Original subtitles

NARRATOR: The Knights Templar.

A secret brotherhood

born in the throes of the Middle Ages,

only to vanish after two centuries in existence.

(Ominous music playing)

Of these men who left their mark on history

remains the legends that made them famous.

Their white overcoats bearing the iconic red cross.

The riches they amassed.

Their discipline and ferocity in battle.

These were the elite troops,

the special forces of the 12th century.

NARRATOR: After 1,000 years,

mysteries still surround the myth

of these soldiers of Christ.

FEMALE VOICE: Are they priests? Are they monks?

Are they knights?

What are they?

An English chronicler called them "a certain new monster."

(Heroic music playing)

NARRATOR: Who was behind the creation

of the Order of the Temple?

What was its mission?

And how did the Templars become so powerful

so quickly?

By the end of the 12th century

the Templars had become an international organization.

NARRATOR: Thanks to experts on the Order of the Temple,

along with an investigation

where the only written evidence of this period is kept,

we discover the birth of a legendary brotherhood,

a unique paradox of men simultaneously monk and soldier.

(Speaking French) It's truly unheard-of,

that there's a military code

within a religious rule.

(Speaking French) There were Christian thinkers

who felt it was an abomination

to try to bring together prayer and battle.

(Epic music playing)

NARRATOR: From the arid lands of the East

to the royal courts of France and England,

discover the rise of the first Templars.

See how they rallied the Pope, kings and people

all across Europe to their cause.

People began to offer huge sums of money,

large numbers of donations to the Templar Order.

(Speaking French) The county of Champagne, Burgundy,

Ile de France, saw the birth of networks of Templar houses

and commanderies ever 30 to 40 kilometers.

It was completely unprecedented to become

that powerful, that quickly.

NARRATOR: This is the story of the birth

of the Knights Templar,

a handful of men who transformed a simple brotherhood of soldiers

into a religious order prepared to reign over Europe.

(Flames crackling)

NARRATOR: Jerusalem.

It was here, in the heart of the Middle Ages

that the first Knights Templar emerged.

At the time, only a handful of knights.

Nearly destitute.

But all are of great piety

and have been trained in combat.

Sworn to dedicate their lives to a new cause:

protection of the Holy Land,

and of the Christian pilgrims who come there to worship.

(Solemn music playing)

To understand the origins of their existence,

we must go back to the end of the 11th century.

At the time, the religious world was divided.

In the west, the vast majority of Europe

was under the authority of the Christian church and the Pope.

Islam dominates North Africa, southern Spain and the Near East

while the Turks threaten the Byzantine Empire

and its capital Constantinople,

territory of the Orthodox Church.

With Pope Urban II's call to action

the First Crusade witnessed thousands of Christians

marching across Europe to reconquer the Holy Land.

After three years of violent fighting

these crusaders reclaimed many possessions,

in particular the city of Jerusalem,

where Jesus Christ was crucified and where his tomb lies.

They got to Jerusalem in the summer of 1099

and camped outside the city walls for about a month,

laying siege to Jerusalem,

and once they breached

the city walls in July, there was a bloodbath.

It was said that blood was running knee-deep.

This could be a medieval exaggeration.

Medieval chronicles are prone to exaggerate

the scale of carnage, but it was pretty bad.

Muslims were slaughtered.

NARRATOR: The First Crusade gave birth

to the Crusader States:

the county of Edessa, the principality of Antioch,

the county of Tripoli and the kingdom of Jerusalem.

SEAN MARTIN: The irony was that after

this three-year epic journey,

with tens of thousands of people laying waste to various cities,

a lot of them just went back to Europe after that.

(Rumble of marching feet)

NARRATOR: At the dawn of the 12th century,

the security of these Crusader states,

threatened from all sides,

rested on only a few knights of very diverse backgrounds,

who chose to settle there.

(Chattering voices)

The challenge facing those who remain

in the east after the First Crusade

is to try and turn their fairly small territorial gains

into permanent territories that can last in the long term.

