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The Rule of the Templars
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Message 1.Β
Posted by hereisabee (U2342191) on Sunday, 22nd May 2011
My sister gathered the Upton-Ward translation from a second-hand book stall the other month and I have been making headway in it's reading. Living a stones throw from Temple Cowley, Oxford, this subject always kindles my curiosity. Of course it is the seven hundredth anniversary of their demise in Paris, which well known. What is more interesting is how from humble beginnings they managed to attract so much wealth. The Oxford land had been given to them by Queen Maude.
Getting to grips with the primitive rule, they had an abhorrence to pointed shoes and shoe laces. Even worse they to sleep fully clothed with shoes on (no doubt reliably buckled), sounds like a recipe for body odour!
Are there any modern examples of a similar group, I thought scientology? -
Message 2
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 22nd May 2011
hereisabee
Temple Cowley! ... I remember the indoor swimming baths from my childhood Fifties and early Sixties..Are they still there?
Was this land then given to the Templars for an income?
Cass -
Message 3
Posted by Scriptofacto99 (U3268593) on Sunday, 22nd May 2011
Cass,
In general, all grants of land that was donated to the various Monastic Orders, both of the military variety, including the knights Templars and the Hospitallers, as well as the non-military foundations, including the Augustinians, Benedictines, Cistercians etc., was primarily used to provide an income for the 'hospital,' priory, or abbey in question.
Occasionally land would be granted to a religious foundation in a specific non-income producing capacity, such as for the building of an infirmary which would not only benefit the monks or nuns but would also benefit the wider community by providing employment and a certain degree of health care. -
Message 4
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 22nd May 2011
Thanks Scripto
I was particularly interested in the local association ..In my teens I was struck by the Cowper-Temple Clause and Temple-Cowley.
Though the Knights Templar became particularly associated with Malta and defence against Muslim expansion in those regions of the Mediterranean, the Kinghts of the Temple were (I believe) originally a fighting order committed to providing facilities for travellers in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem during its brief history.
Cass -
Message 5
Posted by hereisabee (U2342191) on Monday, 23rd May 2011
Hi Cass
Alas the swimming pool at Temple Cowley is set to close, however a new facility is being built at Blackbird Leys and the University have built one at their Iffley Road sports complex.
Alas again for me Maude is spelt without the 'e', having a rummage, it seems Matilda was a popular name and it was Stephen's queen (Matilda) who gave the land she owned at Cowley. Ten years later they received grazing rights in Shotover forest. Eventually the Templars moved to Sandford on Thames due to gift from Robert de Sandforde who later became a Templar himself. One of the Sandforde brothers was Richard de Colingham who spoke at the subsequent Oxford trial about mystic girdles which the brethren were said to wear. The Templars admitted to wearing a rope around their waist but claimed it was merely a reminder of chastity rather than having any diabolic connotation. -
Message 6
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 23rd May 2011
hereisabee
Thanks for that.. Perhaps Temple Cowley baths are just not up to modern expectations, though I take all the blame for singularly failing to learn to swim in all those school sessions.. It was only later at the Hinksey Open Air pools that I finally cracked it, and Hinksey Pools became a regular summer haunt- with school swimming sports day at Long Bridges in that brown Thames water.
Of course by that time Wednesday afternoon was no school, and the opportunity to go to the cattle market, passed the remnant of the castle tower imagining that the window above the pond was the one that Queen Matilda climbed out of and down to make good her escape.
Shotover Hill still had a remnant of the Forest...
Why a trial about mystic girdles? Was there an accusation of supersitions creeping in from the Middle East? Given the fact that it is now acknowledged that much valuable new thinking came through the Crusades and the contacts that were established, one presumes that there was anxiety that novelties would allow in the Devil and all his works.
Perhaps shades of Stalin sending to the gulags all returning prisoners of war like Solzenetzin, who had seen life outside the USSR- even in that form.
Cass -
Message 7
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Monday, 23rd May 2011
Cass Perhaps shades of Stalin sending to the gulags all returning prisoners of war like Solzenetzin, who had seen life outside the USSR- even in that form.Β Solzhenitsyn never was a prisoner of war. He was arrested on active duty as RKKA junior officer - lieutenant, f I remember correctly.
