1. Order of Knights Templar

The order of knights Templar – just like the Johanniter or the German teuton order – was founded in the Holy Land , after the first Crusade. Around 1120, nine crusaders decided to dedicate their lives to protect the pilgrims, being pestered by the Muslims. The members of the team, led by Hugues de Payns, called themselves the poor knights of Christ (pauperes commilitorum Christi), referring to the initial poverty and vocation. Knights were taken up by Balduin II, king of Jerusalem , who settled them in Jerusalem , in the place of the former Temple of Solomon . So they were called the knights of the Temple , or simply Knights Templar (fratres militiae Templi), because of their residence.

The prosperity of the novel order – which alloyed the monastic and military discipline (disciplina regularis et militaris) – started after the travel of Hugues de Payns to Europe . The leader of the Templars set off with five knights to participate in the Council of Troyes, convoked on the initiative of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the powerful patron of the Order. At the Council, held in January 1128, the church dignitaries heard through the report of Hugues de Payns about the foundation, aims of the order and friars' way of life. As a result of the Council, the rule of the Order was created in Latin in the same year. Till the second half of the XIII century, the rule was completed with further and further amendments.

Hugues de Payns did not return to the Holy Land at the end of the Council, he rather carried on his journey in Europe – he toured round the French Kingdom , moreover, he shipped to England to recruit new members and find patrons. His journey met with success; shortly the Templars gained several landed properties in Western Europe, mainly in France and Spain . Since the second half of the XII century, the knights found their homes in the kingdoms of Central Europe – so here, in Hungary , too.

Beside the donations of estate, the order got several privileges. The most important among these were the privileges formulated in the bull, beginning with Omne datum optimum ..., and issued by Pope Innocent II in 1139 . The pope withdrew the Order from the legal authority of the bishops, exempt them from paying tithe after their landed properties and allowed them to built temples and elect chaplains. About that time, only the Cistercians had similar privileges.

Parallel with the spectacular and rapid expansion, by the beginning of the XIII century the structure of the order had developed and consolidated. The members of the order were divided into three groups. The elite group consisted of the knights, the warriors, in fact, with heavy armament, fighting knightly. Every knight had three horses and an armour-bearer. Their clothes and equipment were identical. They wore white cloaks, with a red cross on the left shoulder. Pope Eugene III allowed them to wear this uniform with the victorious sign on it, in order to help them in the battle and to never turn their back on any unbeliever. Their task was the military service (and, in accordance with the aims of the founders, protection of the pilgrims, and in a wider sense, the contest against the unbelievers). Beside the military service, they lived like the monks: they slept in common dormitory, they ate together twice a day, and spent the intervening time with praying, singing psalms and discharging other duties (practising handling of weapons, supplying the animals, or just standing on guard).

The second, most populous group of the Order consisted of squires and sergeants, who wore the same – but greyish-brown / beige – clothes, as the knights. The number of sergeant was eight – nine times many as those of the knights. Their main duty was the service of the knights, and in the battles they helped the light horse soldiers.

The clerics and chaplains belonged to the third group of the Order. The clerics of the Order generally lived in more notable monastic quarters (and above all, in the Holy Land ). Their task was to support the members spiritually, and they owed a debt of obedience only to the Grand Master and to the Pope..

The leader of the Order of Knights Templar was the Grand Master ( magister or grand maitre ), elected by the Chapter, and he fulfilled this duty through his lifetime. In the cases of smaller importance he took a decision alone, but in the most important cases, he could decide only with the approval of the Chapter. His general deputy was the seneschal ( sénéchal ), who had the same rights as the Grand Master in the case of war. The third person of the Order was the marshal ( maréchal ), who was responsible for military affairs. Right behind the three most important office-holders were the leaders ( preceptor or commandeur ) of the provinces – generally, these were the provinces of each country. The leaders of the monastic quarters, convents were also called preceptors, commanders. The power and jurisdiction of the principals of provinces or monastic quarters were similar to those of the Grand Master, but they ruled over a smaller territory.

