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THE TEMPLARS

n 1128, Saint Bernard convened the council of Troyes. It was the first time in the history of the Church that a council had been called to create a religious order. Besides the papal legate, all the abbots or bishops of France in attendance were Benedictines or Cistercians. The Order of the Temple was officially born at that council. It was granted exceptional autonomy and privileges never seen in history before or since. It was attached directly to the pope and was accountable to no one else, not even the king or his ministers. It was exempt from all taxes. This status and Saint Bernard's rules for the order would make the "Templars" an extraordinary organization for its times, one that would remain a model for many generations to come. The Templars had no right to property besides their personal goods, but the Order of the Temple soon received gifts and legacies from many sources. The order immediately began to comb Europe for volunteers who could pass muster for morality and were qualified for the part they were to play in the great moral and social reconstruction to come. For two centuries, as they became more numerous, the Templars protected not only pilgrimage routes but also trade routes. The created and im-proved the infrastructure of farming, forestry, shipping, trade and even banking. They introduced the encrypted letter of credit and the trans-portation of funds over a network of protected routes, "command posts," stage and relay points. They also created training centers and lodgings for the many construction workers who traveled under the protection of the Temple and who formed an auxiliary association: "the children of Solomon." In a word, they were out to put France to work and get it moving forward again ! In the same time, in that yet misty age, they combined to create the myths of chivalry and of the Quest for the Grail. A few decades earlier, some anonymous authors, who were certainly Benedictine monks, had composed the Song of Roland. It was recited by traveling minstrels as they went from castle to castle. Since this trial bal-loon worked well, Chrestien de Troyes (a transparent pseudonym for an author whom no one had ever seen) wrote his "romances" of the Round Table: Arthur, Lancelot of the Lake, Perceval are all guides of good con-duct for small feudal lords who hadn't yet understood that history had turned a page and that a new age was beginning... *