Soldiers of Christ
The Knights Templar were formed in 1118 when a small group of French crusaders solemnly vowed to defend the recently recaptured Jerusalem from the Moslems, and were given a house near Solomon's Temple as their first home. After ten years of living on alms, they adopted a form of the Cistercian Rule, and rapidly began to acquire and administer estates all over Christendom. The expansion of the Knights Hospitaller was almost as remarkable. First organized in the 11th century (c.1070) under the Rule of St. Augustine at the Hospital of St. John the Baptist in Jerusalem, their first obligation had been to provide pilgrims to the Holy Land with hospices and hospitals; but like the Templars, the Hospitallers became an international military order.
Both orders had emerged to meet the needs of the crusading movement, so it is hardly surprising that their wealth, influence and prestige were at their height in the years before the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin and the Sarecens in 1187. But, well into the 13th century, the Templars were still building and extending their great castles -- Safed, Karak of the Desert and Castle Pilgrim -- to defend a beleaguered Holy Land.
There were comparatively few Templars and Hospitallers actually resident in the British Isles, and the final and highly controversial suppression of the Templars by Pope Clement V in 1312 -- among other things the order was accused of sacrilege -- caused relatively little opposition of disruption in England. Their only important memorial is the church south of the strand in London. (This, and other churches of theirs in England such as Garway and the Round Church in Cambridge has a round nave like the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.) The English province of the Hospitallers, however, directed by its chief prior from the house of St John at Clerkenwell, London, survived as a religious order until the Reformation.
Above Right - Garway, in Herefordshire, was a small settlement at the time of the Domesday Book. The church of St Michael is one of six in England attributed to the Knights Templar; the land at Garway was given to the order around 1170, and confirmed later by King John in 1199. The massive square tower, 70ft high, was a fortification as well as a church, providing protection during the continueal border wars. The original chancel and nave wer probably build around 1170, the chapel a little later.
Right - Round Church, Cambridge. Built in c.1130, modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the church has been a treasured landmark in Cambridge for centuries, and for good reason. Its quirky shape and beautiful architecture is a shining testimony to Cambridge’s rich history.
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