Customer Reviews

The Templars: Knights of God (The Rise and Fall of the Knights Templars)

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This gives a once-over look at the history of the order, from what seems to be a very English point of view (nothing wrong with that) that can get to be dry "history book" reading sometimes. BUT, Mr. Burman has a bundle of contemporary sources, French, Latin, and Arabic sources, that really give this handy little book a surprising amount of depth for being "cursory".

An excellent complement to a study of the Order, or of the Crusades, or of medieval history in general.

"The Templars" doesn't purport to be, and isn't, an exhaustive study of the most intriguing of the Crusader-era military orders. The book is targeted towards the reader who wants a concise overview of the order, without bogging down in discussions of modern-day conspiracy theory or the allegations of witchcraft which eventually doomed the Knights. The book is refreshingly sober in this respect, and, as such, gets a generally good rating from me. Indeed, the Holy Grail is mentioned only in passing, and, if you're looking for fuel for that particular fire, you'll have to look elsewhere.
However, although a chapter was devoted to the part of Templar history which most appealed to me--namely, the Order's development in Western Europe into a massive multinational proto-banking institution--it still left me wanting more explanation in that regard. The reasons behind this phenomenon are examined only cursorily by the book, and are, perhaps, not realistically within the scope of a work this size.
Despite this shortcoming, the author makes effective use of a number of contemporary chroniclers, both Crusader and anti-Crusader, to bolster his thesis--that the Templars' downfall was brought about through a fundamental lack of political "situational awareness" among their leaders that eventually left them vulnerable to Philip the Fair's probably-spurious accusations of heresy. Their undoubted influence among the popes of the 12th and 13th centuries no doubt contributed to their becoming a natural target and tool in Philip's plans to gain control of the papacy (which, indeed, moved to Avignon around the time of the Order's suppression). I think any scholar will find this work an interesting, concise summary.

If you want to read an extended dissertation on the Templars - then this is worth a look. The only criticism I have is that it is too conservative and skims over the extensive myths surrounding the Templars. Although it seems well researched - it almost totally ignores the more esoteric tales of the knights. If you want to read about the knights, the grail and mysticism.....then look elsewhere.

This is one of the better written general overviews of the Templars and suffers as a result -- if you do not know that much about the Templars before you read this book, then the thematic style of the book may throw you off. In addition it tends to be rather dense at times and assumes a broad knowledge of both the crusades and broad thematic elements of the two-hundred-year history of the Templars.

The book is organised around a rough centre of chronological and thematic elements. At times the thematics dominates and if you are new to the whole study of the templars you find yourself shaking your head and wondering who is doing what, where... On the last point, more maps would help, but as usual in most books, good maps, and lots of them, are lacking.

The style is slightly academic and the bibliography is worth the read. A good read. In addition there is a lot of rather interesting broad elements on the financial background of the Templars and their unique and rather banal role in money lending.

I picked up this book with some hesitation, because it was issued by a publisher that seems to cater to conspiracy theorists. Destiny (Inner Traditions) does. However, there are two kinds of nutball publishers: the complete loons, and, as in the case of Destiny, the cranks who also avail themselves of rational scholarship when available.

Edward Burman's "The Templars" is the sort of text that would be on the reading list of a good undergraduate history course: 200 pages, solid command of the best secondary sources, familiarity with the important primary documents, an assumption of some minimal knowledge of the background of the period. Just right for HI 340, History of Medieval Europe in the Levant, say.

There are several themes: The Templars were the first, though still premodern, international organization aside from the Church, directly chartered by the pope; they (and the Hospitallers, which was a bigger organization), created the warrior-monk concept in the West; though famous for courage, militarily they were inept; somehow (the records do not reveal the details) they helped to create modern financial systems.

The bankers must have been educated, but Burman faults the leadership for illiteracy and ignorance, which contributed to military defeat and, at the end of two centuries, political suppression.

It was the lurid charges engineered by Philip the Fair that kept the Templars alive in the imagination, in ways the Hospitallers and even more, the Teutonic Knights, were not. Although Burman does not say so, whatever crimes and errors the Templars got involved in -- Burman convicts them primarily of pride and avarice -- they were choir boys compared with the Teutonic Knights.

Charges of avarice from the Church will generate the ol' horselaugh from a modern secularist. The whole career of the Templars and their enemies was sordid in the extreme. The notion that they had occult powers or that they secretly survive to run the world today can safely be left to the tinfoil beanie crowd, but even after 700 years, some events in the history of the Templars resonate today:

1. The promise of martyrdom. They didn't expect 72 virgins (as monks, they didn't expect sex with women, period), but they did expect celestial crowns.

2. The massacres and faith-breaking, by the Moslems and the Christians.

3. The Templars ability to get around international (that is, Church) sanctions, in their case, the sin of usury. (It would take another, thicker volume, and more documentation than seems to exist, to decide whether in fact they were usurers.)

4. The value of seapower in Middle Eastern conflicts.

One point Burman fails to make screams out to the reader. Burman spends a good deal of scarce space wondering exactly what factors led to the suppression of the Templars. There were several, but in the long view of European history, the confiscation of private wealth by the state has been a constant theme. The Templars were among the first, but the habit lived into the 20th century with the Nazi plundering of the Jews and into the 21st with the Russian plundering of the owners of Yukos.

This book covers the KNOWN Templars, from their humble beginnings to their violent demise. Speculation about what they were really doing, sorcery, Holy Grail/Arc of the Covenant, their eventual metamorphosis into the Freemasons, etc. have been covered in extensive and often far-fetched detail elsewhere. If you want to explore the myths surrounding the Templars, you should start with what is known.

I KNOW the Templars were more than this book says and that they didn't cease to exist in 1312, I know where they went and where they are now, but I will never be able to prove it. This book is dull, mundane fact. If you don't start with fact, however, your entire theory crumbles.

If you want to jump straight into "Born in Blood" or "The Temple and the Lodge", go ahead. If you want to understand what the heck they are talking about, you had better know the mundane history of the Templars.

This book is by no means boring, the documented history of this group is extremely exciting. Glory and humiliation were both theirs. Power beyond imagining, misery beyond belief, all these were theirs during the 200 or so years of the Order.

Oh, just read it!

Burman's book is a fast read and presents a very summary overview of the Order of the Temple. Although Burman does a good job of detailing the Temple's origin and financial workings, insufficient attention and detail is given to the Order's territorial holdings in the Holy Land, their military involvement, rivalry with the Hospital and political dealings with the various Christian rulers. The biggest, unforgivable shortcoming is the absence of any maps in the book. It is unclear to me how you can span approximately 200 years, eight crusades and countless exchanges of castles and territories without including maps of the Holy Land.