"Why?"
"The Templars became too powerful too fast. It all goes back to Saint Bernard. You're familiar with Saint Bernard, of course. A great organizer. He reformed the Benedictine order and eliminated decorations from churches. If a colleague got on his nerves, as Abelard did, he attacked him McCarthy-style and tried to get him burned at the stake. If he couldn't manage that, he'd burn the offender's books instead. And of course he preached the Crusade: Let us take up arms and you go forth...."
"You don't care for him," Belbo remarked.
"If I had my way, Saint Bernard would end up in one of the nastier circles of the inferno. Saint, hell! But he was good at self-promotion. Look how Dante treats him: making him the Madonna's right-hand man. He got to be a saint because he buttered up all the right people. But to get back to the Templars. Bernard realized right away that this idea had possibilities. He supported the nine original adventurers, transformed them into a Militia of Christ. You could even say that the heroic view of the Templars was his invention. In 1128 he held a council in Troves for the express purpose of defining the role of those new soldiermonks, and a few years later he wrote an elogium on them and drew up their rule, seventy-two articles. The articles are fun to read; there's a little of everything in them. Daily Mass, no contact with excommunicated knights, though if one of them applies for admission to the Temple, he must be received in a Christian spirit. You see what I mean about the Foreign Legion. They're supposed to wear simple white cloaks, no furs, at most a lambskin or a ram's pelt. They're forbidden to wear the curved shoes so fashionable at the time, and must sleep in their underwear, with one pallet, one sheet, and one blanket...."
"With the heat there, I can imagine the stink," Belbo said.
"We'll come to the stink in a minute. There were other tough measures in the rule: one bowl for each two men; eat in silence; meat three times a week; penance on Fridays; up at dawn every day. If the work has been especially heavy, they can sleep an extra hour, but in return they must recite thirteen Paters in bed. There is a master and a whole series of lower ranks, down to sergeants, squires, attendants, and servants. Every knight will have three horses and one squire, no decorations are allowed on bridles, saddles, or spurs. Simple but well-made weapons. Hunting forbidden, except for lions. In short, a life of penance and battle. And don't forget chastity. The rule is particularly insistent about that. Remember, these are men who are not living in a monastery. They're fighting a war, living in the world, if you can use that word for the rat's nest the Holy Land must have been in those days. The rule says in no uncertain terms that a woman's company is perilous and that the men are allowed to kiss only their mothers, sisters, and aunts."
"Aunts, eh?" Belbo grumbled. "I'd have been more careful there.... But if memory serves, weren't the Templars accused of sodomy? There's that book by Klossowski, The Baphomet. Baphomet was one of their satanic divinities, wasn't he?"
"I'll get to that, too. But think about it for a moment. You live for months and months in the desert, out in the middle of nowhere, and at night you share a tent with the guy who's been eating out of the same bowl as you. You're tired and cold and thirsty and afraid. You want your mama. So what do you do?"
"Manly love, the Theban legion," Belbo suggested.
"The other soldiers haven't taken the Templar vow. When a city is sacked, they get to rape the dusky Moorish maids with amber bellies and velvet eyes. And what is the Templar supposed to do amid the scent of the cedars of Lebanon? You can see why there was the popular saying: 'To drink and blaspheme like a Templar.' It's like a chaplain in the trenches who drinks brandy and curses with his illiterate soldiers. The Templar seal depicts the knights always in pairs, one riding behind the other on the same horse. Now why should that be? The rule allows them three horses each. It must have been one of Bernard's ideas, an attempt to symbolize poverty or perhaps their double role as monks and knights. But you can imagine what people must have said about it, two men galloping, one with his ass pressed against the other's belly. But they may have been slandered...."
"They certainly were asking for it," Belbo interrupted. "That Saint Bernard wasn't stupid, was he?"
"Stupid, no. But he was a monk himself, and in those days monks had their own strange ideas about the body....I said before that maybe I was making this sound too much like a Western, but now that I think about it ... Listen to what Bernard has to say about his beloved knights. I brought this quotation with me, because it's worth hearing: 'They shun and abhor mimes, magicians, and jugglers, lewd songs and buffoonery; they cut their hair short, for the apostle says it is shameful for a man to groom his hair. Never are they seen coiffed, and rarely washed. Their beards are unkempt, caked with dust and sweat from their armor and the heat.'"
