Knight Templar: sword, dagger, piece of armor

The Order of the Temple is the first example of an original creation of Western medieval Christianity: the religious-military order. In the XIIᵗʰ century, the new knight of Christ takes the monk's vows, lives by a rule, but acts in the century. For his faith, he fights, kills and dies. Created to protect pilgrims to Jerusalem, the order extended its mission to the defense of the Latin states of the East, then to Reconquista Spain.
Its indictment by French King Philip the Fair in 1307 was followed by an unfair trial and its suppression in 1312. The Order of the Temple became the scapegoat for a conflict that went beyond it, exacerbated in France by the personality of the king and his advisors: the rivalry between a spiritual power on the defensive and the modern state that had been asserting itself in the West since the middle of the XIIIᵗʰ century.
Alain Demurger
Honorary lecturer at the University of Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, he is the author of "Chevaliers et chevalerie expliqués à mes petits-fils" (Seuil, 2009).
Release date: October 9, 2014

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