritual strength to tens of thousands of knights in white cloaks? Who were they? For hundreds of years, people have been occupied with the question: are they the servants of the Lord or the helpers of the devil? Innocently slandered victims or malicious heretics who got what they deserved? We will not delve into this long-standing dispute, in which one can hardly find the truth. Let's talk about historical events that took place more than 800 years ago, and try to lift the veil over the secrets of the Order of the Temple.

At the very end of the distant XI century, events took place that turned the course of world history into a new direction. An era has begun crusades. It began with the Clermont Cathedral, which took place in the south of France in 1095. Thousands of participants, inspired by the passionate sermon of Pope Urban II, knelt down and vowed to release the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, captured by that time by Muslims. Those who took the vow, as a sign of fidelity, sewed a cross to their clothes, and many, in a fit of religious enthusiasm, burned the cross directly on the body with a red-hot iron. They became known as the Crusaders. Tens of thousands of people went to recapture the Holy Sepulcher - men and women, young and old, even children. Among them were monks and artisans, merchants and peasants, naive poets and cynical robbers.

But, for the most part, dying on a long journey from hardships and hardships, ordinary participants in the crusades were mainly suitable only to die with joy for the glory of the Almighty, having accomplished a feat of piety and thereby earning a place in paradise. The only ones who could adequately resist the dashing Muslim riders were the knights. Not every good warrior could be considered a knight, but every knight was obliged to become a good warrior. In those years, they did not yet wear the shiny steel armor that appeared later. Armament was simple, morals - severe. Many of them were sinners who wanted to wash away their sins in battles with the infidels. Among them were fanatics obsessed with sincere faith. From this alloy of scoundrels and saints, the first knightly orders were formed. Orders arose due to the fusion of the ascetic ideal with the ideal of chivalry. But not yet becoming ascetic, the knightly ideal was already a Christian ideal, for knights - "those who serve the Mother of God, devoted to her with all their hearts" - were considered not only the defenders of the unarmed and weak, widows and orphans, but most importantly - the defenders of Christianity from infidels and heretics.

To become a knight meant to take an oath not to retreat a single step before the infidels. "It's better to be dead than to be thought a coward," said the old French proverb. Thus, the mission of protecting the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem recaptured from the Muslims and guarding pilgrims to the Holy Land, helping those of them who are sick or poor, this mission stemmed from the ideal of Christian chivalry. Thanks to the dominance of the ascetic worldview in the then society, it was well combined with the taking of monastic vows about chastity, poverty, and obedience.

This is how knightly orders arose - voluntary unions of the brotherhood of knights-monks. The 11th and 12th centuries were the heyday of chivalry. In the twelfth century, the Christian church was no longer like the small Jewish sect that it was when it began. Its influence spread to all areas of life in Western Europe, but it was still far from the time of that gloomy obscurantism that the enlightened generations of the 18th century reproached the Middle Ages. During this period, all political activity took place under the sign of rivalry between the clergy of the Catholic Church and the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation for influence on the lords.

In those years, the talented young (he was not yet 30 years old at that time) abbot Bernard of Clairvaux ruled over the minds, who during his lifetime was canonized (recognized as a saint) and whose fame extended far beyond the monastery entrusted to him in Clairvaux. The strength and persuasiveness of his words could be the envy of speakers ancient rome; people believed him, because in his sermons he miraculously found his way to the heart of everyone and did not just retell the Scriptures, but shared his experiences. His voice sounded lonely, but the whole Christian world listened to this voice. Bernard did not like complex and obscure theories; he spoke very simply about the deepest truths, considering the moral purity of a person, and not the number of memorized psalms, to be the fundamental basis of any spiritual achievements. A mystical writer, a great orator, he was the inspiration behind the Second Crusade. Popes listened to his opinion, and the feudal lords were afraid of him. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, in his essay “For the Glory of the New Host,” stated: “There is no law that would forbid a Christian to lift a sword. The gospel prescribes restraint and justice to the soldiers, but it does not tell them: “Drop your weapons and give up military affairs!” The gospel only forbids unjust war, especially between Christians. For those who have chosen a military life, there is no nobler task than to scatter the pagans who are eager to seize the Holy Land, than to cast aside these servants of the devil who dream of taking away from Christians the sanctuary of God hidden in Jerusalem. Oh, may the children of faith draw both swords against their enemies!”