"I would hate to sleep in their quarters," Belbo said.
"It's always been characteristic of the hermit," Diotallevi declared, "to cultivate a healthy filth, to humiliate his body. Wasn't it Saint Macarius who lived on a column and picked up the worms that dropped from him and put them back on his body so that they, who were also God's creatures, might enjoy their banquet?"
"The stylite was Saint Simeon," Belbo said, "and I think he stayed on that column so he could spit on the people who walked below."
"How I detest the cynicism of the Enlightenment," Diotallevi said. "In any case, whether Macarius or Simeon, I'm sure there was a stylite with worms, but of course I'm no authority on the subject, since the follies of the gentiles don't interest me."
"Whereas your Gerona rabbis were spick and span," Belbo said.
"They lived in squalor because you gentiles kept them in the ghetto. The Templars, on the other hand, chose to be squalid."
"Let's not go overboard," I said. "Have you ever seen a platoon of recruits after a day's march? The reason I'm telling you all this is to help you understand the dilemma of the Templar. He had to be mystic, ascetic, no eating, drinking, or screwing, but at the same time he roamed the desert cutting off the heads of Christ's enemies; the more heads he cut off, the more points he earned for paradise. He stank, got hairier every day, and then Bernard insisted that after conquering a city he couldn't jump on top of some young girl—or old hag, for that matter. And on moonless nights, when the simoom blew over the desert, he couldn't seek any favors from his favorite fellow-soldier. How can you be a monk and a swordsman at the same time, disemboweling people one minute and reciting Ave Marias the next? They tell you not to look even your female cousin in the eye, but when you enter a city, after days of siege, the other Crusaders hump the caliph's wife before your very eyes, and marvelous Shulammite women undo their bodices and say, Take me, Take me, but spare my life.... No, the Templar had to stay hard, reciting compline, hairy and stinking, as Saint Bernard wanted him to. For that matter, if you just read the retraits..."
"The what?"
"The statutes of the order, drawn up rather late, after the order had put on its robe and slippers, so to speak. There's nothing worse than an army when the war is over. At one point, for instance, brawling is forbidden, it's forbidden to wound a Christian for revenge, forbidden to have commerce with women, forbidden to slander a brother. A Templar could not allow a slave to escape, lose his temper and threaten to defect to the Saracens, let a horse wander off, give away any animal except a dog or cat, be absent without leave, break the master's seal, go out of the barracks at night, lend the order's money without authorization, or throw his habit on the ground in anger."
"From prohibitions you can tell what people normally do," Belbo said. "It's a way of drawing a picture of daily life."
"Let's see," Diotallevi said. "A Templar, annoyed at something the brothers said or did that evening, rides out at night without leave, accompanied by a little Saracen boy and with three capons hanging from his saddle. He goes to a girl of loose morals and, bestowing the capons upon her, engages in illicit intercourse. During this debauchery, the Saracen boy rides off with the horse, and our Templar, even more sweatcovered and dirty than usual
, crawls home with his tail between his legs. In an attempt to pass unnoticed, he slips some of the Temple's money to the Jewish usurer, who is waiting like a vulture on its perch...."
"Thou hast said it, Caiaphas," Belbo remarked.
"We're talking in stereotypes here. With the money the Templar tries to recover, if not the Saracen boy, at least a semblance of a horse. But a fellow Templar hears about the misadventure, and one night—we know that envy is endemic in such communities—he drops some heavy hints at supper, when the meat is served. The captain grows suspicious, the suspect stammers, flushes, then draws his dagger and flings himself on his brother...."
"On the treacherous sycophant," Belbo corrected him.
"On the treacherous sycophant, good. He flings himself on the wretch, slashing his face. The wretch draws his sword, an unseemly brawl ensues, the captain with the flat of his sword tries to restore order, the other brothers snigger..."
"Drinking and blaspheming like Templars," Belbo said.
