The Knights Templar & Love
See original FB article here
THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR AND LOVE
Following on from my last post on women within the Order of the Knights Templar, I wanted to come back to a post I did on Valentine's Day this year where I shared a Love poem believed to have been written about by a Knights Templar, found with a property charter, inside the French version of the Rule of the Knights Templar. As some of you asked for more information U wanted to come back to this and share, in the name of
We've already seen that the Latin Rule of the Knights Templar which included a prohibition against the company of women also allowed us to see that women had been admitted into the order up to that point. Helen Nichoson believes that it is possible that this clause was added by the archbishops, bishops, abbots, nobles and officials present at the Council of Troyes in 1128 when they examined the new order’s customs in detail, approving some clauses while removing others.
Knights were always associated with women and romance, and we can see this in the many romances of the time and in the concept of Courtly Love often linked to Eleanor of Aquitaine. Interestingly, During the proceedings of the Knights Templar, one brother denied the charge of homosexuality by saying that he could always get a lovely woman when he wanted one, and that he had them frequently. He also added that brothers of the order were frequently removed from their houses for this reason. Marie Luise Bulst-Thiele furthermore notes that at Famagusta, on Cyprus, it was said that the Templars claimed that no girl was a woman until she had slept with a Templar. Helen Nicholson also mentions that outsiders did not criticize the Templars for this behaviour and seem to accept any sexual laxity among Templar brothers; as if it was only to be expected from knights, even monk-knights. In my research, I have also seen this reflected in Islamic literature. In a love song by Gontiers de Soignies, from the early thirteenth century, the order of the Knights Templar is portrayed as a fitting place of retreat for a man who had been crossed in love; while in two later thirteenth century romances the Templars were even even depicted as sympathetic towards lovers, in total contradiction with their Rule.
The above supports the intimate thoughts of the Templar who wrote a declaration of undying love to a worthy lady in three four-line stanzas of rhyming couplets on the blank page at the
end of a copy of the Templar rule. This was the love poem I shared on Valentine's Day and was published by Jane Oliver in 1981 (see refs at the end). The writing dates from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, and the rule appears to have come
from northern France, perhaps from the Templar house at Dourges. As only the preceptor (commander of a Templar house) was supposed to have custody of the rule, presumably the preceptor had been amusing himself making verses on the favourite literary theme; love. A theme which comes up often with the Knights Templar but is also relevant to the teachings of Jesus, John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene as well as the Sufi's "religion of love".
Hard to decipher, the grammar is erratic, the style is awkward, and the content is extremely conventional: the writer no longer sings as much as he used to for he does not wish to show any sign of love towards his worthy lady, because of the ‘mauvaise gent,’ (the evil people who would cause trouble for him). But declares that he will not be deterred by gossip and opposition of these people, nor would he for anything think of any deed to wrong her. So he thanks love for setting him on the road and in fact, in the last stanza he says that he has fallen so deeply in thrall to his lady's "merchi" that he gives himself to her body and soul forever. The poem reads as follows:
"Se je ne chant si souvent comme jou faire soloye
C'est pour la mauvaise gent qui nuit et jour sont en voye
D'agaitier se je feroie sine ne semblant d'amour
Vers vous dame de valour.
Or sai je certainement que pour yaus ne le lairoye
Que ne fuisse bonnement du tout a la simple coye
Ne pour riens ne penseroye fait que tournais a falour
Vers vous dame de valour.
Car je sai tout vrayement que trop vers li mespenroye
Si en merchi bonnement amours qui m'out mis en voye
Que cuer et cors eli (sic) otroye du tout en tout sans retour
Vers vous dame de valour."
References:
La Règle du Temple, ed. H. de Curzon (Paris, 1886), section 72. An English translation of the Templar rule by Judith Upton-Ward.
Nicholson, Helen. Templar Attitudes Towards Women. Medieval History, 1.3 (1991) (ISSN 0960-0752), 74–80
Example quoted by Bulst-Thiele, Sacrae Domus, p. 350 note 262, quoting Procès des Templiers, ed. J. Michelet, 2 vols (Paris, 1841–51), 1 p. 326ff.
J. Oliver, ‘The rule of the Templars and a courtly ballade’, Scriptorium, 35,2 (1981), 303–6.
Ibid., p.305.
#knightstemplar #templars #templar #templarios #templari #medievalhistory #historylovers #ancientwisdom #EsotericKnowledge #gnosis #gnosticism #love #lovepoetry