In 1099 Christendom rejoiced. Still would! The result of the First Crusade was the liberation of Jerusalem, which means that the Holy Land ceased to belong to the infidels. And much more important than the expansion of territorial boundaries was the return of hope to the hearts of people who had regained the shrine. The liberation of Jerusalem was, figuratively speaking, a liberation from fetters that were more spiritual than material in nature. Longing for the real, deep, great, people of different nationalities, men and women, young men and old people, rushed to Jerusalem with one goal: to bow to the Holy places. Unfortunately, the religious impulse that elevates the soul is not a sufficient protection against all the vicissitudes of the path. Having overcome many hardships of sea travel (the most accessible way from

Europe to the Holy Land passed through the Mediterranean), pilgrims often became victims at first just gangs, and then organized gangs of robbers. The ease of money and almost complete impunity led to a rapid increase in the number of robbers, and this, in turn, made the journey to Jerusalem dangerous not only for the wallet, but also for the lives of the pilgrims themselves.

The joy and relief with which the king of Jerusalem Baldwin II met the appearance in 1118 at his court of nine knights of different origins and from different cities - "people of the sword and spear" led by Hugh de Payen, a poor lord from Champagne, are understandable. They were united by one common goal: to protect the pilgrims from the attacks of the Saracens and to guard the cisterns with drinking water from robbers. Nine knights offered the king to take under his protection the caravans of pilgrims in the final and most turbulent part of their journey: from the port city of Jaffa through the Château Pelerin Gorge to Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, no historical documents have been preserved that describe this moment, and therefore we have so far only to guess about the motives that moved the knights and forced them to take on such an unsafe business without visible benefit for themselves. Officially, it is believed that they were trying to achieve absolution and earn eternal salvation. Let's leave it without comment, especially since further developments so far only confirm this version.

The Jerusalem king Baldwin II provided the knights with housing in his palace (they did not have housing in Jerusalem), and the next year - in the house of the canons, located on the site of the former temple of the legendary Jewish king Solomon. It is believed that this is why the knights, who formed the backbone of the future order, are popularly called templars, knights of the Order of the Temple. Temple in French is "temple", and therefore they are known to us as the Templars. In the face of the Jerusalem patriarch, the knights declared their spiritual brotherhood and swore "in obedience, chastity and poverty" to tirelessly fight the infidels, and to these three monastic vows they add a fourth, their own: to protect pilgrims.

Thus arose the order of the Templars, the full name of which was: "the brothers of the army of the Temple, the knights of Christ, the poor of Solomon's temple fighting together." The Templars were not the first. As early as the end of the 11th century, the Order of St. John the Hospitallers appeared in Palestine. But it was the templars who most fully embodied the image of a warrior - a monk, the ideal of a fighter - a religious ascetic, who became a role model for all subsequent knightly orders. With their personal courage and courage, they quickly gained respect and recognition. The Templars not only guarded the pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land, but also accompanied the king on his journeys, making them safe. Very soon, romantic legends began to be created about the order - about disinterested and fearless knights, ready to help a person in trouble. Numerous pilgrims spread the news of these glorious warriors to all corners of Europe, and in a few years there was no place in Europe where the exploits of the Templars would not be admired.

Saint Bernard, then still a simple abbot, wrote the Charter to the order, which forbade the Templars from any contact with those who were excommunicated, all the more there could be no question of admitting them to the order. (However, later this rule was changed, allowing the brothers to go to the excommunicated knights, and also to allow them into their ranks - for the sake of saving their souls.) The brothers chose the meek Mother of God, Saint Mary, as the patroness of the order.

