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ORDO SUPREMUS MILITARIS TEMPLI HIEROSOLYMITANI®

Welcome to the Official International Knights Templar Website


The Magistral Grand Priory of The Holy Lands
(Notre Dame, Saint Mary of Magdalene)

The International, Ecumenical and Military Order was founded in Jerusalem during the year 1118 by Hugues de Payens, Geoffrey de Saint-Omer and seven other French noble knights. The Order was consecrated to the protection of pilgrims and the defence of the Holy Land. The founding knights took monastic vows and were known as “The Poor Knights of Christ”.
King Baldwin II, the King of Jerusalem (1118-1131), installed the Order in a part of the Palace of Jerusalem, Solomon’s Temple, for their residence and armoury, from which it took the name of Knights of the Temple or Templars.
The Templars And Cyprus
(...) This allowed Templar Master Robert de Sable to enter the picture. Robert is best known for lobbying the Pope to write the bull "Omne Datum Optimum", which would benefit the Templars for many years to come. The Templars long wishing to carve out a nation for themselves, as the Teutonic Knights and Hospitallers would latterly accomplish, offered to buy the island from Richard.

Richard was quick to agree and the price was 100,000 bezants of which De Sable gave a down payment of 40,000 with the rest to be paid from profits made on the island. The fact that the Templars were able to pay even 40,000 bezants so quickly after striking losses suffered during Hattin and its aftermath indicates just how wealthy the order was starting to be. Of course part of this wealth was being generated by commerce a field that Templar Inc. excelled at. Naturally Cyprus would be a key part in this endeavor due to its key location in the Mediterranean.

Unfortunately De Sable was not able to leave a huge garrison on Cyprus as the order was needed to do battle elsewhere. All that remained on Cyprus were fourteen Templars with some accounts claiming as high as 20. Still this small garrison under the command of Armand Bouchart was scarcely enough to properly occupy the island. Besides the men sent were warriors and not administrators. Soon the Templar arrogance raised its head with the men taking what they wanted and generally showing disrespect for the islands barons and citizens.

This ill treatment soon came to a head and the populace revolted. Bouchart and his knights sought shelter... (read the full story)

The Military Orders in Cyprus
in the Light of Recent Scholarship

Professor Peter W. Edbury (Cardiff University, Wales, United Kingdom)

The French crusading Lusignan dynasty ruled in Cyprus from 1192 until 1474. After that the island was under Venetian rule, de facto from 1474 and de jure from 1489, until 1570-71. Until a few years ago it would have been true to say that medieval Cyprus had been rather neglected by scholars.

Huge advances had been made in our understanding of the history of the other kingdom founded by the crusaders in the Levant, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem - we might think for example of the work of Joshua Prawer, Hans Mayer, Jean Richard, and Jonathan Riley-Smith - but interest in Cyprus was limited. This is no longer the case, and in this communication I shall draw attention to recent work on one specific topic: the History of the Military Orders in Cyprus. 

The upsurge in published materials since the early 1990s is striking. The recent book by Dr Nicholas Coureas of the Cyprus Research Centre, The Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195-1312, has a lengthy chapter on the Orders, and, at a conference on the Military Orders which was held in London in 1992 under the auspices of the London Centre for the Study of the Crusades, several contributors chose to talk about the island. A.H.S. (Peter) Megaw pointed out the striking similarities between the design of the concentric Hospitaller castle of Belvoir in Israel and the smaller and rather later (c. 1200) fortress at Paphos, although his suggestion that the Paphos fortress too may have belonged to the Order seems to me to be unlikely.

By contrast, Alan Forey, Anne Gilmour-Bryson, the late Annetta Ilieva and myself all directed attention to the Templars. These papers and many others are edited by Malcolm Barber as The Military Orders. Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick. Malcolm Barber's own study, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple makes appropriate reference to Cyprus, as does his older book, The Trial of The Templars. The Templars are of interest, partly because of their brief period of rule in the island in 1191-92, and partly because of the importance of the trial documents from Cyprus for our understanding of the Order's suppression. Recently Jean Richard has looked again at some of the issues surrounding the Templars' tenure of the island, and more recently still Anne Gilmour-Bryson has published the fruits of what must have been a most prodigious effort, a complete translation into English of the trial documents from 1310-11. 

In Cyprus the Templars were not tortured and did not confess; more remarkably, the lay witnesses, several of whom had no particular reason for supporting the Order, failed to incriminate them. With the suppression of the Templars and the transfer of most of their estates on Cyprus to the Hospitallers, the Knights of St John became the wealthiest ecclesiastical institution on the island and their Cypriot lands their richest commandery. Anthony Luttrell, whose name has long been synonymous with research into the history of the Hospitallers on Rhodes (1310-1522), has examined the effects of the papal schism of 1378 on the Order and its interests and personnel on the island. It is an unedifying tale of selfishness and intrigue.

Source. See Also: Bibliography for Cyprus and the Military Orders.