From a military perspective, they have enemies in Damascus

who can raise armies of several thousand troops.

And in Aleppo, a slightly larger army,

and also Fatimid, Egypt

which can raise about 15,000 troops.

Given that the Crusader States, in the early years,

can't put together more than a few hundred knights

with a slightly larger contingent of infantry,

that's a very serious challenge.

(Dramatic music playing)

NARRATOR: In Jerusalem,

Christian pilgrimage is on the rise

and is organized by the authorities of the Holy City:

The King of Jerusalem,

the Latin Patriarch at the head of the church,

and the Canons of the Holy Sepulcher

which govern religious life in the city.

MAN SPEAKING FRENCH: The Holy Sepulcher is the church

that is located at the site of both the crucifixion

and the burial of Christ.

It's a church that attracted Christian veneration early on,

and therefore it's the Holy Sepulcher

which happens to be the main church

of Jerusalem.

And therefore it's around the Holy Sepulcher,

the Patriarch and the Canons, that the church of the East

is really structured.

NARRATOR: At their side are the members

of the Order of the Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem,

to help welcome pilgrims and care for the sick.

But guaranteeing their safety

is becoming increasingly difficult.

MAN SPEAKING FRENCH: Pilgrims arriving in Jerusalem

were under constant threat of guerrilla raids

from ambushes,

so all pilgrims arriving in Jerusalem could be attacked

in the vicinity or near the Holy City.

The outskirts of this holy land were by no means safe.

(Dramatic music playing)

NARRATOR: At the time,

the Knights Templar didn't yet exist.

The soldiers charged with the safety of the pilgrims

were called the Milites Sancti Sepulcri.

The Knights of the Holy Sepulcher.

(Speaking French) It's a brotherhood of armed civilians

who organize themselves to protect the Holy Sepulcher.

To protect men, and to protect property

throughout the kingdom of Jerusalem.

The milites sancti sepulcri

are neither part of the Canonical Order

of the Holy Sepulcher

nor of the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem.

It could be said that the milites sancti sepulcri,

who are committed to protecting pilgrims, to protecting canons,

to defending, if need be,

those areas which may be insecure,

are in a kind of dual dependence.

They are dependent on the Canons who direct their spiritual life,

and dependent on the Hospitallers

of Saint John of Jerusalem

who maintain and nourish them.

NARRATOR: Among these Milites Sancti Sepulcri,

one knight will claim his independence.

His goal is to form a more powerful group.

A hybrid order,

which no one had ever dared to imagine before.

Soldiers of a new kind, both religious and warrior.

This knight is the founder of what will much later be known

as the Order of the Temple.

His identity and history are mentioned for the first time

in a 12th century chronicle written by Michael The Syrian,

patriarch of the Jacobite church of Antioch.

MALE VOICE: At the beginning of the reign of Baldwin II,

a Frenchman came from Rome to Jerusalem to pray.

He had made a vow not to return to his own country,

but to become a monk

after having helped the King in the war for three years.

Along with the 30 knights who accompanied him,

he would spend the rest of his life in Jerusalem.

When the king and his barons saw

that the Frenchman and his knights

had achieved remarkable things in battle,

they advised the man to serve in the militia

with his 30 knights

and defend the place against bandits

rather than become a monk

in the hope of saving only his own soul.

Now this man, whose name was Hugues de Payns,

accepted this counsel,

and the 30 knights who accompanied him

joined and united with him.

NARRATOR: Hugues de Payns.

Born in the Champagne region around 1070,

in a small village that he is named after,

located 12 kilometers from the city of Troyes.

He is a knight in the service of Count Hugues of Champagne.

With his suzerain,

Hugues de Payns will spend three years in the Holy Land

at the beginning of the 12th century

before returning to Europe.

(Speaking French) Hugues de Payns led a family life.

He had a wife and children.