The Order Charter itself reflected the spirit of the traditions of the Cistercian monks. St. Bernard emphasized that the vow of poverty was fundamental for the Templars. Paragraph two of the Rules even ordered two templar brothers to eat from the same bowl. Bernard also made sure that nothing distracted the Templars from serving Christ. Any secular entertainments were forbidden - visits to spectacles, falconry, dice and other joys of life. Laughter, singing, vain talk were forbidden. The list of prohibitions was more than 40 items. Free time these "monks in spirit and fighters in arms" were to be filled with prayers, the singing of sacred psalms, and military exercises.

The official seal of the new order was the image of two knights riding one horse, which was supposed to mean not only brotherhood, but also extreme poverty.

A white cloak, worn over the rest of the clothes of the same color, became a kind of symbol of the templars. The knight - a monk who took three obligatory vows: poverty, chastity and obedience - with white clothes symbolized the pure holy life that he led, consecrating his soul to the Lord.

Being confident that the divine order in the world order should be reflected in the internal structure of the order, the Templars paid special attention to its structure. At the top reigned the Grand Master, elected by a meeting of representatives of the nine provinces of Western Europe. The Grand Master had absolute power, with the exception of issues related to the admission of new knights, the sale of the property of the order, the appointment of the highest leaders of the provinces - they were decided by the assembly. The Templars did not recognize any other authority over themselves. The Order of the Temple enjoyed the right of extraterritoriality and did not fall under the jurisdiction of the authorities of those lands on whose territory it was located. The order did not pay any taxes to anyone, including church tithes, as well as customs duties. He had his own police and his own tribunal. Formally, the Grand Master was subordinate only to the pope, who in fact was afraid of him.

The order itself was made up of three categories of brothers: knights - all of noble birth or - very rarely - elevated to the nobility, the leaders of the residences were elected from among them; confessors - monks who were with the masters or served in churches; sergeants, from among whom the knights recruited squires and infantry in military campaigns and who ran the household and managed the property of the order, among them were free peasants and artisans.

There was also a category of Temple guests who provided temporary services to the order. The Order also took under its protection those who adjoined it: seniors who showed loyal feelings towards him; merchants who used his commercial services; artisans who settled on his lands, and many others.

At the bottom of this hierarchical pyramid were dependent peasants, attached to the land by feudal dependence, and dark-skinned slaves exported from Palestine.

However, no matter what more or less complex and responsible posts people in the order occupied, they all had, as indicated by the Charter, the same duties and enjoyed the same privileges. The reason for occupying a particular position was exclusively the person’s own merits, because, as Bernard writes, “among them there is no difference between individuals, and the difference is more determined by the merits of a knight than by the nobility of blood.”

Simple novice brothers wore black cloaks and camisoles, and therefore, when the Templar warriors rushed to the attack, their first line was made up of horsemen in white, and the second - horsemen in black. Apparently, this is where the famous black-and-white standard of the order, the so-called "Bosean", the battle banner of the Templars, the combination of colors of which symbolized the constant struggle in the Cosmos and in man between Light and Shadow, originated. On the banner was a cross with an inscription in Latin addressed to the Lord: "Not to us, not to us, but to your name." The word "Bosean" became the battle cry of the knights.

It is still unclear why, despite the incredibly rapid growth in fame and the natural desire of many noble people of their time to faithfully serve the cause begun by the Templars, no new members were admitted to the order during the first nine years.

Now, after eight centuries, there is a huge number of opinions on this subject, often controversial and contradictory. One thing is certain: it could not have been an accident. And if we do not know the true reasons, then this does not mean at all that these reasons did not exist. They were, just as there were deep philosophical concepts and wisdom gleaned by the Templars in the East. Only being realists and well aware of the impossibility of publishing many truths because of the danger of profanation, the knights learned to keep this wisdom, and from the very moment of its foundation, the order could be likened to an iceberg, in which we can see only one tenth of its true size. Only by some of the brightest events in the history of the order can we now guess about that part of the "iceberg" that was under water, about those ideas and principles that led the "poor knights of Christ."

One such event took place in 1128. This year, by decision of the Church Council - the highest body, which met not for any reason, but only in exceptional cases - the official status of the Templars was approved: the knightly-monastic order. The pope himself personally took under his patronage a new order, whose members not only served the cause of Christ, but also had to protect the interests of this cause wherever they were. The same Council approved the Charter of the order, written, as mentioned above, by the famous Bernard of Clairvaux.

