Council of Troyes and the Knights Templar

Background

Around 1119–1120 Hugh of Payns and a few knights founded a brotherhood in Jerusalem to protect pilgrims on the roads. Baldwin II gave them part of the al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount; the Latins called the building the Temple of Solomon, and the brotherhood took its name from it. Having stayed small for a decade, the community turned to the West for recognition and new members.

The council and the rule

The council met at Troyes in Champagne under the papal legate Matthew, cardinal bishop of Albano; participants included many Cistercian abbots and Bernard of Clairvaux. Hugh described the brothers' way of life, and the meeting drew up a text of the rule.

The Latin Rule requires the brothers to vow poverty, obedience and chastity, to follow a common order of meals and worship, to dress simply and to avoid aristocratic pastimes such as hunting. Military service was defined as a religious duty within monastic discipline.

Outcome and significance

After the council Hugh gathered members and donations in France, England and Spain. Bernard's In Praise of the New Knighthood, written in the 1130s, provided the order's ideological defence. In 1139 Pope Innocent II's bull Omne datum optimum placed the order directly under the papacy.

Together with the Hospitallers and later the Teutonic Knights, the Templars became the backbone of castle defence and the standing army of the Latin East.

Sources and debates

Some copies date the council to 1128; because of differing calendar reckoning, most historians accept 13 January 1129. The Latin Rule is known to have received later additions, and its French translation contains some differences. The order's founding date and its membership in the early years are also disputed.