The Knights Templar: Warrior Monks Who Invented Medieval Banking

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The original emblem of the Knights Templar shows two knights sharing one horse, because they were too poor to afford a second. In 1119 a French knight named Hugh de Payens and a handful of companions, nine in all, offered King Baldwin II of Jerusalem a monastic military order to protect pilgrims on the bandit-ridden road from Jaffa. Given quarters on the Temple Mount, they lived on donations until Bernard of Clairvaux championed them at the Council of Troyes in 1129. Gifts of land and silver poured in, and in 1139 Pope Innocent II freed the order from local laws and taxes, answerable only to the pope.

This episode separates the history from the legend. Individual knights owned nothing while the order amassed vineyards, fleets, and for a time the island of Cyprus, and its letters of credit let pilgrims travel without coin. Its heavy cavalry was feared from Montgisard to Ascalon. Then the Crusader states fell, and an army with no war and a vast treasury sat in the Europe of King Philip IV of France, who owed it money.

• A pilgrim could deposit funds in London or Paris and receive half of a parchment cut along a jagged line, then match it in Jerusalem to withdraw the equivalent.
• Only about 10 percent of the order's 15,000 to 20,000 members were knights in white mantles. The rest were sergeants, chaplains, and tradesmen who kept them in the saddle.
• At Montgisard in 1177, 500 Templar knights shattered the center of Saladin's army of over 26,000. At Ascalon in 1153, forty knights and their Grand Master charged a breach alone and were all beheaded.
• On Friday, October 13, 1307, Philip's officers opened sealed orders at dawn and arrested Grand Master Jacques de Molay and Templars across France on charges of heresy.
• The Chinon Parchment, found in the Vatican archives in 2001, shows Pope Clement V absolved the leadership in 1308 before dissolving the order in 1312 under French pressure.