In 1139, the Pope of Rome grants significant privileges to the order: the templars from now on became independent of any authority - secular or ecclesiastical, political or religious.

The cathedral at Troyes was destined to become a turning point in the history of the Templars, for it begins a rapid growth in the number and wealth of the order. Despite the strict requirements for origin, lifestyle and behavior, more and more knights are accepted into the order.

Seven years later, under Pope Eugene III, a red cross with forked clawed ends appeared on the white cloak of the Templars. This cross of scarlet matter, located on the left, under the heart, is approved by the pope as their coat of arms. Such a "sign of triumph," says the pope, will be a shield for them, lest they flee before the infidels. However, the knights never ran away and always showed themselves worthy of their reputation - proud to the point of arrogance, brave to the point of recklessness and at the same time surprisingly disciplined, unparalleled among all the armies of the world.

The knights were united in "commanderships", small autonomous republics that had their own fortresses and were not dependent on the laws of the area in which they were located. To XIII century the Templars had about five thousand commanderies, covering almost all of Europe and the Middle East with their network. In the Holy Land alone, the order had 600 knights, 2,000 sergeants, and more than 5,000 ordinary horsemen. Such a force had to be reckoned with, especially since

The charter of the order forbade its members to retreat before the enemy, if the enemy did not outnumber them three times. The charter required complete and unconditional heroism from the knights. Together with the Knights - Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, the Templars constituted the standing army of the Christian states of the East. They were in the most difficult areas. During the assault on the next fortress, the monk-knights were the first to break into it.

But in 1291, the crusaders were finally expelled from Palestine and the Holy Land was irretrievably lost to the Christian world. The Templars moved to Europe, where they quickly created a kind of international state for which there were no national borders. This was an era of prosperity for the order, when its Grand Masters spoke to the kings on an equal footing.

From the very beginning, the order firmly settled in the lands of Western Europe, divided at that time into nine provinces: France, Portugal, Castile, Aragon, Mallorca, Germany, Italy, Sicily and England with Ireland. By the beginning of the XIV century, the templars had almost ten thousand possessions throughout Western Europe, of which about a thousand were in France. The possessions, as well as the military posts and fortifications of the Templars, covered Europe with a dense network. They owned hundreds of castles and a huge amount of land. The order, created as a symbol of poverty and simplicity, became the richest organization. The Templars invented the bill of exchange and became the largest usurers of their era, and the House of the Order of Paris became the center of European finance.

Due to constant contact with Muslim and Jewish cultures, the Templars possessed the most advanced technology of their time. The order did not skimp, allocating funds for the development of geodesy, cartography and navigation. It had its own ports, shipyards, as well as its own fleet, the ships of which were equipped with a curiosity unprecedented in those days - a magnetic compass.

And all of them, from masters to ordinary knights, were bound together by iron ties of obedience, discipline and secrecy. For, among other things, there was also a secret that united them. The secret that allowed the “poor knighthood of Christ and the Temple of Solomon”, created in 1118 by nine crusaders, to rapidly spread throughout Western Europe and become the largest landowner and owner of untold wealth, far exceeding the treasury of any then sovereign. The residence of the Templars in Paris became something like the Wall Street of the Middle Ages, and the order itself in the 12th-13th centuries was nothing more than the then IMF, which issued loans to European monarchs and merchants, financed the Crusades and other super projects. The Templars had a significant military force, had their own fleet, had at their disposal numerous castles and fortresses in Europe and the Middle East. Like all monks, the Templars took vows: obedience, chastity and personal poverty. But the order itself, as an organization, could have property. Its charter directly obliged the accumulation of valuables and forbade the sale of property without the permission of the supreme council.

The reasons for such a rapid growth in the financial and military power of the Order of the Temple of Solomon still do not have a satisfactory explanation. Historians mainly talk about significant donations from European monarchs and aristocracy to the treasury of the order, but they donated not only to them, there were already at least a dozen Catholic orders, but none of them in the XII-XIII centuries could compare in strength and wealth with the templars .