And then in 1114,

touched by a deep piety

that must have inhabited him for a long time,

he went back to the Holy Land,

and this time he left with the idea

that he would never come back.

(Inaudible)

GHISLAIN BRUNEL: Hugues de Payns is a military strategist,

a defender of the Holy Land.

He truly experienced what Jerusalem was,

and it must have been a revelation.

In Jerusalem, one could not be a knight like any other.

One could only be a knight

turned towards God, towards the service of Christ,

so this idea must have germinated

when he arrived in Jerusalem.

NARRATOR: Over several years,

Hugues de Payns refined his project.

And in 1119, one event will change his destiny.

(Epic music playing)

On June 28th, 1119,

Muslims of the city of Aleppo

attack the Principality of Antioch.

The intensity of the fighting will be of such violence

that the event will be baptized in Latin

as the Ager Sanguinis:

the battle of the Field of Blood.

(Clatter of swords)

It is Baldwin II, the new king of Jerusalem,

who will come in person to repel the invaders.

This battle reinforced the sovereign's belief

that the threat to the Crusader States was becoming too great.

(Speaking French) The new king, Baldwin II,

realized that he needed more military presence

than he had on the ground.

He needed border guards,

escorts on the roads to protect the pilgrims.

He needed additional forces.

NARRATOR: It was on January the 16th, 1120

in the small city of Nablus

north of Jerusalem,

that a council was to take place

that would change the course of history.

Assembled around the King of Jerusalem,

Baldwin II,

and the Patriarch Gormond de Picquigny,

the council brought together the main clergymen

and nobles of the kingdom.

On that day,

the two men approved the project conceived by Hugues de Payns:

The formation of a new order of knights,

both religious and military,

dedicated entirely to the defense of the Holy Land.

(Speaking French) The opportunity was seized

by the King and the Patriarch together,

to gamble that these knights could be operative,

and the Patriarch played this game,

which was not a foregone conclusion,

because these knights

who had gathered in the shadow of the Holy Sepulcher

were empowered.

They detached themselves from the Patriarch,

they claimed to lead a religious life of their own,

to no longer obey the directive of the Holy Sepulcher,

but a master chosen from among themselves

without ceasing to be what they were,

that is to say, knights and warriors.

(Dramatic music playing)

NARRATOR: It is King Baldwin II himself

who will offer the members of this new order of chivalry

a place to settle.

This place is mentioned in another manuscript

written by William of Tyre,

known for being the first historian of the Crusades.

MALE VOICE: Over the course of the same year,

some noble knights devoted themselves

to the service of Christ,

and professed to live forever in chastity,

obedience and poverty.

As they had neither church nor fixed residence,

the king granted them accommodations in his palace

which was located near the Temple of the Lord.

PHILIPPE JOSSERAND: King Baldwin II

made a very strong gesture

by offering his palace to them in Jerusalem.

Baldwin's palace actually extended south

of the Esplanade of the Mosques,

south of the Temple Mount.

It extended into the area of al-Aqsa Mosque,

the former palace of King Solomon.

And so Hugues de Payns and his associates

somehow took on the name by association,

by calling themselves

"The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ

and of the Temple of Solomon."

NARRATOR: The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ

and of the Temple of Solomon.

Later, this name will be shortened

and the group will become one of the most significant orders

in all history:

The Order of the Temple.

(Dramatic music playing)

Faced with the ongoing conflicts in the Holy Land,

the members of this new brotherhood

must now find a way to grow.

The Templars in the 1120s, if they were going to expand

what they really needed was troops,

high quality recruits, money, and land in Western Europe

that would supply the resources to carry on their vocation.

NARRATOR: Hugues de Payns decides to return to Europe

to embark on a vast recruitment and fund-raising operation.

GHISLAIN BRUNEL: He went from country to country:

France, Champagne, Flanders, England,

to try to recruit and promote his project.

NICHOLAS MORTON: Seeking crusaders

for the King of Jerusalem,

he went into all the major courts of Western Europe.

