h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

where does the name templar come from do we know?

Hi there,

When the Crusaders took over the Jerusalem, they were given the Temple mount which the temple of Soloman was supposed to be built upon. Since they were in the temple.... If there was another reason, I'd like to know too!

A.

cool ta

Not exactly a reply to your posting ... more of an offshoot.
It strikes me that this quest for aracne knowledge that people project onto the Templars is an extension of the propoganda and persecution that led to their ultimate downfall. In a secular age it might be diffcult to comprehend, but in Templar times the charges of arcane knowledge, secret rites, balsphemous doings etc. were ones which, correctly levelled, could bring down even this mighty institution. Given their military power, wealth and standing it was no surprise that a beleagured religious state would seek to undermine this organisation by spreading rumours that justified their torture, murder and disbandment. I would suggest that this hearsay of heresy has become part of the myth of the Templars and has sadly been accepted by many as what makes the Templars interesting, as oppose to their complex moral double-standards which would allow for the massacre of Muslims under the name of God and right.
Anyway ..thanks for the entry ..very illuminating and well written. Would like to hear more.

What you say is true. France was very short of cash at the time, and their envy of the Templar fortune is well known.

I think its mainly the secrecy of the Templar order and their chapters are what lead to the intrigue.

Apparently after digging tunnels under the Temple Mount for 9 years, they travelled back to Europe with whatever they'd found (if anything). Next thing you know, huge gothic churches started to get built on a scale that Europe had never seen. Theres a whole load of speculation to what they might have found, from the ark of the coventent, to an ancient knowledge once lost to arkane secrets.

Once the order was made, their inner dealings were not known to the world as a whole, so being rather superstitious times, people started to make up all sorts of stuff about them.

Of course, the Templars were only human, and there are counts of homosexuality and other deeds the Church of the time deemed evil. So it was with this that the Crown of France laid their claim. Some things about the initiation ceremony where initates were required to bow to an image, spit and stomp on the cross and kiss his initater in a few oddly undesirable places.

In the Templar trials, there was never hard evidence found about them apart from the sorts of things that came out in the torture (and we're talking the best Royal torturers in the Church and kingdom). Those who got burnt at the stake fell into the trap of Church law at the time, which stated that if you took back your confession, you were a 'relapsed heretic' which was one of the worst things to be in the eyes of the Church.

Pretty dodgy stuff eh? Makes a lot of people very curious.

To all,

Economic explanations are almost certainly right. But the Templars were Cathars. Their downfall is generally explained by their wealth and their power as bankers. But the Cathar connection remains. Check out "The Name of the Rose". Christ's poverty was no more popular then than it is now. His tendency to teach the poor and disenfranchised has generally been equally unpopular. The Cathars applied Christ's teachings to the rural poor. They were removed from history - their legacy a tired conspiracy theory about the origins of Freemasonry.

I doubt anyone's interested. If you are, my door is always open.

Not that it makes much difference.

What the hey.

Yours in the hope and expectation of paradise,

Stella X.

I had always thought that the charges laid against the Cathars stemmed mainly from what was known as the "Cathar Dualist Heresy" (or at least that was where the main excuse to burn the lot of them and take their holding and property in the name of the French crown). This stemmed from the fact that the Cathars subscribed to the belief that while the Christian god was the master of the spiritual world (or heaven, if you like), the devil was the ruler of the physical world. This rationalised the evil in the physical world and neatly got God out of the old "why does God let bad things happen to good people" dilemma. But it also alloted a great deal of power to the devil and put the figure almost on par with God himself. Of course this flys in the face of the traditional Christian image of God as omnipotent and all-powerfull. The Cathars were, in the eyes of the Christian establishment, elevating the devil to Godhood and challenging the central importance of the one true God.

When you're a religious bigot empowered in such ways and strapped for cash the easiest target is almost always a religious minority.

I wouldn't agree with the statement that the Templars were Cathars, nor with the implication that "The Name of the Rose", brilliant book as it is, is a stable historical text.

2 things, One on the Cathar duality: I merely wanted to suggest the irony that this very tactic of talking up the significance of the devil was later adopted by the church to give people a greater sense of an embodied evil in the world, making the religious experience more edgy; a greater struggle of good and evil.
The idea of devil/demonic possession and real conflict on earth with the devil became a somewhat prominent theme in such Church comissioned works as Faustus and Everyman because the public took to it better. Without contempt I say: Essentially good marketing.
2nd: Something that I had heard anectdotaley was that the modern image of Jesus as the white bearded man was drawn from images of Zeus that were so frequently encountered by crusaders on their travels and becamed popularised in Europe after their return. This may well be absolute bunk, so I say this as a question rather than a point, if anyone could further enlighten me, I'd be obliged.