Or another mystery: the Templars generously paid with a silver coin, which in Europe at that time, which did not have significant silver deposits, was in great short supply. In this regard, some researchers make a rather fantastic assumption that the Templars discovered America long before Columbus and organized trade with the natives there, and it was they who supplied them with silver. This is allegedly supported by some frescoes in the surviving Templar castles, which seem to depict people of clearly Indian appearance.

Other historians believe that the Templars owe their unheard-of wealth to their established trade with the Muslim East, in which they were monopolists, since due to the Crusades, all of Western Europe was at war with the Muslims, and the Templars, with the help of secret diplomacy, maintained normal relations with the Saracens. relations. In any case, European chroniclers more than once accused the Knights of Solomon's Temple that by their actions or inaction they often helped the enemies of the Christian faith, as was the case during the Second Crusade during the siege of Damascus. There are even more fantastic assumptions about the sources of the Templar treasures: in the East, the templars got the secret of the philosophical alchemical stone and with its help turned lead into gold and silver.

There is an opinion that it was financial transactions that occupied a significant place in the activities of the Templars, the almost monopoly mining of silver and other "manipulations with material values", as well as secret rites and hidden disagreement with the official church (which in itself was a terrible crime) played in their fate was a fatal role and caused the death of the Order of the Temple.

On October 13, 1307, on Friday, on the same day and hour, throughout France, the deputies of Philip the Handsome, having broken the seals, got acquainted with the contents of the secret dispatch of the king. The order was clear and subject to immediate execution. And in the morning twilight, several thousand Templars were arrested, the order's houses and castles were placed under the supervision of the royal authorities, all the property of the order was confiscated. An armed detachment of royal guards, led by Chancellor Guillaume de Nogaret, broke into the Parisian residence of the order, the Temple. Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who was there, and another hundred and fifty templars offered no resistance and allowed themselves to be taken to prison. The Order of the Templars, having existed for almost 200 years, was destroyed: on April 3, 1312, it was dissolved by a bull of Pope Clement V, and its leaders, led by Jacques de Molay, after a long litigation burned at the stake.

What was the reason that a powerful military-religious organization, which had enormous influence, means and authority, practically ceased to exist within a day? And without any resistance! Why did the professional warrior-monks, perfectly wielding all types of weapons, dutifully allow themselves and their master to be seized? There is something inexplicable about this! Obviously, this is another of the many mysteries of the already rather mysterious organization - the Knights Templar.

Those arrested were put on trial, many were tortured. At the same time, terrible confessions were made, but the accusations made were even more monstrous! The Templars were accused of not recognizing Christ, the Holy Virgin and the saints, spitting on the cross and trampling it underfoot. They declared that they worshiped in a dark cave an idol depicting a human figure, that this idol was covered with human skin, with brilliant diamonds instead of eyes. At the same time, the Templars smear him with the fat of fried small children and look at him as if he were a god. They were accused of worshiping the devil in the form of a cat, burning the bodies of the dead Templars and mixing the ashes with the food of their younger brothers. They were accused of various crimes, of terrible debauchery and superstitious abominations, in which only madmen can be guilty.

To force them to confess to these crimes, the templars were tortured not only in France, but also in England, since the English king Edward II supported his father-in-law, Philip the Handsome, in order to destroy this order. Many knights, under torture, confessed to the crimes of which they were accused; hundreds died without making any confession, many starved themselves to death or otherwise took their own lives in prison. The process dragged on for seven years. The persecution has spread to other countries. In Germany, Spain and on the island of Cyprus, the order was justified. But in Italy, England and France, his fate was a foregone conclusion, although at one time there was hope of salvation, because the pope, seeing that Philip and Edward had seized all the money and all the property of the Templars and, apparently, did not intend to share the booty with him, took the side of the order. When both kings made concessions to him, he again began to support them, although he complained about the small share of the booty that he got.

What was the true reason for the defeat of the once so powerful order? Much can be expected...

The Templars really possessed enormous monetary and military power, and most importantly, they had far-reaching plans for its use. Some modern researchers say the following about these plans: the Templars tried to implement what current politicians have only just approached, 700 years after the defeat of the order, - to create a united Europe with a single economy and under common political leadership. The unified economy was supposed to be based on an advanced, even from a modern point of view, credit and financial system of the Knights Templar itself.

