CRUSADERS, TEMPLARS AND FREEMASONRY
Freemasonry was officially established
and recognized in England in the 18th century but actually, the
roots of the organization reach back to the Crusades in the 12th
century. At the focal point of this old story is an order of crusaders
called the Knights of the Temple or the Templars, for short.
No matter how much many people may believe that the Crusades were
a product of Christian faith, they were basically wars undertaken
for material gain. In a period when Europe was experiencing great
poverty and misery, the comfort and wealth of the East, especially
of the Muslim Middle East, attracted Europeans. This motivation
took on a religious appearance decorated with the symbols of Christianity
but actually the idea of the Crusades was born out of a desire
for worldly gain. This was the reason for the sudden change among
Christians from their former pacifist policies in earlier periods
of their history to a tendency towards military aggression.
The initiator of the Crusades was Pope Urban II. He summoned the
Council of Clermont in 1095 in which the former Christian doctrine
of pacifism was changed. A holy war was announced that was to
wrest the holy lands from the hands of the Muslims. Afterwards,
a huge army of Crusaders was formed composed both of professional
soldiers and tens of thousands of ordinary people.
 Historians
think that this venture of Urban II was prompted by his desire
to eclipse the candidacy of a rival for the papacy. European kings,
princes, aristocrats and others greeted the Pope's call with excitement
but their intentions were basically worldly. "The French knights
wanted more land. Italian merchants hoped to expand trade in Middle
Eastern ports... Large numbers of poor people joined the expeditions
simply to escape the hardships of their normal lives."1
Along the way, this greedy mass killed many Muslims and even Jews
just hoping to find gold and jewels. The crusaders even cut open
the stomachs of those they had killed to find gold and precious
stones that the victims may have swallowed before they died. The
material greed of the crusaders was so great that they did not
hesitate to sack the Christian city of Constantinople (Istanbul)
in the 6th Crusade during which they stripped off the gold leaf
from the Christian frescoes in Hagia Sophia.
So, this band called Crusaders reached Jerusalem in 1099 after
burning and looting many places and putting many Muslims to the
sword. After a long siege of five weeks, the city fell and the
Crusaders entered. As one historian put it, "They killed all the
Saracens and the Turks they found... whether male of female.2
One of the Crusaders, Raymund of Aguiles, wrote these words
in praise of this savagery:
Wonderful sights were to be seen. Some
of our men (and this was more merciful) cut off the heads of their
enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from
the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the
flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen in the
streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one's way over the
bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared
to what happened at the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious
services are normally chanted ... in the Temple and porch of Solomon,
men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins.3
 |
| The Crusaders reached Jerusalem in 1099
after burning and looting many places and putting many Muslims
to the sword. |
According to the same historical
source, the number of Muslims pitilessly slaughtered was 40,000.4
The crusaders made Jerusalem their capital and founded a Latin Kingdom
stretching from the borders of Palestine to Antioch.
Later, the crusaders began a struggle to hold their position in
the Middle East. In order to sustain the state they had founded,
they had to organize it. To do this, they established military orders,
which had never existed before. Members of these orders came from
Europe to Palestine and lived in a kind of monastery where they
received military training to fight against Muslims.
One of these orders was different from the others. It underwent
a change that would influence the course of history. This order
was the Templars.
From the Templars to Freemasonry
The Templars, or, their full name, The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ
and the Temple of Solomon, was formed in 1118, that is 20 years
after the crusaders took Jerusalem. The founders of the order were
two Frenchmen, Hugh de Payens and Godfrey de St. Omer. At first
there were 9 members but the order steadily grew. The reason that
they called themselves after the temple of Solomon was that the
place they chose as a base was the temple mount where this ruined
temple had been located. At the same time, this place was where
the Al-Aqsa Mosque stood.
The Templars had called themselves "poor soldiers",
but within a short time they became wealthy. Christian pilgrims
coming from Europe to Palestine were completely under the control
of this order which became very rich on the money collected from
the pilgrims. In addition, for the first time they set up a cheque-bond
system similar to that of a bank. According to the BBC commentators,
Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, they established a kind of Medieval
capitalism and led the way to modern banking by their management
of interest.5
The Templars were the ones mainly responsible for the crusaders'
attacks against and murder of Muslims. For this reason, the great
Islamic commander Saladin, who defeated the crusaders' army in 1187
in the Battle of Hattin and afterwards rescued Jerusalem, put the
Templars to death for the murders they had committed even though
he had pardoned a large number of Christians. Although they lost
Jerusalem and suffered heavy losses, the Templars continued to exist.
And despite the continual diminution of the Christian presence in
Palestine, they increased their power in Europe and, first in France,
and then on other countries, they became a state within a state.
There is no doubt that this political power made European monarchs
uncomfortable. But there was another aspect of the Templars that
also made the clergy uneasy: the order had gradually broken its
ties with Christian faith and while in Jerusalem, they adopted a
number of strange mystical doctrines. There were also rumors that
they were organizing strange rites to express these doctrines.
Finally, in 1307, the French king Philip
the Fair and Pope Clement V jointly decided to arrest the members
of the order. Some of them managed to escape but most of them were
caught. Afterwards, a long period of interrogation and trial began
and many of them admitted that they were actually heretical, that
they had rejected the Christian faith and insulted Jesus in their
masses. Finally, the leaders of the Templars who were called "grand
masters", beginning with the most important of them, Jacques de
Molay, were executed in 1314 by the order of the Church and the
King. The majority of them were put into prison, the order dispersed
and officially disappeared. But although the order "officially"
ceased to exist, it did not mean that it had actually disappeared.
