Knights Templar

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, mainly known as the Knights Templar, was a military order of the Catholic faith, and one of the most important military orders in Western Christianity. They were founded in 1118 to defend pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, with their headquarters located there on the Temple Mount, and existed for nearly two centuries during the Middle Ages.

Officially endorsed by the Catholic Church by such decrees as the papal bull Omne datum optimum of Pope Innocent II, the Templars became a favoured charity throughout Christendom and grew rapidly in membership and power. The Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades. They were prominent in Christian finance; non-combatant members of the order, who made up as much as 90% of their members, managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom. They developed innovative financial techniques that were an early form of banking, building a network of nearly 1,000 commanderies and fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land.

The Templars were closely tied to the Crusades. As they became unable to secure their holdings in the Holy Land, support for the order faded. In 1307, King Philip IV of France had many of the order's members in France arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake. Under pressure from Philip, Pope Clement V disbanded the order in 1312. In spite of its dissolution, however, between 1317–1319, a number of Templar knights, properties and other assets were absorbed within the Portuguese Order of Christ, and the Spanish Order of Montesa; the abrupt disappearance of this major medieval European institution in its original incarnation gave rise to speculation and legends, which have currently kept the "Templar" name alive in self-styled orders and popular culture.

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Latin: Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici and French: Pauvres Chevaliers du Christ et du Temple de Salomon) are also known as the Order of Solomon's Temple, and mainly the Knights Templar (French: Les Chevaliers Templiers), or simply the Templars (French: Les Templiers).

The Temple Mount where they had their headquarters had a mystique because it was above what was believed to be the ruins of the Temple of Solomon.

After the Franks in the First Crusade captured Jerusalem from the Fatimid Caliphate in 1099, many Christians made pilgrimages to various sacred sites in the Holy Land. Although the city of Jerusalem was relatively secure under Christian control, the rest of Outremer was not. Bandits and marauding highwaymen preyed upon these Christian pilgrims, who were routinely slaughtered, sometimes by the hundreds, as they attempted to make the journey from the coastline at Jaffa through to the interior of the Holy Land.

In 1119, the French knight Hugues de Payens approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and proposed creating a monastic Catholic religious order for the protection of these pilgrims. King Baldwin and Patriarch Warmund agreed to the request, probably at the Council of Nablus in January 1120, and the king granted the Templars a headquarters in a wing of the royal palace on the Temple Mount in the captured Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The order, with about nine knights including Godfrey de Saint-Omer and André de Montbard, had few financial resources and relied on donations to survive. Their emblem was of two knights riding on a single horse, emphasizing the order's poverty.