But as for the unified political leadership of Europe, they believe that this should have been provided by the Merovingian dynasty restored by the templars, the first rulers of France in the 5th-8th centuries. The point of view is quite controversial and ambiguous, it is adhered to by the authors of the book "Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" (another name is "The Holy Mystery") Michael Baigent, Richard Ley and Henry Lincoln. At the same time, these authors promote a rather strange, and from a church point of view, simply heretical idea that the Merovingians were direct descendants of Jesus Christ. It must be said that the modern fictionalized alternative history, and cinema art, sometimes gradually, and when they directly carry out the idea that the Savior did not die on the cross at all, did not resurrect and did not ascend to heaven, but somehow escaped death, then lived like an ordinary person, married and had children.

However, such views are not new. Something similar was expounded in their teachings by many heretical movements in medieval Europe. The denial of the divine nature of the Savior was the main point of such teachings. By the way, one of the accusations brought against the templars by the French king Philip IV the Handsome is renunciation of Christ, mockery of the shrines of the Christian church, idolatry. And the arrested higher hierarchs of the order pleaded guilty, although some later retracted their confessions. Of course, most modern historians, with great sympathy for the Order of the Temple of Solomon, believe that the Templars made all their confessions under torture. However, the same historians very often, following the refutation of the Templar confessions 700 years ago, suddenly begin to prove that even if the templars mocked Christianity at their secret meetings, there is nothing wrong with that, this, they say, just confirms the super-progressiveness of the knights Temple.

What we can really agree with these historians is the recognition of the merits of the Templars in creating a credit and financial system far ahead of its time with its loan interest, debt obligations (bills), which could be traded like ordinary goods, etc. That is, the templars built a pan-European usurious network, almost similar to the system of modern banking capital. At the same time, they had to actually violate the church’s regulations, which forbade Christians to lend money at interest, since the profit from usury was considered unearned income, a departure from God’s commandment: “In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground from which you were taken. "(Gen. 3, 19).

Usury in medieval Europe was equated with theft and robbery, and it was tolerated only by non-believers, in particular Jews (remember Pushkin's "The Miserly Knight" or Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice"). By the way, there is a similar ban on usury in Islam, and there it remains in force to this day.

Nevertheless, the Templars failed to make a radical breakthrough at the beginning of the 14th century - Europe was not yet ripe for such advanced transformations.

Even if Philip the Handsome did not know about all the plans of the Templars, he considered dangerous the colossal influence that the order gained every year. It was not only about the untold riches accumulated over two centuries. Dangerous was the political influence that the Templars had in Europe, and not only. Speaking on an equal footing with the kings, the master templars maintained direct contacts with distant eastern lords, and with representatives of secret teachings and sects. In particular, with one of the most secret sects of the East - "hired political assassins", assassins. Maybe in the future they wanted to create some kind of order superstate, not knows the boundaries and national differences that go beyond ordinary states? Philip IV, who dreamed of crowning his head with the crown of the "Holy Roman Empire", could rightly fear that his dreams might well be shattered by the Secret Holy Empire, represented by the military and financial power of the Templars. And finally, an important circumstance may be the fact that Philip the Handsome was literally up to his ears in debt. The treasury of France was empty, the people rebelled, and there was simply nowhere to take money from. The Templars, to their misfortune, were not only monstrously rich, but also were the main creditors of the French king.

Rebels in economics and politics, the Templars were also rebels in theology. The very name of the order in some way points to rebellious ambition. The temple is a grander, broader and deeper concept than the church. The temple is higher than the church! Churches fall, the Temple remains - as a symbol of the relationship of religions and the eternity of their spirit. During their stay in the East, the templars learned to interpret the canons of Catholicism quite freely. Moreover, in their rituals they dared to interpret their attitude towards God, towards the Holy Spirit and towards the Pope in their own way. The Church may be called the house of Christ, but the Temple is the house of the Holy Spirit! This is the religion of the spirit which the Templars inherited from the Manicheans and from the Albigensians.

