Europe's inner demons

It is a far cry from the self-confidence of the early Christians. Now demons are no mere external enemies, doomed to be defeated again and again, and finally cast down for ever, by the bearers of a militant faith. They have penetrated into every corner of life, above all they have penetrated into the souls of individual Christians. No longer imagined as causing drought or bad harvests or epidemics, demons have come to represent desires which individual Christians have, but which they dare not acknowledge as belonging to themselves. People feel themselves victims of forces which they are quite unable to master — and the more concerned with religion they are, the more grievous their afflictions: monks and nuns suffer most of all. These menacing forces are, above all, temptations to irreverence and sacrilege, indiscipline and rebellion. Often the psychic tensions and conflicts which they generate express themselves in such physical symptoms as giddiness and indigestion. But at the same time these forces take on the appearance of external beings, demons endowed with what look like bodies, animal or human. Ritualistic gestures seem the only means of resisting them — the inner resources of faith are not available, or not in sufficient abundance.

It is not surprising that in such an atmosphere people should have elaborated the fantasy of a secret society of Devil-worshippers. The source of the fantasy lay less in the existence of the Dualist religion than in the anxieties that haunted the minds of Christians themselves. It was because Christians, and particularly monks, were so obsessed by the power of Satan and his demons that they were so ready to see Devil-worship in the most unlikely quarters.

We have seen how, in the 1230s, Conrad of Marburg was moved by these fantasies to torture and kill not only heretics but also a number of perfectly orthodox Catholics; and how the pope himself was influenced into supporting this killing. At the beginning of the fourteenth century very similar fantasies were to be used to legitimate a far larger and more celebrated judicial killing, this time in France. The episode has entered history as “the affair of the Templars”.

5. THE CRUSHING OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS

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The capture of Jerusalem in the First Crusade, in 1099, greatly stimulated the movement of pilgrims to Palestine. Many of these people arrived in a sorry state, sick or penniless or both; and the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem was developed to supply them with alms and medical care. But pilgrims were also exposed to armed attack by the Moslems. Around 1118 a knight from Champagne called Hugues de Payens, inspired by the example of the Hospitallers, founded a new fellowship, this time for the purpose of giving military protection to the pilgrims as they toiled towards the Holy City. Like the Hospitallers, this new body resembled a monastic order in that its members vowed to live in chastity, obedience and self-denial. But it was also a fraternity of warriors, pledged to fight for the King of Heaven. As headquarters it was granted a dwelling near the Dome of the Rock, which stands on the site of the Temple, and so acquired the name which was soon to become famous throughout Christendom. At first these fighting monks called themselves “Poor fellow-soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon”; but soon they were known simply as the Knights Templars, and their organization as “The Temple”.⁽¹⁾

The fraternity quickly expanded its field of activity. Instead of merely providing armed escorts for pilgrims it turned into a standing army committed to perpetual struggle against the forces of Islam. As such, it was carrying out what all western Christians regarded not only as a vital but as a holy task; and recognition came quickly. At the synod of Troyes in 1128 that uniquely prestigious personality, St Bernard, recommended that the fraternity should be officially recognized as a monastic order; and this was done. The pope gave his sanction, so that the Church could, through the Templars, make its contribution to the security of the Holy Land. St Bernard lent his assistance in drawing up an appropriate monastic rule. A new kind of organization had come into being — a fighting force sworn to the service of the Church, a religious order which offered salvation as a reward for valour in war. The dual nature of the Temple was symbolized by its banner, which was piebald — the white signifying gentleness towards the friends of Christ, the black ferocity towards his enemies.