People began to get curious about who he was,

what his order was trying to achieve,

and when they found out,

they were immensely impressed and began to offer

huge sums of money.

Large numbers of donations to the Templar order.

So much so that it became very, very wealthy, very quickly.

(Epic music playing)

NARRATOR: But Hugues de Payns

and the founders of the Order of the Temple

know that to bring more men and money to the Holy Land,

they need to be recognized

by the highest authorities of the time.

In the beginning

people were asking questions like,

"Are they priests?

Are they monks? Are they knights?

What are they?"

Because a priest, a monk, is not supposed to kill,

but they are fighters, they are knights.

GHISLAIN: There were Christian thinkers

who considered it an abomination to want to unite

prayer and combat under the same religious order.

In his desire to consolidate the community,

to transform it into an order,

Hugues de Payns had to obtain the permission

of the Roman Church and therefore of the Pope.

NARRATOR: To obtain the Pope's approval,

Hugues de Payns will use his connections

in a region close to his birthplace: Burgundy.

His first wife, Emeline de Touillon,

is a relative of the De Montbard family,

in which we also find another man

in ascendancy within the Christian church

and recognized throughout Europe:

Bernard de Fontaine,

who later becomes Bernard de Clairvaux,

and after he is canonized,

Saint Bernard.

GHISLAIN BRUNEL: Saint Bernard entered the order of Cîteaux

and in 1115 he founded a new abbey,

the abbey of Clairvaux.

He also came from chivalry,

from the border of Burgundy and Champagne.

So he had all the characteristics

of a man of combat,

with a great strength of conviction,

a very great orator eager to lead an ascetic life,

a rigorous life in the order of Cîteaux

which was the figurehead of the church

in the 12th century.

Saint Bernard was already in 1129

a considerable figure in the church,

a sort of moral figure of the kingdom of France,

both for the clergy and for the common people.

He saw in the Knights Templar not only a chance

to support the continued defense of Jerusalem,

but he also wanted to reform Western European Knights.

For over 100 years, before the First Crusade,

one of the biggest problems facing the Catholic Church

was to reform Western Knighthood.

Knights were troublemakers.

They fought vendettas against each other,

they caused trouble, they were arrogant and proud.

And so Bernard of Clairvaux saw in the Knights Templar

the idea of using the Templars

as a role model for Western Knights:

"This is how you should be."

Tried to steer them away from their internal feuds

and into what he perceived to be a more Godly form of vocation.

Convinced that this new Order of the Temple

represented an opportunity for the Christian church,

Bernard de Clairvaux wrote a manifesto

which would go down in history,

entitled, "In Praise of the New Chivalry."

MALE VOICE: This is a new kind of militia,

which fights a dual battle against flesh and blood,

and against evil spirits.

They live without wives or children,

dwell under one roof,

have no property of their own.

They have no fear of sin by killing an enemy,

because it is for the sake of Jesus Christ

that they give or receive the blow of death.

They are more gentle than lambs,

and fiercer than lions,

so much so, that we do not know

whether to call them monks or soldiers.

(Bell tower ringing)

MARINA: What is stated in his De laude novae militiae

was of course justification of the killing of the enemy,

but it wasn't just that.

What is most important

is the opposition that he makes between two types of chivalry.

The profane chivalry, where the knights are rich

or seek after richness and fight for it,

and love their beautiful dresses,

their beautiful horses,

and another kind of new chivalry.

This new chivalry was impersonated

by the Templar Knights,

that really don't care about richness,

individual richness, of course...

And they put their lives and all they have

in support of Jerusalem, the Holy Land,

and Christianity in the end.

NARRATOR: On January 13th, 1129,

the authorities of the Christian church,

under the direction of Bernard De Clairvaux,

organized the Council of Troyes,

bringing together a representative of the Pope,

members of the clergy,

nobles and representatives of the Order of the Temple.

During this council,

the very first rule of the Temple was enacted

and put down in writing.