The Chapter, which consisted of the principal leaders and the superiors of the provinces in the Holy Land , helped the Grand Master with its advice in controlling the Order. Every year the Templars held a General Chapter, a general assembly of the Order, where, theoretically, the participation of the commanders of the provinces was compulsory. In addition, each province held an assembly every year, e.g. the leaders of the Hungarian province held a meeting in 1240 in Glogonca.

The order reached the top of its rule in the second half of the XIII century. They attended in almost every European country, they rivalled the kings in wealth. Their gorgeous property came not only from donations, but from their banking activities and financial transactions. According to their privileges, they got out of the control of the secular and ecclesiastical authorities, only the prevailing pope had the right to command them. Each landed property of the Order, anywhere in Europe or in the Middle East , operated like “a state in a state”.

A The main reason for the failure of the Order was the rearranging of power in the Middle East in the end of the XIII century. In 1291, Christians lost the Holy Land for good, and this indicated a challenge for the Order, too. They had to find new duties, which could justify their existence. The other two bigger orders (the German knights and the Hospitallers) were in better position than the Templars, because they occupied in nursing, beside the battles and the protection of pilgrims. Meanwhile, both order found the opportunity, where they could transport the idea of fighting for the protection and spreading of Christianity: the German knights fought against the Prussians and other Slavonic people, whereas the Hospitallers fought against the Turkish, who were also heathens, for long centuries. The solution for the Order of Knights Templar could be a foundation of an own state – such as the one in Rhodes for the Hospitallers, or the other at the coast of the Baltic for the German knights –, but they did not succeeded as they had to face the increasingly stronger French Kingdom .

One of the first show trials against the Knights Templar happened under such circumstances, which finally led to the fall of the Order. In October, 1307, Philip IV (the Fair), French ruler, in the frame of a well-organised action, seized the fortune of the Order in his kingdom within a day, sent the members of the Order into prison and started legal proceedings against them for disgracing the Christian religion. Philip managed to attain that Pope Clement V dissolved the Order of Knights Templar at the Council of Vienne (1311-1312). He lured Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Order of that time, to Paris , imprisoned him, then condemned him to death by burning in 1314. Most of the landed properties of the Order fell into the hands of the French king (or the ruler of the given territory) and of the other orders of knighthood, mainly the Hospitallers. These orders admitted several Knights Templar among their members.

2. The Knights Templar in Hungary

The Order of the Knights Templar appeared here, in Hungary in the second half of the XII century. The supposition, that knights settled down in our country in 1147, when the crusaders of Louis VII, French king passed through Hungary , is unproved. The first house of the Templars, which could be proved with sources, was the monastic quarters of Vrána near the coast of the Adriatic . Namely, the Benedictine monastery of Saint Gregory in Vrána belonged to the Templars already in 1169. After that, in the last decades of the XII century, the Templars appeared in Hungary again and again. They got further landed properties, monastic quarters, for example the city of Zengg , with the church of Saint George (between 1172–1185), Boisce (1186), and the list does not end here. From the beginning of the XIII century, the Order started to spread, relatively, rapidly in the Kingdom, which, above all thanks to the donations of our kings – Emery and Andrew II –, who supported the ideal of crusaders. (Both of them declared under oath that they led the crusade, and Andrew kept his promise, he participated in the Fifth Crusade in 1217.)

According to the sources, known at present, until the abolition of the order in the XIV century, the Order of Knights Templar owned fourteen monastic quarters (Boisce, Béla, Dubica, Esztergom, Gecske, Glogonca, Gora, Keresztény, Nekcse, Okriszentlo1rinc, Szentmárton, Vrána, Zablata, Zengg) and almost 50 other landed properties (area, temple, castle, city, house, fish pond, etc.) in the Hungarian Kingdom in the Middle Ages. This number is absolute value, of course, so it shows that the Order had gathered this fortune altogether during the one and half century, which they spent in Hungary . In comparison with other areas in Western Europe , this is very little. At the time of the dissolution, for example, the Order had 40-40 monastic quarters in England and in a province of France , Provance, whereas, in Aragon and Catalonia , it had 32 altogether. According to our data, the number of monastic quarters in Hungary is almost one-third of the quarters of the Order in western Europe..

