Stephen Howarth

The Knights Templar

New York 1982

Stron 321, format: 16x23 cm

Obwoluta dodatkowo zafoliowana, książka bez śladów używania

The age of the crusades-complex, battle-torn and fiercely pious-encompassed the rise and fall of a singular Order of fighting men, equally devoted to God, war and the defense of Palestine. Here is a meticulously researched and completely absorbing history of that Order.
The Knights Templar joined together in 1118, shortly after the first Crusaders had swept through the Holy Land and won Jerusalem from Islam. In the strict hierarchy of the feudal world, where every man owned loyalty and allegiance to his overlord, the Templars obeyed no one except the Pope. Acquiring land and castles by gift, conquest and purchase in every part of Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, they became a church within the Church, a state within the State. They were bankers, merchants, diplomats and tax gatherers, and though they themselves were poor, the wealth of their Order was legendary.
For nearly two hundred years the Templars were the champions of Christendom, leading the five great crusades against the Moslem states of the east, yet when, in the spring of 1314, their brotherhood was destroyed, its enemies were not Moslems but Christians. Individually and as a group, the Knights Templar, the flower of Christian chivalry, were accused of heresy, treachery, sodomy, usury, blasphemy and idolatry. Were the Templars, as St. Bernard said, "wor­thy of all the praise given to men of God," or were they, as Pope Clement V thought, "horri­ble, wicked and detestable"? Drawing on a rich variety of original source material, Stephen Howarth assesses the faults and fine qualities of the brotherhood, examining the reasons for its initial allure and eventual, ignominious obliteration. Brilliantly elucidating the medieval world view, he makes accessible to a wide au­dience an understanding of the chaotic age that pitched Richard Coeur de Lion against Saladin, and Christian against fellow Christian.
Teacher, explorer, historian, Stephen Howarth has been a full-time writer since 1971. He discovered, in 1974, the lost canal of Raspadura, an artificial waterway joining the headwaters of two rivers in the jungles of Colombia, which predates by more than a century the Panama Canal as the first man-made link between the oceans. Mr. Howarth has written a definitive history of the cele­brated Kohinoor diamond, and is cunently engaged in research for his next book. A Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, he lives in Warwick, England.

Contents

The Masters of the Order of the Temple in Jerusalem   9

Preface  11

Introduction: ASHES TO ASHES  13

Part One: THE FIRST CRUSADE AND THE BIRTH OF THE TEMPLE 1[zasłonięte]095-11

1.  The Blessed Soldiers   21

Part Two: THE TEMPLE IN EUROPE, 1[zasłonięte]128-11

2.  Strangers and Pilgrims  47

3.  Hugh     62

4.  Omne Datum Optimum   77

Part Three: THE KINGDOM BEYOND THE SEA: OUTREMER, 1[zasłonięte]131-13

5.  Living Waters     95

6.  The Ideal Saracen    118

7.  The Horns of Hattin    145

8.  Lion's Heart    157

9.  The Devil's Doctrine   179

10. Castle Pilgrim   193

11. Dead Waters   213

Part Four: The TEMPLE IN EUROPE, 1[zasłonięte]153-13

12. The Quartermasters of the Crusades  233

Part Five: CONSPIRACY AND ARREST, 1[zasłonięte]303-13

13.  Philip the Fair  251

14.  The Celebration of Perfidy  264

Part Six: THE TRIALS, 1[zasłonięte]307-13

15.  The Heresy of Innocence    277

16.  The Infernal Sacrifice   294

Bibliography   313

Index   317