Today, only ten original copies remain in the world.

Among them is this work, written in old French

and kept in the National Library of France.

(In French) The manuscript first contains

the Rules of the Temple,

which continues through page 13 and 14.

Then there's a list of celebrations

that the Templars received from the Pope,

and then the bulk of the manuscript is formed

by the rules of the Temple.

So, for all of the Temple's legislation.

This allows us to say that the manuscript belonged

to the Templars.

It most probably even belonged

to an important house of the Order,

because it is a beautiful manuscript,

with a beautiful layout,

with the watermarked letters in red and blue.

So this is something important.

(Pounding drum beat)

NARRATOR: In the beginning of the book

we find the names of those who participated in the council.

The first is perhaps the most important:

Cardinal Matthew of Albano, a representative of the Pope.

The following is a list of people

gathered in the cathedral of the city of Troyes,

among them, important religious leaders:

The archbishops of Reims and Sens,

the bishops of Soissons, Paris, Troyes, Auxerre and Beauvais,

eight abbots, including of course,

Bernard de Clairvaux,

noblemen such as Count Thibaut of Champagne,

and William, the Count of Nevers.

At the end are named the six Templars

present at the council of Troyes,

among them, Brother Hugues de Payns,

master of chivalry.

(Orchestral music playing)

On the 12 pages of manuscript,

written on goatskin parchment,

are all the recommendations of the Council of Troyes

for members of the Order of the Temple.

The rhythm of prayers when they're in battle,

the care required to give their horses,

or the food they are advised to eat.

MALE VOICE: You are to eat meat three times a week.

NARRATOR: Everything is accounted for

down to the last detail.

Because unlike monks,

the knights cannot fast or be lacking in sleep.

They must maintain their strength

to be ready for battle.

MALE VOICE: The brothers who are exhausted

from the great services rendered to the order

can avoid getting up for the night prayers,

with the permission and discharge of the master.

It's a really incredible and innovative thing,

the fact that inside a religious code,

there is a military part...

There's even a military code which is integrated perfectly

inside of a religious order.

A little further, reads...

that the participants in the Council of Troyes,

will bring the Christian church into a new era.

MALE VOICE: We believe that this new kind of religious life

was born in the holy land

thanks to divine Providence.

This means that this armed knighthood can,

without committing a sin,

kill the enemies of the cross.

For this reason, we deem that you have

the right to be called "Knights of the Temple."

For the first time, the church formalizes the idea

that one can kill in the name of Christ,

and that its armed branch in the holy land has a name:

The order of the temple.

It was the Council of Troyes

which marked the birth of the Order of the Temple,

and transformed the community

gathered around Hugues de Payns in Jerusalem,

into a structure of the Latin church.

To some people the idea of the Knights Templar

was actually almost heretical.

One of the English chroniclers

by the name of Henry of Huntington

called them, "A certain new monster."

The Council of Troyes therefore marks

a new era for the Order of the Temple.

And the fame of these new knights of God

immediately spreads throughout Europe.

After the council of Troyes everything changed, rapidly,

because this new order looked interesting

to the western world.

Especially of course to the aristocracy

of the western world

that had found a way

to invest their donations

in something that was different

from the traditional monastic orders.

Donations began to grow, began to increase.

They grew constantly and quickly

in very few years

and in the 30's already

they are powerful in the East.

They are starting to build power in the West, too.

They became Europe's first standing army

since the days of the Roman Empire.

Rome had collapsed in the fifth century

so it's the first standing army

in about six or 700 years.

This was a really radical shift.

You had a permanent military force in the East

defending Christendom,

defending Christian interests.

Once the donations of land and money came in,

they were able to train men up to fight.

A medieval knight was the equivalent

of a modern-day tank or something.

A fully armed knight on a warhorse

was an awesome figure to behold.

You needed to run.

These were the elite troops. The crack troops.

The Special Forces of the 12th century.

