Re: Events can always seem inevitable in hindsight. The luck of the neocons currently seems similar to...
...that of the Templars of yore:
TEMPLARS. Founded in 1120 in the Holy Land to defend Jerusalem and protect Christian pilgrims, the Knights Templar was a crusading order whose members took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Their name is derived from the fact that Baudouin II, the crusader king of Jerusalem (r. 1118-31) turned over to them a portion of his palace on the site of the Temple of Solomon. Within nine years of their founding, they had received significant grants in France from such distinguished nobles as Thibaut de Blois, Thierry d'Alsace, and William Clito of Flanders. From humble beginnings, the Order developed by ca. 1300 a network of some 870 castles, preceptories, and subsidiary houses. In the 13th century, the Templars may have had as many as 7,000 knights, sergeants, brothers, and priests, with perhaps 2,500 serving in the Holy Land. The Order developed a powerful Mediterranean fleet to transport men, food, and clothing to the Holy Land, and its international structure and extensive resources made the Templars ideal bankers and financial agents.
The regulations of the Order, largely inspired and perhaps actually written by [Saint] Bernard of Clairvaux, were drawn up at the Council of Troyes (1129). They provided for an ascetic, celibate, and anti-materialistic Order closely modeled on the Cistercians. Like the Hospitallers, who had been founded in the Holy Land ca. 1080, the Templars were organized into provinces reflecting geopolitical realities. There were three categories of members: knights, sergeants, and chaplains. The knights, who wore white garments with a red cross, were originally free to leave at will, but eventually could only leave to join a stricter order. The sergeants were bourgeois associates and/or servants; the chaplains were priests who served for life, administering to the spiritual needs of the knights.
By 1150, the Order had a strong presence in northern France, Provence, England, Aragon, Portugal, and Italy, but its recognized center was France, and nearly all of the twenty-two Grand Masters between the founding of the Order and its dissolution in 1312 were Frenchmen. The Templars were recognized as a distinct Order by three papal bulls between 1139 and 1145 by Innocent II, Celestine II, and Eugenius III, exempting them from paying tithes and even from the effects of ordinary papal decrees. In spite of papal recognition and a strong defense by Bernard of Clairvaux in his De laude novae militae (ca. 1136), the privileges granted the Templars and their increasing wealth and influence aroused the virulent opposition of such contemporary moralists as John of Salisbury, William of Tyre, Walter Map, and Isaac of Stella.
As long as the crusading spirit was strong, attacks on the Templars were unsuccessful. However, the fall of Jerusalem to the Muslims in 1187 signaled the beginning of the decline of the Order. As repeated Crusades failed to recapture the city, crusading fervor began to wane and support for the Templars and other military orders, whose primary raison d'être was defence of the Holy Land, declined. After the fall of Acre in 1291, many Templars hired themselves out as mercenaries to the highest bidders. The Order maintained a strong presence in France, centering their activities in Paris, where their Temple became the depository of the royal treasury. Relations with King Philip IV the Fair (r. 1285-1314) remained normal for some twenty years, although the king was constantly debt-ridden and no doubt jealous of the Temple's considerable wealth. However, sometime around 1306, for reasons that have continued to evoke debate among historians, Philip determined to bring them down. He blamed the Templars for the loss of the Holy Land, accused them of heretical practices and obscene acts, notably in their highly secret initiation rites, and persuaded Pope Clement V (r. 1305-14), who owed his election to Philip, to investigate the entire Order. Without, however, waiting for papal ajudication, Philip ordered all the Templars in France (ca. 2,000) arrested on the same day, October 13, 1307, and their property confiscated. After successfully stirring up public opinion against them, Philip's royal ministers, nominally under the leadership of the inquisitor for France, but actually acting on royal orders, brought the Templars to trial. Using torture, they extracted confessions from the leading Templars, including the Grand Master, the Burgundian Jacques de Molay. Although Templars in all other countries were judged innocent of all charges and the Council of Vienne (1311) voted overwhelmingly against suppression of the Order, in France and in all areas under French domination (Provence, Naples, and even the Papal States), they were found guilty as charged and a vacillating and weak Clement V dissolved the Order by papal decree in 1312. Still not satisfied, Philip had Jacques de Molay and other leading Templars burned at the stake on March 18, 1314. It is popularly believed that Jacques repudiated his confession and summoned Philip and Pope Clement to meet him within the year before the judgment seat of God.
The Temple's vast holdings, being church property, were turned over to the Hospitallers, who in 1318 settled Philip's claims for compensation and expenses. Their archival records were lost in their entirety, perhaps when the Ottoman Turks overran Cyprus in 1571. A disaster for historians, this has been a great boon for students of the occult and conspiracy theorists. [Grover A. Zinn]
Barber, Malcolm. The Trial of the Templars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
-----. The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Partner, Peter. The Murdered Magicians: The Templars and their Myth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
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