This is my dissertation which I wrote for my MA in European Historical Archaeology at the University of Sheffield in 2002. I will warn you now that this was written over a lot of sleepless nights as I got progressively more and more burnt out. By the end I really didn't care about the quality, so much as the fact that it was DONE! I got a low mark on it, which I richly deserved. It is not a great scholarly work, but it may be of interest to some of you, so read, enjoy, and take with a grain of salt.

The Iconography of the Knights Templar

by Mary Adelle Leinart

Department of Archaeology and Prehistory
University of Sheffield, England
Dissertation - 2002

Abstract

From their formation in 1119 to their dissolution in 1312, the Order of the Temple used many images and symbols to represent themselves. Among the most frequently used of these symbols were the various seals of the Order, the clothing they wore, and the arms they carried with them into battle.

The meaning of the seal of the Grand Master of the Temple is very ambiguous, and is discussed here at length, with shorter segments on the seals used by the masters of the European houses, and some information on the use of seals in general during this period.

The habit of the Order evolved over time, and the meanings behind its aspects are more clearly described in contemporary literature than those of the Order's seals. The symbolism of the Templars' habit and arms is connected through the use of St George's cross, but I will also be treating the beauseant, the Templar's less commonly known emblem.

These symbols demonstrated the image the Templars wished to present to the world. I will look at where these symbols came from, when they first appeared, how they came to be used, and what they meant to the Templars and their contemporaries. The meanings of some symbols have been lost, and in some cases, educated guesses by modern scholars are all the is available. Some of the problems of interpretation modern scholars have encountered in studying the Templars and their symbols are also discussed in this paper.

Wherever possible, I have attempted to use the most authoritative academic sources currently available. I am especially indebted to Dr Helen Nicholson for her recent book The Knights Templar, a New History and for her personal help in suggesting useful sources such as Malcolm Barber and Alan Forey. I am also indebted to such freely available online sources as the Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies, the Catholic Encyclopedia and the Internet Medieval Sourcebook, for providing so much valuable information and so many original sources in English translations.

In some places, I have used more controversial sources, such as Peter Partner, Stephan Dafoe and a couple websites which claim to represent current incarnations of the Order, not because I believe their information to be historically significant--or even particularly accurate--but to show some of the less likely origins and meaning currently applied to Templar symbols. Wherever I have used examples from these sources, I have endeavoured to point out their fallibility.

Many of the excellent historical sources on the Templars that I looked at had little to say on the subject of the symbols I discuss, or little that was not said just as well in the sources covered in my bibliography, and I was therefore unable to include them.

A Brief History of the Templar Order

Before one can properly look at the iconography of the Knights Templar, one must have a clear understanding of the Order, how it came about, what it represented, and how it came to an end.

Formally known as "The Poor Knights of Christ of the Temple in Jerusalem", they were more commonly known in their own time and today as the Order of the Temple or the Knights Templar. The Order was founded in 1119 by Sir Hugh de Payens, a crusading knight from Champagne, and eight of his crusader comrades, also of the lesser nobility. After the First Crusade was over at the beginning of the twelfth century, most of the people involved felt that they had completed the task for which they had signed up, and could now return home. However, it was necessary for someone to stay and guard the West's interests in the Holy Land, and thus the Knights Templar were born.

The Rule of the Order was approved by the Church ten years later in 1129 at the Council of Troyes. This put the Templars on a par of importance with other holy Orders of their day, such as the Cistercians, though their purpose was very different. The Templars were a military Order. Their purpose, initially, was to act as protectors of Christian pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem. Over the following two centuries, they became western Christendom's most enthusiastic defenders against the Muslims, as well as one of Europe's leading and most trusted banking houses. The Order had a great deal of political and social influence, and was known and respected throughout Europe and the Near East.

In 1307, nearly two hundred years after the Order was founded, the King of France, Philip IV, accused them of heresy, blasphemy and perversion, as well as conspiring with the Muslims, with whom the Templars had made treaties. However, the consensus of modern historians is that he did this, not because he believed these accusations to be true, but because he hoped to lay hands on the vast wealth the Order had accumulated.

Hollister (1982, p. 267) suggests that Philip may have convinced himself that the charges were true, but that the king had to pay his witnesses to testify demonstrates that public opinion was not necessarily against the Order. The king's statement ("If some among them are innocent, it is expedient that they should be assayed like gold in the furnace and purged by proper judicial examination." Royal letter opening the Inquiry into the Templars 1307 [Anonymous 2002, Ancient Templar Quotes]), though, upon opening the Templar inquiry suggests that Philip did not care greatly whether the Templars were guilty or not. In any case, the charges against the Templars were never proved, but some of the brothers confessed under torture, and many French Templars were burnt at the stake after retracting these confessions.