"God's bodkin, in God's name, 'swounds, God's blood," I said.
"Our hero is enraged, and what does a Templar do when he's enraged?"
"He turns purple," Belbo suggested.
"Right. He turns purple, tears off his habit, and throws it on the ground."
"How about: 'You can shove this tunic, you can shove your goddamn temple!'" I suggested. "And then he breaks the seal with his sword and announces that he's joining the Saracens."
"Violating at least eight precepts at one blow."
"Anyway," I said, driving home my point, "imagine a man like that, who says he's joining the Saracens. And one day the king's bailiff arrests him, shows him the white-hot irons, and says: 'Confess, knave! Admit you stuck it up your brother's behind!' 'Who, me? Your irons make me laugh. I'll show you what a Templar is! I'll stick it up your behind, and the pope's. And King Philip's, too, if he comes within reach!'"
"A confession! That must be how it happened," Belbo said. "Then it's off to the dungeon with him, and a coat of oil every day so he'll burn better when the time comes."
"They were just a bunch of children," Diotallevi concluded.
We were interrupted by a girl with a strawberry birthmark on her nose; she had some papers in her hand and asked if we had signed the petition for the imprisoned Argentinean comrades. Belbo signed without reading it. "They're even worse off than I am," he said to Diotallevi, who was regarding him with a bemused expression. "He can't sign," Belbo said to the girl. "He belongs to a small Indian sect that forbids its members to write their own names. Many of them are in jail because of government persecution." The girl looked sympathetically at Diotallevi and passed the petition to me.
"And who are they?" I asked.
"What do you mean, who are they? Argentinean comrades."
"But what group do they belong to?"
"The Tacuaras, I think."
"The Tacuaras are fascists," I said. As if I knew one group from the other.
"Fascist pig," the girl hissed at me. She left.
"What you are saying, then," Diotallevi asked, "is that the Templars were just poor bastards?"
"No," I said. "Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to liven up the story. We were talking about the rank and file, but from the beginning the order received huge donations and little by little set up commanderies throughout Europe. Alfonso of Aragon, for example, gave them a whole region. In fact, in his will he wanted to leave the kingdom to them in the event that he died without issue. The Templars didn't trust him, so they made a deal—took the money and ran, more or less. Except that instead of money it was half a dozen strongholds in Spain. The king of Portugal gave them a forest. Since the forest happened to be occupied by the Saracens, the Templars organized an attack, drove out the Moors, and in the process founded Coimbra. And these are just a few episodes. The point is this: Part of the order was fighting in Palestine, but the bulk of it stayed home. Then what happened? Let's say someone has to go to Palestine. He needs money, and he's afraid to travel with jewels and gold, so he leaves his fortune with the Templars in France, or in Spain, or in Italy. They give him a receipt, and he gets cash for it in the East."
"A letter of credit," Belbo said.
"That's right. They invented the checking account long before the bankers of Florence. What with donations, armed conquests, and a percentage from their financial operations, the Templars became a multinational. Running an operation like that took men who knew what they were doing. Men who could convince Innocent II to grant them exceptional privileges. The order was allowed to keep its booty, and wherever they owned property, they were answerable not to the king, not to the bishops or to the patriarch of Jerusalem, but only to the pope. They were exempted from all tithes, but they had the right to impose their own tithes on the lands under their control....In short, the organization was always in the black, and nobody had the right to pry into it. You can see why the bishops and monarchs didn't like them, though they couldn't do without them. The Crusaders were terrible screwups. They marched off without any idea of where they were going or what they would find when they got there. But the Templars knew their way around. They knew how to deal with the enemy, they were familiar with the terrain and the art of fighting. The Order of the Temple had become a serious business, even though its reputation was based on the boasting of its assault troops."
"And the boasting was empty?" Diotallevi asked.
"Often. Here again, what's amazing is the gulf between their political and administrative skill on the one hand and their Green Beret style on the other: all guts and no brains. Let's take the story of Ascalon—"
"Yes, let's," Belbo said, after a moment's distraction as he greeted, with a great show of lust, a girl named Dolores.
She joined us, saying, "I must hear the story of Ascalon!"