With their rites, the Templars expressed their independence from the official church. One of the secrets of the order was that a consecrated member of the order was called a "friend of the Lord" and could speak with God whenever he wanted, that is, without the mediation of the Pope and the Church. It was a clear heresy, subject to cruel eradication.

All these, as well as many other circumstances, together made up an amazing combination that Philip the Handsome simply could not help but take advantage of. Accusing the order of heresy, atheism and other crimes, he acted in the noblest role of a champion of justice. The royal power argued that, by confiscating the property of the Templars, it was striving not for booty, but for the punishment of intruders, for the greater glory of religion and for the triumph of the law! The Grand Master of the Order, Jacques de Molay, and the Prior of Normandy, Geoffroy de Charnay, were burned on March 18, 1314. They stood on heaps of brushwood, in paper caps of heretics, opposite the royal palace, from the window of which Philip the Handsome gave the signal to the executioner. Both of them - the master and the prior - refused at the trial from their testimony, given under torture. Both spoke of their innocence and the order! At the last moment, the thunderous voice of the Grand Master swept through the flames over the curious crowd:

Papa Clement! Knight Guillaume de Nogaret! King Philip! In less than a year, I will call you to the judgment of God and you will be rewarded with a just punishment! Curse!! A curse on your family to the thirteenth generation!!!

And a month later, the Pope died of pain in his stomach in terrible convulsions. In November of the same year, Philip the Handsome died of an unknown illness. The chief judge of the process - Nogare - was executed. The curse worked! Four and a half centuries later, during the years of the French Revolution, when the guillotine blade fell on the neck of Louis XVI, a man jumped onto the scaffold, dipped his hand in the blood of the dead monarch and showed it to the crowd, shouting loudly:

Jacques de Molay, you have been avenged!

The unfortunate Louis was the thirteenth descendant of King Philip IV.

But back to the moment of the death of the Order. Not everywhere the Templars were persecuted so severely, many knights of the order survived, because nowhere, except in France, they were not subjected to such severe persecution. Scotland even gave them asylum. In Lorraine they were acquitted. Many former Templars merged with two other powerful military-monastic orders, also established in Palestine at about the same time as the order of the temple of Solomon. These were the Order of the Hospitallers, or St. John, now better known as the Order of Malta, and the Order of the House of St. Mary of Teutonic, or simply Warband. Many of them ended up in Livonia, with which they had maintained close ties for a long time. In Portugal, the templars were acquitted by the court and in 1318 changed their name, becoming the Knights of Christ. Under this name, the order existed there until the 16th century. Vasco da Gama was a Knight of the Order of Christ, and Prince Enrique the Navigator was its Grand Master. At the expense of the order, the prince founded an observatory and a nautical school, promoted the development of shipbuilding in Portugal. He equipped ocean expeditions that discovered new lands. Their ships sailed under the eight-pointed (pawed) Templar crosses. Under the same symbols, the caravels of Christopher Columbus - "Santa Maria", "Pinta" and "Nina" - crossed the Atlantic. The great discoverer of America himself was married to the daughter of an associate Enrique the Navigator, a knight of the Order of Christ, who gave him his sea and pilot charts.

But there is one problem that has not been solved so far. Although Philip the Handsome used the moment of surprise, he did not achieve his goal. main goal- the king did not receive treasures and documents of the order. Of course, the wealth went to him unheard of! But the priceless archive of the Templars, their secret relics, were not found. One can only speculate and build the most fantastic guesses about what the knights-templars kept in their caches.

Shortly before the start of the arrests, Jacques de Molay managed to burn many documents and manuscripts. The Grand Master managed to send a letter to all the order houses, in which he ordered not to provide even minimal information about the customs and rituals of the Templars. It is said that one night before the wave of arrests, the Templar treasures were removed from Paris and taken to the port of La Rochelle, where they were loaded onto eighteen galleys that departed in an unknown direction. Obviously, the Grand Master knew something about the impending danger. But where were the relics of the order taken? Today we cannot reliably answer this question.

Domanin Alexander Anatolievich

VI. Templar process

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