[SPEAKER_01]: This is Troy and Joel, and you're listening to Revive Thoughts, Deep Dive Edition.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're listening, we're listening.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm talking about the Knights Templar, who are the Knights Templar, who are just without a doubt, a very special set of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: But let me kind of set the stage for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me just kind of introduce you a little dip in the water here before we get started here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It had been twenty years since the first crusaders had entered the Holy Land and conquered Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the situation in Jerusalem had become dire.
[SPEAKER_01]: Leaders of the Old Crusade had been kidnapped and ransomed off.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some had become kings, but the others were now serving Turkish chiefs, these Muslim leaders in the area.
[SPEAKER_01]: The original goal of the Crusades was to create a safe passage to Jerusalem on many pilgrimages and many people remember long ago during this moment called the Great Pilgrimage when many people were killed and murdered trying to get to Jerusalem and know and very few of them had made it back.
[SPEAKER_01]: All their efforts, though, the crusaders and on and on, to make a safe pilgrimage to Jerusalem, seem to be threatened and seem to be falling apart in the situation in Jerusalem as hanging by a thread.
[SPEAKER_01]: When on a cold night, a group of nine gathered at the Temple Mountain, what they believed were the ruins of Solomon's Temple.
[SPEAKER_01]: and they made an oath to their leader, they swore to embrace poverty, and turn it around all their lands and their property.
[SPEAKER_01]: They swore an oath to be chased, and to never have a relationship with a woman meridly, they swore to follow the duties of the monks of the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there was a difference between their oaths and many other oaths that you've heard and seen throughout Christen them, because on top of those oaths, they swore an oath to defend the Christian faith with their swords.
[SPEAKER_01]: They swore an oath to fight for the Christian pilgrims coming to Jerusalem, and they swore to lay down their lives fighting and killing to protect Jerusalem's pilgrims, and that they would follow their directions of their leaders, or the quote, Grand Master of the Order, a man by the name of Hugh
[SPEAKER_01]: of the pagans.
[SPEAKER_01]: And from this group of nine, mostly relatives of Hugh, began the order that would get them that would be called poor fellow soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, but as we know it today, the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this may be, I would add it out of all the people we've studied and talked about the most mysterious group in Church history.
[SPEAKER_01]: More legends have been associated with them than anything else.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you listen to our typing rebellion part one and two, I said one of the big problems with doing research on the typing rebellion was there were not enough sources.
[SPEAKER_01]: While the problem with doing research on the Knights Templar is there are too many sources that are absolutely unreliable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything from, they have Solomon's great treasures hidden to that they are the founders of the Free Masons, to the founding of the CIA, to the founding of the United States of America, to the false god, baffement, and many, many other conspiracies are all sewn into the history and the origins of this group.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the Knights Templar, and that is who we're going to be taking a look at in this episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh boy, boy, what a setup, Troy.
[SPEAKER_00]: The night's Templar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Admittedly, I have no idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know anything about the night's Templar.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're new to kind of the second era of deep dives that we do here at Rewi Thoughts, Troy becomes an expert at a specific topic, and I, as a layman, get to learn all about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm particularly interested in night's Templar because I,
[SPEAKER_00]: have always had questions that I've been too lazy to research the answers to and so I've always I've always wanted my very own night simpler expert that I can ask questions about and now I have one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have my very own choice to tell me all about them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm excited to learn to be educated on the sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you mentioned the crusades.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're we're giving this what will you like?
[SPEAKER_00]: One thousand AD, eleven hundred AD.
[SPEAKER_01]: There we go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good question.
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually should have put the date in here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said on that cold night around the year, eleven fifteen to eleven nineteen is when we're looking at this happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't actually have written down the exact day official, you know, the night's Templar that kind of have one day other historians kind of have another.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's safe to say between eleven fifteen and eleven nineteen is when we were looking at the official beginning of the night's Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: So
[SPEAKER_01]: Go, you remember that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your great grandpa has told you stories of the eleven hundredths.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, it's pretty far back.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is, it is a ways out of our, out of our normal scale.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is also, it can always remind yourself, this is during the Catholic era of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we are a long ways from the Protestant Reformation, the kind of things that we are, I think more comfortable with the Reformation, the Great Awakening, those things that make us go, I like that in Church history.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're way out from those guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, those guys are not even a twinkling of an eye.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing, the proto people haven't even.
