THE KNIGHT'S TEMPLAR PART I

THE POOR KNIGHTS

WHERE DID ALL THE TEMPLARS AND THERE GREAT WEALTH GO?

THE BRETHREN, THE MASTERS OF THE TEMPLE,

WHO WERE WELL STOCKED AND AMPLE

WITH GOLD AND SILVER AND RICHES

WHERE ARE THEY?

HOW HAVE THEY DONE?

THEY HAD SUCH POWER ONCE

THAT NONE DARED TAKE FROM THEM

NONE WAS SO BOLD

FOREVER THEY BOUGHT AND NEVER SOLD

In 1307 the Church of Rome and the country of Gaul (France) turned their Inquisition loose on the Knight Templar’s, and their fleet of ships went missing! Or did it?

The Knight Templar’s were nine knights from the Champagne region of France called Gaul in medieval times, the nine knights were later joined by the Count of Champlain as the tenth knight.

Knights of the order wore white mantles, assigned to the Templar’s in 1129 at the Council of Troyes and surcoats quartered by a red cross or “Rosy Cross”, a symbol of martyrdom, probably added at the start of the Second Crusade in 1147, and were heavily armored knights from the aristocracy with war horses. Knights had to wear their white mantles at all times, even when eating and drinking. Knights of the Order would never surrender unless the Templar flag had fallen, and even then they should try and regroup with other Christian orders. They had a solemn initiation ceremony that outsiders were discouraged from attending that was to later cause mistrust of the order. New members generally joined for life, and had to willingly hand over their wealth and goods to the order and took vows of poverty, chastity, piety and obedience. Married men could join if they had their wives permission but they were not allowed to wear the white mantle, and occasionally knights were allowed to join for set periods of time.

Below the knights were sergeants who wore a black surcoat with a red cross and a black or brown mantle, and There were lightly quipped cavalry. Chaplain’s were ordained priests who looked after Templar spiritual requirements. Other members looked after its infrastructure which grew rapidly to large proportions, mainly through gifts of land from wealthy benefactors. They used their finances to build castles and fortifications throughout the Mediterranean and Holy Land, and to purchase further lands, farms, vineyards. They were involved in manufacturing, import and export and even had their own fleet of ships.

With this military strength, financial stability and their large wealth, the Templar’s developed a banking system in 1150A.D. to ensure the safe transfer of money, by using encoded documents to note deposits of wealth the documents could be used to retrieve funds at the travelers destination, making them less susceptible to robbery.

The First Grand Master of the Knights Templar Hughes de Payen was married to Catherine St. Clair and there has always been a strong connection between the Knights and the St. Clair/Sinclair family whose name has under gone a few changes in spelling over the years. St. Clair being the French contingent of the family, Sinclair the Norman Scot contingent.

The knights were a threat to the church and the King of France had a huge debt with them and wanted out from under the debt by destroying the knights. The knights held a major piece of information which they were black mailing the church with. Because of this the church put out a papal decree that permitted the knights to be able to operate without paying taxes among other privileges throughout Christendom.

At the time of their demise they were twenty thousand strong, with over nine thousand estates throughout Europe and the Middle East. The estates were Castles, real estate, dairies, farms, vineyards, distilleries, shops, architectural firms all types of building guilds and shipping. All of these entities were owned by the Knights Templar’s and not by individuals.

All of the knights most of whom came from nobility and families of distinction, donated all of their wealth and assets to the knights and lived as monks in commune. Their actual name was the Poor Knights of The Temple of King Solomon.