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Message 8
Posted by hereisabee (U2342191) on Monday, 23rd May 2011
Feelings are high about the pool issue...
The mystic girdle evidence would have been from an Oxford trial as the order collasped, perhaps the de Sandsfords hoped to retrieve their land? -
Message 9
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 23rd May 2011
suvorovetz
Well it is a long time since I read the Gulag Archipelago- perhaps I lumped him in with the rest that he wrote about
Had he written some reports that signalled him out as a potential revisionist? Or was it his scientific knowledge in an age when there was still some king of sense of an international scientific brotherhood, like the one that Slizard tried to get Einstein to enlist to prevent the use of the atomic bomb, once Germany- and the German atomic bomb team- had been defeated?
Cass -
Message 10
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 23rd May 2011
hereisabee
Perhaps there is some concern at having to go to park on the Blackbird Leys Estate in order to go swimming.. Is it still a famous place for juvenile car theft and joy riding?
But I wonder what my niece, who is a swimming teacher taking school classes would think of the loss of a convenient pool for local schools. My brother brought up his family on the Berensfield estate and they all greatly benefitted from the local pool there in after school swimming.
Your theory of the Sandsford's trying to retrieve land given to an order that became defunct seems reasonable.. One of the points of land given to a Holy Order was that it by-passed the question of inheritance and dues of succession. But when the order itself ceases to operate, who then?
In those feudal days reversion to the person making the grant -with certain ends in view- seems to have been normal. nb to the King.
Cass -
Message 11
Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Monday, 23rd May 2011
Cass, not many joy riders left these days. I presume you know about this school.
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Message 12
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Monday, 23rd May 2011
Cass Had he written some reports that signalled him out as a potential revisionist?Β According to Solzhenitsyn himself, he was arrested upon NKVD intercepting his correspondence with his friend who served elsewhere (different front, or something). The gist of the matter had been Solzhenitsyn comparing and contrasting Stalin - as somebody who "subverted" Marxism - to late Lenin who had been a pure Marxist. Of course, Solzhenitsyn wrote that the education he would receive in GULAG - especially mingling with the people who had been arrested by CheKa, GPU, NKVD, KGB, etc, etc, at different times and different places - cured him from this fallacy.
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Message 13
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 23rd May 2011
Silverjenny
No. Thanks for that..
I "lost" Oxford many years ago.. though I got briefly slightly re-aquainted when our daughter was there for four years..
Cass -
Message 14
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 23rd May 2011
Suvorovetz
Thanks for that.
Cass -
Message 15
Posted by arty macclench (U14332487) on Tuesday, 24th May 2011
"Though the Knights Templar became particularly associated with Malta and defence against Muslim expansion in those regions of the Mediterranean"
Point of order, Cass. It was the Knights of St John, the Hospitallers (aka. Knights of Rhodes, aka. Knights of Malta) who eventually ended up in Malta, having moved after the fall of the Christian state of Outremer to Cyprus and Rhodes before being driven west by the OttomanTurks.
The Templars had been dissolved by then. The Order didn't long survive the loss of Acre in 1291 and the loss of their ostensible, military raison d'etre. Having become involved in international banking, the wealth they amassed attracted the envious gaze of Philip of France, who was also in their debt, and led to their dissolution in 1311-12. The Turkish expansion gained momentum in the following century -
Message 16
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Wednesday, 25th May 2011
No mention of the 'falcon'?
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Message 17
Posted by hereisabee (U2342191) on Wednesday, 25th May 2011
As a religious order, the brothers were obliged to attend prayers and services. However on a personal hygiene theme - if a brother was washing his hair, then he could ignore the chapel bell.
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Message 18
Posted by hereisabee (U2342191) on Friday, 27th May 2011
Reading the Templar’s rules, what is impressive is the level of democracy in their internal affairs, especially in discipline where a consensus would be achieved regarding penances. What is unusual is the greatest sin being of simony, from the name of Simon Magus. Apparently he tried to buy apostolic powers.
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