It was at this time,

the first symbols of recognition of the Templars were born

on which their legend of outstanding fighters

would gradually be built.

The initial knights weren't visually impressive at first,

the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ

and the Temple of Solomon.

They were literally poor. They had nothing.

Just the clothes they wore,

their swords and a few horses.

So after the Council of Troyes,

you get massive donations of land and money

and all of a sudden they become vastly wealthy.

So the white surcoat is part of this new look.

We would call it maybe a rebranding

but to a medieval person white would symbolize purity.

This long white mantle with the Red Cross on it

is precisely the mark of the commitment that was made,

since this Red Cross recalls the blood

shed by Christ for the redemption of humanity,

therefore the commitment of a brother of the Temple

in his turn to lay down his life

and shed his blood to defend the land of Christ

and the kingdom of Jerusalem.

The mission of the Knights Templar

is to defend the Holy Land.

They must not only know how to fight,

but also how to make new weapons

organize their movements,

and build strongholds to defend pilgrims.

Thanks to the donations,

the Order of the Temple recruits.

The Templar Order essentially has three grades.

The most famous are the brother Knights.

To be recruited as a brother Knight in Western Europe

someone would normally be of Aristocratic background...

they'd have been trained as a Knight,

so they'd already have the skills to perform

the functions of a Templar Knight.

If you were not from an elite background,

but from a free background, perhaps from an artisan family

or from a family of merchants

you would generally enter the Templar Order

as a Templar Sergeant.

Templar Sergeants could fight,

but it's from their ranks that Templars recruit

their ship builders, their carpenters,

their estate managers, people with specific trade skills.

The third type is brother priests

who have been ordained as a priest,

and act as chaplains to the order.

When the applicant enters the Temple

he commits himself to a number of things

and the obligations take place in the framework of a ceremony.

The absolutely decisive moment

is when the Templar's mantle

is put around the neck of the candidate.

Here, he truly enters the brotherhood of the Temple.

And then, immediately,

he swears to respect the vows of chastity,

poverty, obedience

and he also swears to fight by all means in his power,

for the holy land.

We sometimes refer to this as the fourth vow,

it's something quite essential because a Templar of any kind,

knight, sergeant, or chaplain,

whether in the West or in the East,

ideally competes in the defense of the Holy Land.

It's an entry into brotherhood,

an entry into an Order,

hence the importance of the mantle,

the importance of the sword and the importance of the oath.

Gradually, Templar houses called "commanderies"

were created in Western Europe.

The brothers live there by scrupulously respecting

the guidelines of the Temple by pursuing only one mission:

To prepare to fight in the East

and to grow the wealth of the Order

to finance the Holy War.

A commandery is a large building with a residence,

with common buildings, a granary to store crops,

and above all, a chapel.

The commandery is where the chaplain officiates,

and performs the canonical services for all the brothers.

The county of Champagne,

Burgundy, Provence, Auvergne,

Ile de France

saw the birth of networks of Templar houses

and commanderies every 30 to 40 km.

The network formed quite quickly during the 12th century.

The commanderies and Templar houses are also used

to recruit locally.

Their establishment, their impact,

their daily relationship with the populations

also served to feed this recruitment.

In 1136,

Hugues De Payns, the first grand master Templar

dies after returning to fight in the East.

He is replaced at the head of the Order

by Robert de Craon

who brilliantly organizes the operation

and management of the commanderies

which continue to develop thanks to donations.

10 years after the Council of Troyes,

events are accelerating.

On March the 29th, 1139,

Pope Innocent II writes a papal bull

which will go down in history.

A document which bears his seal and is baptized

"Omne Datum Optimum,"

the 3 Latin words with which it begins.

MALE VOICE: Every good grace and every perfect gift

descends from above,

from the Father of Light, with whom there is no change

or shade of variation.

We exhort you to fight the enemies of the Cross with ardor,

and as reward, we allow you to keep for yourselves

all the spoils that you have seized,

without anyone having the right to claim

a share of them.