Pope Clement V was forced to officially dissolve the Order in 1312, because it had fallen too far into disrepute to function any longer (Nicholson 2001, p. 12). All of the Templars' property and their archives were inherited by the Knights Hospitaller, another military Order. Popular legend holds that the Templar Order continued to function, unofficially and underground for centuries following their dissolution, but such tales spring mainly from the romantic revival of the Templars in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and there is no historical or archaeological evidence that they are founded in truth.

Research Problems

Over the course of nearly two hundred years, the Knights Templar adopted and used many symbols to represent themselves. In the centuries since their dissolution, these symbols have acquired an air of mystery, which has made their interpretation problematic. The main difficulty is the abundance of sensational texts which have been written about the Order since accusations were first brought against them in 1307. These texts often suggest that their was some truth behind the French king's accusations, including occult practices and devil worship.

The accusations, backed up by the testimony of paid witnesses, and spread officially and by rumour around Europe, caused the Templars to be demonised in the eyes of the public, and this demonisation lead to the destruction of much contemporary information, either intentionally, through the people's anger at the Templars' betrayal of their trust, or through neglect, because people did not see any need to preserve the memory of the Order.

The majority of surviving contemporary texts concerning the Order were written by outsiders, whose understanding of Templar symbolism was limited, affected by hearsay, and sometimes not recorded at all. Three main factors contribute to this lack of first hand documentation: first, the Templars were not scholars, they were warriors. While other holy Orders devoted themselves to scholarship, the Templars were busy fighting Christendom's battles. Few of the brothers were able to read more than their own native language, and in some Templar houses, learning was frowned upon.

Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, who was instrumental in the writing of the Rule of the Templars, and whom the Templars greatly respected, preached a doctrine of the superiority of love to knowledge (Seward 1972, p. 11). In fact, the Order considered educated brothers more likely to ask troublesome spiritual questions, which the uneducated commanders and masters of the Templars would find difficult to answer (Nicholson 2001, p. 12).

The second factor contributing to our lack of knowledge is that the Order's central archive has been lost. It was first held at Jerusalem, but was moved, along with the Templar headquarters, to Acre, after Jerusalem was lost to the West in 1187, and then to Cyprus after the fall of Acre in 1291. Following the dissolution of the Order, these records passed into the keeping of the Knights Hospitaller, who kept them on Cyprus until the island was taken by the Turks in 1571, at which point the records were presumably destroyed (Nicholson 2001, p. 8).

The third factor is that the Templars and their contemporaries knew what these symbols meant, and assumed that everyone else did as well. There was no need to describe in detail the reasoning behind the choice of this colour or that symbol. Neither the Templars nor their contemporaries felt it needful to record these facts, which were--to them--common knowledge, as well as being minor details compared to the task they had set themselves of defending Christendom. In such ways, common knowledge often becomes lost.

These substantial gaps in our knowledge of the Templar Order have, over the last few centuries, been filled in by myth, legend and hearsay. With the romantic revival of the Templars in the 17th and 18th centuries, new symbols were invented, or uprooted from their historical context, and given new significance. These new symbols and meanings often corroborated the Templars' legendary connections with the occult, which modern society largely finds romantic and intriguing, rather than frightening, enhancing the reputation of the Neo-Templar Order. Many writers--and some historians--have become so caught up in the myth and mystery of the Templars that the facts have become muddled and difficult to disentangle.

One would think to find many symbols of the Order preserved in the architecture of Templar churches and houses, but according to Ritook (1994, p. 176), though the masonry was generally of high quality, no special Templar iconography is displayed in the masonry. In my research, I have found nothing to refute his observations. Templar symbolism in architecture seems to be a more recent development--a result of the romantic revival of later centuries. These Neo-Templars apparently had greater need for recognition of their association with Templar imagery that the original Order.

Despite the substantial gaps in our knowledge of the Order of the Temple, a great deal has been written--both contemporary with the Order and by modern historians--on the Templars and their iconography. In this paper, I have tried to assemble a comprehensive, if brief, discourse on a few of the Order's symbols, namely their seals, habit and arms. I will be covering many theories, some of them my own, and attempting to determine the probability of each, as well as explaining why some suggestions could not be true.

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©2005 Mary Adelle Leinart