Love & the Knights Templar
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY
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On Valentine's Day, I would like to speak about love, which was so very relevant to the Knights Templar. Not just the idealised version of the Knights Templar seen in KnightFall or Templar series/movies but in terms of gnosis and knowledge of the heart which was central to their spirituality as followers of the teachings of Jesus as a Christ, initiate of John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene. Of course, the Templars are known for their brotherly love within the order, but many also experienced real romantic love.
Contrary to popular belief, many Templars WERE married and they did enjoy romantic love. This love poem, believed to have been written by a Knights Templar, was actually found inside a version of the Latin Rule of the Knights Templar. You can view the digitized manuscript under the Walters Collection at the link below. The entry for the love poem reads:
fols. 97v - 97v:
Title: Added love poem
Incipit: Se ie ne chant si souvent comme iou faire soloye
Contents: Love poem added in thirteenth or fourteenth century to originally blank back of folio; written in ballad format, with three rhyming couplets containing four lines each; Randall points out this is an unusual addition given the rule to not keep company with women (fol. 24r)
https://manuscripts.thewalters.org/viewer.php?id=W.132#page/1/mode/2up
While Celibacy is mentioned in the initial Latin Rule written for the Templars by Bernard de Clairvaux and Hugues de Payens, we really must understand what this meant. Not in terms of our modern-way of thinking, but actually what this meant for the Templars and the spiritual ways they followed. I will explain this further in my upcoming works on the Knights Templar but what I can advance so far is that it has everything to do with sacred sexuality and that it has been wrongly interpreted due to being looked at it through a modern lens. History can be seen as an interpretation of the past. However, history isn't made in the past, but in the present. We "make history" when we interpret the past and often there isn't just one interpretation, or new data and evidence may change how an event in history is understood and thus re-interpreted. But...we also must not forget that ancient minds worked a little different to ours and in interpreting and "making history", it is an error to interpret it based on current norms, concerns or even beliefs/ways of thinking, forgetting/omitting parts of history in favour of others. This is why I work in secret history / historical revisionism, ensuring to dig up omitted/forgotten parts but also stepping into the shoes of men and women of a given time period, to really understand what truly mattered to them. What they carried in their hearts...
So going back to love and marriage with respect to the Knights Templar. We know and have recorded evidence in the form of letters that have survived that founding Knight Hugues Count of Champagne was reprimanded several times by the Bishop of Chartres who tried to persuade him to not abandon his wife for the Templars. We also know that William Marshal, the greatest knight that ever lived and a Templar , was married. Also many nobles who were married joined the order for brief periods, while donating vast sums to the Order for doing so.
Another example of evidence that many Templar Knights were married can be seen in the documents concerning the trials of the Templars following their arrest in 1307, which we do have records for and extensive work has been done on this subject by academics such as Alain Demurger, Malcom Barber, Helen Nicholson and especially my favourite, Alan J. Forey. These documents show that following the dissolution of the order in 1312, Templars who had survived torture, interrogations and imprisonment and had not simply been murdered (as many of them were even prior to any trials or interrogations as we will see later today) were asked to abandon their wives and children and continue their lives in isolation in monastical settings. The reason for this being pretty much the same as the one underlying the changes suffered by Catholic Church of Rome after the 4th century, when priests were no longer able to be married and celibacy was imposed, and those who were married were also asked to leave their wives. Let's not forget that the apostles were married and until 3-4th centuries priests were married and obviously had marital relations.
There are many more examples that contradict the belief that the Templars could not enjoy love, whether married or not, or relations in general with the opposite sex. We even find some in islamic texts talking about the Frankish invaders in the holy land, but I will leave these for my upcoming work on the Knights Templar; The Way of the Rose.
Always question history and never take anything as a given, for history is an interpretation of the past, made in the present and constantly evolving as new evidence and findings are unearthed.
Love...is the ultimate form of truth, which is feminine and can be seen as a form of wisdom. It is also connected to the Grail which in grail romances always appears carried by women. The only inscription found in Rosslyn Chapel often connected to King Darius actually alludes this:
'Wine is strong. The king is stronger. Women are stronger still: but truth conquers all. '
However, what is missed by many is its relevance to Tantra and Sufi mysticism, relevant to gnosticism and the Knights Templar as they were gnostic:
"Women are heaven; women are dharma (truth);
And women are the highest sacrament..."
Hevajra Tantra (circa 700 CE)
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