And we declare that the order of the Temple,

with all its assets acquired by the bounty of the popes,

the kings and the princes, remains under the protection

and guardianship of the Holy See.

According to this text,

not only can the Templars preserve the wealth accumulated

during battles against Muslims in the Holy Land

but they place themselves under the authority of one person:

The Pope himself.

MALE VOICE: No one can force you to pay tithes,

but we confirm to you the possession and enjoyment

of the tithes given to you with the consent of the bishops.

So that you may have the fullness of salvation

and care for your souls,

for the practice of the Divine Offices

and giving of the ecclesiastical sacraments,

you may admit clerics and priests.

We grant you the power to build chapels

in all the places attached to the temple,

so you and your relatives may attend services

and be buried there,

for it is bad for your morals if the brothers of the temple,

on their way to church,

should mingle with crowds of sinners

and those who keep company with women.

The order of the Temple will no longer pay tax to the church,

will have the right to collect tax

without going through the bishops,

train its own priests,

build its own churches,

and anyone who questions this protection of the pope

will be excommunicated.

The Templars were not subject

to the authority of other churchmen,

no Archbishops, no Bishops,

except for the Pope himself.

This gave the order a great deal of freedom of movement,

at least within the church hierarchy.

It also stirred up resentment

among the Archbishops, and other members of the church,

who felt the order had too much independence,

and wasn't responsive to their leadership.

Over the following years, successive popes

will further strengthen the privileges

given to the Templars.

In 1144,

the faithful were expressly asked to contribute

to the mission of the Knights Templar.

It was stipulated that the Pope would grant his forgiveness

to the benefactors of the Order of the Temple.

MALE VOICE: He who has provided them with the goods

God has entrusted to them

and who has established a bond with such a holy brotherhood

and allowed them to make a profit each year,

will receive a reduction of one seventh

on the penances he has incurred.

Huge tracks of land were given them by kings all over Europe.

But even small grants of land like estates,

farms, water mills, things like that.

If somebody wanted to donate to the order,

they would accept everything.

No donation was too large or too small,

because it was all with the greater good

of keeping the Christian kingdom in the East going.

It was very good for a Christian

to donate to an order like the Templars,

it was good for your soul and your afterlife,

it minimized your time in purgatory

and ensured you went to the right place

when the time came.

In 1145,

a new papal bull gave the Knights Templar

the right to bury their brothers in their own cemeteries

and to travel freely throughout Europe.

So from 1129 to 1146

we could compare them to a corporation or a business

going from a small startup to a multinational in 17 years.

Even today that is quite impressive.

It was completely unprecedented

for a small group of people to become that powerful so fast.

It had never happened before.

But while the Templar enterprise develops quickly in the West,

in the East, the situation in the crusader states

has deteriorated.

Defeated in Damascus in 1129,

in Ba'rin in 1137,

in Tecua in 1139,

and especially in Edessa in 1144

where it is said that 30,000 Christians were massacred.

The failures of the Crusaders mount one after another.

These weren't the setbacks of the Templars

but of the army of the kingdom of Jerusalem

which were starting to integrate within it

perhaps a few dozen Templars,

but these setbacks were bitter.

The Templars still lacked influence within the army

and the qualities of Order and discipline that we know of them

were not really imposed.

In the face of these defeats

and the threats to Christians in the East,

Pope Eugene the Third decided to act.

With the papal bull "Quantum Praedecessores",

he called for a new crusade.

Bernard de Clairvaux himself

is in charge of mobilizing the population.

On March the 31st, 1146,

at Vézelay in Burgundy,

he preached the journey to the Holy Land

by promising to those who would take up the cross,

the absolution of all sins.

Among the many sovereigns from all over Europe

who joined the 2nd crusade,

was Louis the Seventh, King of France,

and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine.

To help in their endeavor,

they turned to those with sufficient means:

The Knights Templar!

