“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 sweat-covered 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,