[SPEAKER_01]: The proto reformers haven't even shown up yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is, I mean, this is that era of history where things are very, very different from the way they are today.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, I do think that we can often learn from these people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes, even can be inspired by them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I, like you Joel, did not know much about the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew nothing about the Knights of War.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just, I didn't know much about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're national treasure.
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually don't remember how the idea came to me if I ate like mocha by the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: You were a research in Knights of?
[SPEAKER_01]: It kind of, that's actually what it really feels like.
[SPEAKER_01]: I normally, like, for example, a typing rebellion, I knew from the first episode we did on Hudson Taylor, I wanted to do an episode on the typing rebellion.
[SPEAKER_01]: But with some episodes, like the one in fire, sixteen, sixty, six, which I believe, did you send me that episode?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you were the one who was like, try to take a look at this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, four hours later, you had an episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then some episodes, it just kind of, they come together on their own.
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, the nice symbol I was not on my radar.
[SPEAKER_01]: I never really considered them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thought about them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anything them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't one of those ideas that you and I, you know, like the first Crusade, Salem would trust.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's things like we had talked about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah, it's to be a good one to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just was like, it just kind of came at me as like an idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: And once I had like started to do research on them, I became really mystified by just everything about them, like the way they interact, who
[SPEAKER_01]: where they come from, how they got to who they are, how powerful they truly were, how much our current world has seeds of it planted.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's amazing how many things that they throw it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Full bone conspiracy theorists now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I mean, I was already there, but that's actually now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said that's the thing, the things that they influenced are not the things.
[SPEAKER_01]: like conspiracy theories, you know, what the things that I actually have found were banking.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Jolly Rodger on Pirate Flags, like there's so many little things like that that were actually connected to the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was far more fascinating by that stuff than I was like, you know, the Knights Templar got away on a UFO and are hiding their treasure in an order because stuff like that, that stuff, whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there was all the little things where I was like, wait, no one had ever done that until these guys did that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fascinating to me how they were the ones who created that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, all right, I have an idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let me ask a question, and I want you to try to give me like a real brief two sentence summary, impossible.
[SPEAKER_00]: That quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, just I was going to overview just kind of set the set the field.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what are what are common questions that people have if there anything like me.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I think of Night's Templar, I associate them, and I don't even know if this is accurate or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: They may be a completely separated.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think of the Free Masons.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are they the same thing?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are they connected?
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... spoilers for a future part for the probably future part two because i don't think we're gonna get through the night stemplar uh... in one is say i will say this if you enjoy long episodes and that's your jam which if you're a little deep dive listener you are this is gonna be great for you because this is the longest script we've ever written by a mile like the typing rebellion was a lot longer than any other script and this one blows the typing rebellion like straight out of the water it is what they're not even close
[SPEAKER_01]: But with that said, so no, they're not the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the reason, and this is your two sentence answer, but I cannot wait to explain it when we get there.
[SPEAKER_01]: The reason the free masons and the night's Templar are so locked is not because the night's Templar had anything to do with the free masons.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's because the free masons liked the night's Templar and they intentionally masquerated themselves in a lot of free in the lot of night's Templar stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it wasn't that the Knights Templar led to the Free Masons.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as the Free Masons as a group formed, they intentionally tried to give themselves a Knights Templar look, which is why we kind of have that vision of them in the past.
[SPEAKER_01]: We think they're connected, but it wasn't done by the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was done by the Free Masons.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that's a good answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, next question.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I think of the Three Masons, I think of like,
[SPEAKER_00]: A society that's around with their secretive, but they're like a service society.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are the Knights Templars still around and are they a secret of group or are they kind of put her down?
[SPEAKER_01]: Good question.
[SPEAKER_01]: So unless the secret conspiracies are correct in the Knights Templar, are actually orchestrating the CIA.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, the Knights Templar got destroyed in the thirteen hundreds, but several of the groups that we will talk about because there aren't just the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are going to be five different these organizations that are similar to the Knights Templar that are founded in Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of them is the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are four others.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll talk about the Knights Hospitaliers.
