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for $39 at museum replicas.com Go to Search and type in Crusader Surcoat. Warriors and Bankers: Lesson 1
“Up To Their Fall”
Please read the Introduction and Chapter 1 entitled “Up To Their Fall” of Butler and Dafoe’s book, The Warriors and The Bankers. Then answer the questions following the essay below.
I. Step One
Memorize the poem on page 8 of The Warriors and the Bankers. This poem familiarizes you almost instantly with the question the book answers: What happened to the Knights Templar? It is the age-old question, and one that you are probably already quite familiar with. Please do memorize it, as it is short and to the point. We might quiz on it later…
To help your memorization process (not to mention self-discipline — always a great skill), you are asked to please send a copy of the poem to the Mystery School for the next seven days. If you read over it each day that you send it, you will easily have it memorized. This is the same as you did with the Our Father and Our Mother prayers. Not only are you memorizing this poem for its value, but it also increases your memory skills, skills that are invaluable to all Knights and Knightresses of the Temple and Daughters of Tsion.
You do not have to memorize the poem in order to complete the lesson below…
II. The Lesson: W5 ~ Who, What, Where, When, and Why?
Read pages 9-14 in the book Warriors and Bankers, then read the short essay contained in this lesson, (below) and finally answer the questions at the end.
Who, what, where, when, why, and sometimes how, are the questions we are inclined to ask when confronted with the often mysterious, never mundane Order of the Knights Templar.
The Knights Templar began as an extremely small band of eight men, led by a ninth, Hughes de Payens, and dedicated to protecting people on the roads to and from Jerusalem shortly after the first Crusade. They begin, as mentioned,in Jerusalem. There was such great danger to and fro the road to Jerusalem that the Crusade seemed to be for nothing – no pilgrims could really come safely to the Holy Land … even after the Crusade had been won!
So, Hughes de Payens and his band of eight other men set out to police the roads. Such was their success that the first European king of Jerusalem,King Baldwin II, granted them the area on the Temple Mount, occupied by a Muslim mosque that legend and history say sits on the same spot as Solomon’s Temple did. Thus, they became “The Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon.” It wasn’t until later that they became known as simply, “the Templars.”
You might be wondering how this group of nine men “guardian angels” became so popular in such a short amount of time. They evolved into the great moneylenders of Europe, not to mention war machine, and members signed up by the droves. Their popularity and good name was helped along by another form of guardian angel, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, as you may remember from the postulant lessons. Bernard, often referred to as the Second Pope, was at the forefront of Christianity in his day. He was respected by all, including the pope himself.He wrote a now famous letter called, “In Praise of the New Knighthood,” which lauded the holy soldier knights elevating them above secular vain knighthoods as well as above their older rival, the Knights Hospitallers. (literally,”Knights of the Hospital”).
At the Council of Troyes, Bernard also assisted (actually, he nearly wrote all of it) in creating the Templar’s Rule of Order. It closely followed the Cistercian Rule of Conduct, because St. Bernard was a Cistercian abbot from his early 20’s on.
In 1187, Jerusalem fell back into Muslim hands. The Templars were not victorious then, though they fought bravely for the Holy Land, which they called “outremer”(the land “over the sea”). Because they lost, they fell out of favor with many people of Europe – particularly the monarchs, and specifically King Philip IV of France. Philip IV was a money hungry, power thirsty king that wanted nothing short of all the Templar money and power. Even though the Templars had once saved his life, he sought to obliterate them and usurp their material assets.
His wishes were granted by Pope Clement V, one of the weakest popes in Catholic Church history, and the first of a long line of popes to relocate the papacy to Avignon, France. Because of the pope’s position in Avignon, peace with the French king was of the utmost importance. The king made six requests of Clement V to ensure his position as pope; five were fulfilled before ClementV became pope, and the sixth was to be fulfilled at a later date.
We can infer that the sixth request / demand was that Clement V had to dissolve the Knights Templar. After Clement V became pope, Philip IV gave him two choices. He could condemn the previous pope, whom Philip IV had conflict with, or he could condemn the Knights Templar. Rather than condemn the previous pope, a militant man probably worthy of condemnation, Pope Clement V chose infamy and dissolved the Order of the Knights Templar.
On Friday the 13th, 1307, the Knights Templar were taken into custody, and their wealth reverted to the Church … although most of it ended up,not-so-mysteriously, in the hands of the French monarchy.
After Clement V’s decision to dissolve the Knights Templar, they were interrogated and dozens were burnt at the stake. Jacques de Molay, the supreme leader of the Knights Templar at the time, was also burnt at the stake–or rather roasted on a spit. The bravery of his death is legendary, as is his enigmatic curse delivered from the flames—he invited both Pope ClementV and King Philip IV to die within the year and meet him at the throne of God for Divine judgement on the matter. Interestingly, both died shortly afterward. Perhaps they were indeed called to the divine court of inquiry.
In most conventional history books, the Knights Templar met their end with Jacques de Molay’s death in 1314. However, new evidence, presented in later chapters of our book, Warriors and Bankers, strongly suggest otherwise. Perhaps you are personally part of that survival into modern times…
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Please copy and paste the following questions into an e-mail, insert your answers, then send to the TemplarOfficers with the subject line: “W & B Lesson 1 Answers from______________ (your Templar name)”
1. In what year did the Council of Troyes meet?
2. T/F – Bernard of Clairvaux was the pope at the time of the establishment of the Knights Templar.
3. What was the original name of the Knights Templar?
4. T/F – money lending was legal at the time of the Knights Templar.
5. In the vicinity of pages. 12 & 13, what was the name of Pope Clement V prior to becoming the Pope?
6. T/F – Pope Clement V was the first pope to reign in Avignon.
7. What was the date that all Knights Templar living in France were taken into custody?
8. T/F – Most of the Templar wealth ended up in the hands of the Catholic Church.
9. What two men did Jacques de Molay curse while being burnt at the stake?
10. T/F – There is historical evidence that the Knights Templar did not necessarily cease to exist after the death of Jacques de Molay.
Essay Question 1. Earlier in Catholic Church history, we see that the Roman Church suppressed the Gnostic Christians, the earliest Christian group.Around the same time as the Knights Templar, the Inquisition began with the Albigensian Crusade which murdered thousands of men, women and children.Later, the Church (with the French monarch’s help) killed the Knights Templar.What do you think the real reason the Church, supposedly controlled by no secular means, destroyed so many?
Essay Question 2. Do some digging. Find the connection between the Templars, the Albigensians, and the so-called “Grail heresy”. How are the three connected, geographically as well as spiritually?
Questions Compiled by Mark Raines, essay 2 rewritten by Lady Deborah