In 1147, Louis the Seventh requested funding

from the order of the Temple and he entrusted them

for the first time with his treasure.

They already have resources

to help the king with his crusade,

arming ships, etc.

These are the Templars who served as scouts,

protectors, guides, along the road,

and the crusade route is challenging for Louis VII.

They suffered very harsh Turkish attacks

and it was the Templars

led by marshal Evrard des Bars

who will become grand master,

who saved the royal army.

Louis VII is not the only one to embark on the Second Crusade.

Conrad the Third, King of Germany,

also made his way to the Holy Land

with nearly 20,000 men at his side.

But from the first months of combat,

the armies of the two kings suffered great setbacks

against the Muslims.

Mount Cadmus...

Dorylaeum...

Inab.

Defeats follow, one after another.

And the deaths pile up.

Financing these losing battles

is beginning to cost the two kings dearly.

So, to find the necessary money,

Louis VII needs help.

He will turn once again to his new allies,

the Knights Templar.

When the Crusade gets into difficulty in 1148,

Louis turns to the master of the temple and says,

"Can you help us?"

So the Grand Master goes off in his ship

and gets the money from a Templar stronghold.

This is the first time we see the Templars acting

effectively as bankers supporting European kings.

They're not just supporting

the interests of the Church

and fighting for Christ and defending souls.

They are now, by the time of the Second Crusade,

also financially very powerful.

And literally funding the Crusade.

Despite financial assistance from the Knights Templar,

the troops of the King of France and the King of Germany

were unable to recover any territory from their enemies.

After three years of fighting,

the two sovereigns give up.

A crusade for nothing.

Which will nevertheless benefit

the Order of the Temple.

The second crusade was a total failure.

It ended with nothing at all.

Mostly because the presence of

Conrad III and the King of France

revealed to be a problem.

They disagreed on almost everything.

They made all the possible wrong choices

like taking the siege of Damascus

which ended up badly for the King of France

with a lot of money spent.

He had to ask the Templars for money

in order to go back to France.

The defeat of the second crusade

probably helped the Templars.

They had lent money to the King.

They were the forces that surely

ended well in the local situation.

The Knights Templar had shown

by loaning money to the King of France,

and also reorganizing his army at one stage,

they had shown how effective they could be.

This would not be forgotten by future Kings of France.

The Second Crusade will be a resounding military failure.

And Louis the Seventh returns to France in 1149

greatly weakened financially, and diplomatically.

However, his ordeal

contributes to the growth of the legend

of the Knights Templar.

He returned from the Holy Land

with a lofty idea of what the knights of the Temple were like.

For him, this order shines over the whole of the earth,

and it has no equivalent in his mind.

He gives them income in money from his tax revenues,

he cedes to them the villa Savigny

that becomes the great commandery of Savigny le temple.

This is a king who shows the same fascination

of the sovereigns for the beginnings of the Temple,

since it is less than 30 years after its creation,

and the King of France is truly an unconditional ally

of the Knights of the Temple.

During the Second Crusade,

the Templars were able to supply

their own contingents to go on crusade,

whilst continuing their work in the crusade estates

they were also able to afford

massive loans to the King of France

to support the King of France's Crusade to the Holy Land.

By the end of the 12th century

the Templars had become a huge international organization.

We don't know precisely how many members they had

but there were probably about 600 fighting brother Knights

in the crusader states.

But with a much larger contingent of infantry

and other employees and followers.

In Western Europe they'd have had

possibly an even larger number of brother Knights,

brother Sergeants, and other personnel

all there to facilitate the supply of resources

to the Holy Land.

The Templars developed this reputation for avarice,

but I think they were just very good businessmen.

At the beginning of the 2nd half of the 12th century,

the order of the Temple will grow even more powerful.

Supported by Popes and Kings,

the Order accumulates considerable wealth,

building commanderies in the West,

and castles in the East.

Its ranks will not cease to grow.

The reign of these new knights of Christ

was only beginning.

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