Knights Templar

- [Instructor] We've already done multiple videos
on the crusades but what we're going to focus on
in this video is how the crusades help catalyze
the start of what many historians consider
to be the first international financial institution
and that is the Knights Templar.
So let's just make sure we have a good hold on the context.
So over here we have our timeline.
It's occurring during the high middle ages.
In other videos we saw the first crusades start
at the end of the 11th century, started really
by Pope Urban the second with the purported reason
to help the Byzantines take land
from the Muslims, especially the Holy Land.
The first crusade is for the most part successful
but they don't return that land to the Byzantines.
They set up what are known as Crusader States
or Crusader Kingdoms including the Kingdom of Jerusalem
and just to read this timeline that I drew up here,
green shows a time period when at least
Jerusalem is controlled by the Muslims.
Red shows when Jerusalem is controlled
by Western European powers or by these
Crusader Kingdoms which were essentially Western European.
These red parts on our timeline show
when the actual crusades occurred.
So you see the first crusade causes the change of control
of Jerusalem from the Muslims to
the Western European Christians
and once Jerusalem was under their control
and it would continue to be under their control
for roughly 90 years, you could imagine
that many pilgrims from Europe went to the holy sites
in the Holy Land especially in Jerusalem,
but this was not an easy journey.
Not only was it a long journey, these are the paths
that I showed in previous videos that the crusaders took,
but this could also be the paths
that many of the pilgrims took in order to go to
the Holy Land and you could imagine a journey
of this distance going through multiple kingdoms
in this time period could be incredibly dangerous
and many of the pilgrims actually were robbed
or sometimes worse on their way to the Holy Land.
So in 1119 a small group of Knights
led by Hughes de Payens,
they go to King Baldwin the second, King of Jerusalem.
Remember they set up this crusader state,
the Kingdom of Jerusalem headquartered
on the temple mount and these knights tell King Baldwin
the second and Warmund, or Patriarch Warmund
the Patriarch of Jerusalem, they say
we would like to protect these pilgrims
on their way to Jerusalem.
These guys think it is a good idea
and so in 1120 they give them some space,
a headquarters on the temple mount
in order to start their group.
If you translate the Latin version of their name
it translates to Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ
and the Temple of Solomon.
Now the reason why it says and the Temple of Solomon
is because they were headquartered on the temple mount
and the Al-Aqsa Mosque is believed by many
to be on the site of the original Temple of Solomon,
but this is often shortened to the Knights Templar.
This is their symbol, two knights riding on a horse
to show their poverty, but they don't stay poor for long.
They are shortly thereafter recognized by the Pope
and many people start donating money to this order.
Many more people volunteer to be Knights Templar
and so over the remainder of the crusades
they become an important institution in Medieval Europe.
Now most folks often associate the Knights Templar
with being Knights.
You can see here one of the Knights on horseback.
Here you see the Knights protecting pilgrims
on their way to Jerusalem and they did do that.
They did protect the pilgrims and they were also active
in battle during the crusades thereafter,
but it turns out that even though on the peak there were
on the order of 20,000 Knights Templar,
only about 10% of them were actual soldiers,
were actually these warrior monks
as they're sometimes called.
The rest of the Templars created this fairly significant
complex infrastructure to do multiple things
to support the goal of the Knights Templar
and perhaps most significantly they developed
a sprawling financial enterprise of the time.
If you were in London and you wanted to do a pilgrimage
to the Holy Land you would need resources
in order to do that and you would want to have access
to your wealth once you got to Jerusalem
and so you could imagine if you were traveling
over a long journey to take gold coins with you,
not only would they be heavy
but more importantly it would be dangerous.
A lot of people might want to take that gold from you
and so one of the services that the Knights Templar
developed was that you could go to their temple
in London essentially deposit your money,
they'll give you a note of credit saying that,
we the Knights owe you a certain amount of money,
and then you make your journey
and when you get to Jerusalem you can give that note
to the Knights there and they will give you your money.
Now this is something that we take for granted today.
I can go to an ATM machine anywhere in the world
and for the most part I can put in my ATM card
and get access to money, but there's a lot
of infrastructure that makes that happen.
Today we have telecommunications, we have satellites
that help information go back and forth,
we have servers that keep track of all of that data.
They didn't have that in the middle ages
and so you can imagine this is a very powerful idea
that I could deposit money one place
and then I could withdraw it someplace else
and we still don't fully understand
how the knights were able to pull this off.
It requires a lot of trust and how were they able
to authenticate the notes of credit at any of these points?
Not only did they do this type of deposit
and withdrawal in multiple locations,
they also because they had all of these deposits
and people were also donating money to them
just to support their cause,
they were able to provide loans.
Often times loans to very powerful
individuals like kings and nobility.
They were often brokers in major transactions.
This is the reason why historians really do consider
them perhaps the first true international bank.
In other videos we talk about how in 1187 Saladin
is able to retake Jerusalem but then in the Sixth Crusade
and the Barons' Crusades it goes back to Christian hands
but then 1244 it's retaken again by the Muslims
and it stays under Muslim control all the way
until the end of World War One
and so with Jerusalem taken in 1244 the whole goal
of the Knights Templar, the whole purpose
of their existence starts to become less important.
Although at this point they are a significant
and influential financial institution.
As we go to the end of the 13th century
the whole crusader mentality starts to lose steam.
You have the Eighth and Ninth Crusades
but they aren't successful and as we get into the early
14th century you have this character Philip the Fourth,
King of France and he has incurred a lot of debt
in order to have wars especially with England
and a good bit of this financing
comes from the Knights Templar.
He is a powerful man looking for solutions
to his debt situation and he realizes one solution
is maybe just to arrest the people
who you owe money to and then not only
do you not owe any money to them,
but you can seize their assets
and Philip the fourth does exactly that.
Famously on a Friday the 13th in 1307
he arrests many Knights Templars including the Grand Master,
the leader of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay.
He tortures them.
They eventually confess to a whole bunch of things
but then they retract that confession
and they're not willing to retract the retraction
and so in 1314
Jacques de Molay as well as
other Knights Templar, especially in the leadership,
who do not agree to those confessions are burned
at the stake in Paris and this is considered
the end of the Knights Templar
although there are many legends of how
they have continued on perhaps in secrecy.
So the Knights Templar are to this day
are a subject of fascination.
There's many legends associated with them,
but one of their biggest historical contributions
that isn't often talked about but we know happened,
is that they really laid the foundation for what
we today consider modern international banking.

Knights Templar

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