Templars: The Dramatic History of the Knights Templar, the Most Powerful Military Order of the Crusades
Search in google:
First time in paperback: The best-selling novelist's sweeping popular history of the Knights Templar Publishers Weekly The Knights Templar are not very well known today; but many of those who know them consider them as a corrupt order of monks who administered a citadel in Jerusalem during the Crusades. Arguing that the Templars deserve a better reputation than this, Read's balanced study judiciously synthesizes the history of this important religious movement. Formed in the aftermath of the First Crusade, the Templars were members of a monastic order who helped protect Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land. Although similar to military orders like the Teutonic Knights and the Hospitalers, the Templars weren't, for the most part, warriors. When Christian forces held the Holy Land, most Templars aided them by managing the European estates that supported the military activities of the order. After the fall of the Crusader states, the Templars lost their military importance--but because their economic importance continued to grow, the pope and the king of France engineered their downfall through what Read considers to have been a miscarriage of justice. Templar leaders confessed, under torture, to all manner of sinful behavior and the order was destroyed. Best known for Alive (his best-selling account of cannibalistic survivors of a plane crash in the Andes), Read uses his keen eye for detail and facility with language to good effect here. Though he draws mostly from secondary sources, he enlivens his account with visual details; as he considers the larger political and religious significance of the Templars, he also describes the conditions of the monks' lives what they ate, where they lived, how they resisted sexual temptation, etc. But more compellingly, as he considers the rise and fall of this order Read tries to make their stories resonate in our own age (for instance, he notes that "the attitudes of many Muslims in the Middle East to the modern state of Israel is very like that of their ancestors to the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem)--and he occasionally succeeds. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
Acknowledgementsvii Mapsix Prefacexi Part One: The Temple 1 The Temple of Solomon3 2 The New Temple16 3 The Rival Temple44 4 The Temple Regained56 Part Two: The Templars 5 The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Jesus Christ87 6 The Templars in Palestine107 7 Outremer128 8 Saladin149 9 Richard the Lionheart164 10 The Enemies Within178 11 Frederick of Hohenstaufen196 12 The Kingdom of Acre209 13 Louis of France220 14 The Fall of Acre235 Part Three: The Fall of the Templars 15 The Temple in Exile247 16 The Temple Assaulted259 17 The Temple Destroyed283 Epilogue: The Verdict of History302 Appendices The LaterCrusades317 Grand Masters of the Temple324 Bibliography325 End notes330 Index342