During the main arrest in 1307, some Templars escaped and managed
to cover their tracks. According to a thesis based on various historical
documentation, a significant number of these escaped Templars took
refuge in the single kingdom in Europe that did not recognize the
authority of the Catholic Church in the 14th century-Scotland. There
they reorganized under the protection of the Scottish king, Robert
the Bruce. A while later, they found a good method of camouflage
to allow them to continue their existence: they infiltrated the
oldest guild in the medieval British Isles-the wall builders' lodge.6
The wall builders' lodge changed its name at the beginning of the
modern era and called itself the "Masonic lodge". (The dictionary
defines the term "mason" as a master wall builder.) The Scottish
Rite is the oldest branch of Masonry and goes back to the beginning
of the 14th century to those Templars who took refuge in Scotland.
And the names given to the highest degrees in Scottish Rite are
titles that were given to knights in the order of Templars centuries
earlier. It is still the same today.
In short, the Templars did not disappear and their philosophy, beliefs
and rituals still continue under the roof of Freemasonry. This thesis
has many historical proofs and is accepted today by a large number
of Western historians whether they are Freemasons or not.
The thesis that the roots of Freemasonry go back to the Templars
is often pointed out in magazines published by Turkish Masonry for
its own members. On this topic the Freemasons are very open. One
of these magazines is called Mimar Sinan which describes the relationship
between the Order of Templars and Masonry in these words:
In 1312, when the French
king, under pressure from the Church, closed the Order of Templars
and gave their possessions to the Knights of St. John, the activities
of the Templars ceased. The great majority of the Templars took
refuge in Masonic lodges that were operating in Europe at that
time… Scottish Masons, who inherited the Templars' heritage, gave
it back to France many years later and established there the basis
of the rite known as the Scottish Rite.7
Again, the Mimar Sinan
magazine gives much information about the relationship between
the Templars and Freemasonry. In an article entitled "Templars
and Freemasons", it says that "the rituals for the initiation
ceremony of the Order of Templars are similar to those of present-day
Masonry."8
According to the same article, "just as in Masonry, the members
of the Order of Templars called each other 'brother'."9
Towards the end of the article we read,
The Order of Templars and the Masonic organization
have influenced each other to a noticeable extent. Even the
rituals of the corporations are so similar as to have been copied
from the Templars… To summarize, as we said at the beginning
of this essay, we can say that the starting point of Masonry's
royal art and initiatic-esoteric line was the Templars and its
end point is Freemasonry.10
The Impact of the Crusade Philosophy
to Our Day
 It is clear that the roots
of Masonry stretch back to the Order of Templars and the Masons
have adopted the philosophy of this order, which was established
by the Crusaders. While considering the impact of Crusaders to
our day, we need to remember this point and the far-reaching influences
of Masonry on the world. The aims of Masonry are explained by
one of the most well-known Turkish Freemasons Selami Isindag in
his book Masonluktan Esinlenmeler (Masonic Inspirations):
According to Freemasonry, it is necessary
to rid people of a character inspired by metaphysical divine sources,
and instead establish a character based on the love of man, which
is free from relativity. In its basic ethical principles, Masonry
considers the inclinations of man, his needs, satisfactions, the
laws and order of social life, consciousness (conscience), freedom
of speech and thought and finally, the entire plan of nature,
and therefore aims to establish and develop values centered around
man in all societies.11
This is the final purpose of Masonry: to eradicate
religion and to establish a humanist and godless world where the
concept of "man" will be held sacred; where people will deny God
Who created them, and take themselves as "idols".
For this reason, it is essential to protect the society from this
disaster by shattering the godless suggestions of Masonry and
thus save the faith of people. What we have to do is tell people
about the existence of God and the values of religion by supporting
them with the facts revealed by science. When Muslims undertake
this responsibility, by the will of God, this verse will come
true: "Rather We hurl the truth against falsehood
and it cuts right through it and it vanishes clean away!"
(Qur'an, 21:18)
When this is realized, the representatives of the evil will "vanish
clean away" and the 21st century will be the age of Islamic values
rather than the evil's alliance as they presume.
1 World Book Encyclopedia, "Crusades",
Contributor: Donald E. Queller, Ph.D., Prof. of History, Univ. of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, World Book Inc., 1998
2 Geste Francorum, or the Deeds of the Franks and the Other Pilgrims
to Jerusalem, translated by Rosalind Hill, London, 1962, p. 91
3 August C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eye-Witnesses
and Participants, Princeton & London, 1921, p. 261
4 Ibid., p. 262
5 Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, The Temple and the Lodge, London,
Corgi Books, 1990, p. 78-81.
6 For more detail about this thesis on freemasonry, please see John
J. Robinson, Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, New
York, M. Evans & Company, 1989
7 Ender Arkun, "Masonlarin Dusunce Evrimine Katkisina
Kýsa Bir Bakis" (A Quick Look at the Intellectual Evolution of Masons),
Mimar Sinan, 1990, No. 77, p. 68
8 Teoman Biyikoglu, "Tampliyeler ve Hurmasonlar" (Templars and Freemasons),
Mimar Sinan, 1997, No. 106, p. 11
9 Ibid., p. 9
10 Ibid., p. 19
11 Dr. Selami Isindag, Sezerman Kardes IV, Masonluktan Esinlenmeler
(Masonic Inspirations), Istanbul 1977, p. 62
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