"All right. One fine day the king of France, the Holy Roman emperor, King Baudouin III of Jerusalem, and the grand masters of the Templars and the Hospitalers all decided to lay siege to Ascalon. They set out together: king, court, patriarch, priests carrying crosses and banners, and the archbishops of Tyre, Nazareth, Caesarea. It was like a big party, oriflammes and standards flying, tents pitched around the enemy city, drums beating. Ascalon was defended by one hundred and fifty towers, and the inhabitants had long been preparing for a siege: all the houses had slits made in the walls; they were like fortresses within the fortress. I mean, the Templars were smart fighters, they should have known these things. But no, everybody got excited, and they built battering rams and wooden towers: you know, those constructions on wheels that you push up to the enemy walls so you can hurl stones or firebrands or shoot arrows while the catapults sling rocks from a distance. The Ascalonites tried to set fire to the towers, but the wind was against them, and they burned their own walls instead, until in one place a wall collapsed. The attackers all charged the breach.
"And then a strange thing happened. The grand master of the Templars had a cordon set up so that only his men could enter the city. Cynics say he was trying to make sure that only the Templars would get the booty. A kinder explanation is that he feared a trap and wanted to send his own brave men in first. Either way, I wouldn't make him head of a military academy. Forty Templars ran full steam straight through the city, came to a screeching halt in a great cloud of dust at the wall on the other side, looked at one another, and wondered what in hell they were doing there. Then they about-faced and ran back, racing past the Saracens, who pelted them with rocks and darts, slaughtering the lot of them, grand master included. Then they closed the breach, hung the corpses from the walls, and jeered at the Christians, with obscene gestures and horrid laughter."
"The Moor is cruel," Belbo said.
"Like children," Diotallevi added.
"These Templars of yours were really crazy!" Dolores said with admiration.
"They remind me of Tom and Jerry," Belbo said.
I felt a little guilty. After all, I had been living with the Templars for two years, and I loved them. Yet now,
catering to the snobbery of my audience, I had made them sound like characters out of a cartoon. Maybe it was William of Tyre's fault, treacherous historiographer that he was. I could almost see my Knights of the Temple, bearded and blazing, the bright red crosses on their snow-white cloaks, their mounts wheeling in the shadow of the Beauceant, their black-and-white banner. They had been so dazzlingly intent on their feast of death and daring. Perhaps the sweat Saint Bernard talked about was a bronze glow that lent a sarcastic nobility to their fearsome smiles as they celebrated their farewell to life.... Lions in war, Jacques de Vitry called them, but sweet lambs in times of peace; harsh in battle, devout in prayer; ferocious to their enemies, but full of kindness toward their brothers. The white and the black of their banner were so apposite: to the friends of Christ they were pure; to His adversaries they were grim and terrible.
Pathetic champions of the faith, last glimmer of chivalry's twilight. Why play any old Ariosto to them when I could be their Joinville? The author of the Histoire de Saint Louis had accompanied the sainted king to the Holy Land, acting as both scribe and soldier. I recalled now what he had written about the Templars. This was more than a hundred and eighty years after the order was founded, and it had been through enough crusades to undermine anyone's ideals. The heroic figures of Queen Melisande and Baudouin the leper-king had vanished like ghosts; factional fighting in Lebanon—blood-soaked even then—had drawn to a close; Jerusalem had already fallen once; Barbarossa had drowned in Cilicia; Richard the Lion-Heart, defeated and humiliated, had gone home disguised as, of all things, a Templar; Christianity had lost the battle. The Moors' view of the confederation of autonomous potentates united in the defense of their civilization was very different. They had read Avicenna, and they were not ignorant, like the Europeans. How could you live alongside a tolerant, mystical, libertine culture for two centuries without succumbing to its allure, particularly when you compared it to Western culture, which was crude, vulgar, barbaric, and Germanic? Then, in 1244, came the final, definitive fall of Jerusalem. The war, begun a hundred and fifty years earlier, was lost. The Christians had to lay down their arms in a land now devoted to peace and the scent of the cedars of Lebanon. Poor Templars. Your epic, all in vain.