The Knights Templar and The Freemasons

THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR


In 1737 the Chevalier Andrew Ramsay wrote an ‘Oratioii, which, although never delivered, was widely circulated among French Freemasons in the 1740s. In it Ramsay wrote of a renewal of Freemasonry, described as an order founded in remote antiquity’ among a certain group of Crusaders, and alluded to a resulting intimate union’ between Freemasonry and the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, who brought the revived Order and its ancient ceremonies back to the British Isles. This account was widely misinterpreted as a claim that Freemasonry, as a symbolic system, had originated among the Knights Templar, and thus Ramsay’s romantic dreams were transformed into an elaborate history that saw the Templars as the true founders of the Craft.

Though this theory has been much popularized in recent years it has no foundation in fact whatsoever, as the briefest glance at the actual history of the Templars’ origins will reveal.

The Order of Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, to give the Templars their full title, was founded in 1118 to protect pilgrims travelling to the Holy Places in Jerusalem. When the Crusaders were finally driven from Palestine, the order continued to flourish in Europe until 1307, when, for purely political reasons, it was violently suppressed and dissolved by the Pope in 1312. Its Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake, in 1314 on trumped up charges of sorcery and blasphemy. One Masonic myth has it that those Templars who survived the purge are supposed to have fled to Scotland, where they avoided persecution by infiltrating court circles and perpetuated their Order in secret until it eventually resurfaced as Freemasonry Thus, it is claimed, the ‘secrets’ of the Templars became the ‘secrets’ of Freemasonry. In fact the Papal Bull condemn¬ing the Templars was rejedted in Scotland and the Templars were never subject to persecution there.

While there are certain superficial similarities between the two Orders (both have a hierarchical structure, both surround the admission of new members with secrecy, and both have a concern with King Solomon’s Temple), their differences are far greater, and more striking. The outlines of the Templar admission ceremony are well known, despite the alleged secrecy, and they bear no resemblance to those of Freemasonry which for one thing do not enjoin candidates to take up a monastic life of poverty and celibacy. Nor is there any connection between the ~secrets’ of the two Orders. The 'secrets' of Free¬masonry are nothing more than the modes of recognition used in the ceremonies, while — as far as objective history goes — the Templars had no secrets’ at all.

Even the association with the Temple is misleading. Freemasons treat the construction of King Solomon’s Temple as an allegory: the building of the morally up-right and virtuous man. For the Templars, the Temple was simply their original headquarters and a place for quartering their horses.

The Templar theory of Masonic origin, then, is not supported by the historical record. James Anderson, in 1723, even suggested that the line of descent went in the other direction: ‘Nay’, he wrote, ‘if it were expedient, it could be made to appear, that from this ancient Fraternity (i.e. Freemasonry) the Societies or Orders of the Warlike Knights, and of the Religious too, in process of time, did borrow many solemn usages.’ And yet the supposed link with the Knights Templar had a prolonged effect on the popular Masonic mind, fostering associations between the Craft and the noble ideals of medieval chivalry From this romantic notion sprang not only the purely Masonic Order of Knights Templar, but also a multitude of more exotic chivalric Orders that finally found their definitive expression in that most enduring and ubiquitous of the additional degrees’: the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. The story of that Rite will be told in its proper place, but it may be noted here that within its ritual structure are several degrees whose traditional histories and ceremonies are based on the legendary story of the Knights Templar and which emphasize the righting of the wrongs done to the Order. The existence of these degrees has helped, though unwittingly to perpetuate the Templar myth.

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