It is evident from the list that the quarters and holdings of the Order in Hungary were, above all, in the southern provinces of the country – in the areas, which were called at that time Slavonia and Croatia .

A question comes up in connection with this: what is the reason for such concentration of the quarters and holdings. Temporarily, there isn't reassuring answer for this problem, there are only hypotheses. On one hand, the Templars – according to their practice in Western Europe – endeavoured anywhere to get holdings near the (more) important commercial and military roads, connecting Europe and the Holy Land, in order to ensure the flow of military and other supplies and the undisturbed travelling of crusaders and pilgrims from the West to the East. This is, maybe, the reason for that they did not try to get internal areas in the Hungarian KingDom . In contrast, the convents (Zengg, Gecske, Zablata, Vrána) in the coast of the Adriatic could be very important, which were likely intermediate stations for the supplies, carried overseas.

On the other hand, there is a tendency in the expansion of the Templars in Hungary . At first – apart from some exceptions –, they acquired some quarters in the coast of the Adriatic (Vrána, Zengg, Boisce), then they went north and expanded in Slavonia (Gora, Szentmárton, Béla). Finally – in addition to that those territories, mentioned previously, also expanded – they planted their feet firmly inside the country (Keresztény and Esztergom). This last period started in the third-fourth decade of the XIII century, so maybe the Tartar invasion in 1241-1242 and the ruin of the Knights Templar is the explanation for the breaking in the expansion towards the internal areas of Hungary .

Nevertheless, the Hungarian quarters and holdings of the Templars formed an independent province since the second half of the XII century. The Hungarian province of the Order was mentioned first between 1156 and 1169. The chapter of the rule of the Order, entitled „Organisational Directions” ( Statuts Hiérarchiques ), was created at that time, when Bertrand de Blanquefort, Grand Master ruled the Order. The Clause 87 of the chapter lists the provinces in Europe of that time: the French, the English, that of Poitou, the Aragonian, the Portugal , the Sicilian and at last the Hungarian. The Hungarian Templars participated in the life of the country in the proportion of their attendance. As the Order is a military organisation (too), above all, we have to consider this kind of participation. Temporarily, we do not know whether the Hungarian kings had some kind of determined aim (military service to protect the state or, maybe, to fill some countryside with people, or other similar conceptions), when they invited the Knights Templar into the country. (Albeit, inviting such military corporations as an order of knighthood into a country – whether we express it or not – always entails giving assistance in the case of danger.) This happened in the middle of the XIII century, during the Tartar invasion. As it is known from the writing of Thomas, Dean of Spalato, the knights of the Order did their share bravely in the battle against the Mongolians, and the Master of the Templars was a leader of the Hungarian army, beside Ugrin, archbishop of Kalocsa and Prince Coloman. However, they didn't manage to defeat the superior force in the battle of Muhi and they perished to a man with their Master. (Although Thomas of Spalato didn't denominated him, the Master of the Knights Templar could be, by all means, Rembaldus de Carono or Carumb, who had been the leader of Hungarian Templars from 1235.) In the years after the Tartar invasion, our sources did not mention the Templars – they had to recover after the defeats.

The members of the Order, beside military service, carried on activities of verification places in the country. In the Middle Ages, verification places were institutions – above all, the monasteries of friars –, where they could put the various legal affairs in writing (generally, the buying and selling of holdings, renewal of former deeds of gift). Many Hungarian convents of the Order of Knights Templar worked as verification places, but only a few of their documents remained.

At the beginning of the XIV century, the lawsuit against the order sealed the fate of the Hungarian province. According to a few sources, in Hungary , the dissolution of the Order was peaceful, the members weren't put in prison, most of them joined the fellow order, the Hospitallers. This order gained the bulk of the holdings, belonged formerly to the Order of Knights Templar.