[SPEAKER_01]: the other groups will go into and they are several of them are actually still an existence and they're still kind of they're not the same at all they're not still running you know they're not still fighting muslim crusades to protect military programs but they are still an existence they do still do things the Catholic Church has kept at least again in many ways the same the the outside of the shell is still there even though the the inside is completely foreign to what they would have recognized
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... you know if you took a guy from their era and you know transport them and time and said look we kept organization life you'd be like this is not at all we started but it's still it theoretically the same organization so so like you're stereotypical
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember if it's it's simpler or free mason's the idea that like the founding fathers of America were free mason's or something and put the you know the pyramid on the money and like obelisk in the Washington DC like yeah I think you're remembering
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're remembering that documentary that we all watched as younger people with the, with that historian, Nicholas Cage, and it's called National Treasure.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a real story, obviously, about when the declaration of independence was stolen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yes, I, National Treasure, but I have, I have seen like that, that concept, those concepts outside of that movie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it is a thing that like people talked about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that connected to this at all, or is that?
[SPEAKER_01]: So again, three makes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Three makes.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're losing using the language, the tools, the ideas of like, we're going to look like nice Templar because it was a super cool, you know, powerful military unit in the past.
[SPEAKER_01]: They then also would at least claim, or people would claim that they had the treasure the nice Templar hid Solomon's treasure theoretically.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hence,
[SPEAKER_01]: why they, you know, all of that stuff, the founding of America, stuff like that, were there free mason's present in the founding of America, were there free mason's present and some of that stuff?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, that is the undeniable they were there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But did it have anything to do with the Knights Templar we're doing?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, these are completely different missions, completely different groups of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Was America found in our free mason's as it all great conspiracy that I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just isn't in the free mason's episode, we talk a little bit about them, but I'm not an expert on that stuff, and to be fair, like the one side,
[SPEAKER_01]: Freemasons will be like, we're like a super kind group of bros who help each other up and blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then on the other side of it, they kind of give off, you know, creepy vibes.
[SPEAKER_01]: How much power influence do they actually exert?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I don't, we're not, we're not, like, this isn't a conspiracy podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we, we've got fun when to run.
[SPEAKER_01]: You and I would have a great time with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But no, I don't think Bigfoot is behind it all yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when was, when, when about, and I'm just turning this into a Freemasons episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: When, when about did the Freemasons come, come about?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw I didn't research the free Mason's work.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're all at this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will say, uh, we do get into it at the short answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: They come about in the late, fifteen hundred.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like all your free Mason questions, not all of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: You will get free Mason answers.
[SPEAKER_01]: I we have it in the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were come up.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were closer than I simpler though.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were like it wasn't well, they were close in the same way that you're close to, you know, cotton may there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like yes, technically they're within hundreds of years each other, but
[SPEAKER_00]: in their recent history enough for them to know enough about.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like they were digging up ancient art.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, modeling themselves on them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they were aware of them in the same way that you and I are.
[SPEAKER_01]: They knew of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, some of their organizations were still, you know, puttering around like the similar types of organizations were still out there doing stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was a legend at that point.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's why they adopted it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Knights, you know, Timpler were kind of like this legendary group had, you know, a romanticized them into something just kind of glorious.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what made them so useful to the Freemasons to dawn that kind of garbage.
[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned Solomon's treasure and like Solomon in general, that's something that I've also like heard connected.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, I don't really remember if it's free mason's or the night's Templar.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm assuming maybe a little bit of both.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do they tie back to Solomon?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they have, they're like, they're like, we were like the ones that built the temple and like arranged the stones or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's free mason's.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the night's Templar, I get into a wrong episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, hopefully other people have these, I'm used on this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm kind of helping you not join the Freemasons by actually I think we're gonna go fight in Jerusalem and I'm definitely signed up the wrong group so the the again we see they get called the Knights Templar they in the name you see it here
[SPEAKER_01]: were the poor fellow soldiers of Christ in the Temple of Solomon but the idea was they formed and their headquarters was in the shadow was in the temple mountain the shadow of Solomon's temple and the idea became because they had a lot of relics they had a lot of things they collected through their time they yes they were off fighting in these wars but they you know they were going to all these places in the Middle East they were digging things that they were finding things
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they were collecting a lot of different things, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the idea was that they had, at some point found Solomon's treasures and they had used them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now for starters, we're in the scriptures that you see that Solomon has a secret treasure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's no evidence that the hid a secret treasure anywhere that I see.
[SPEAKER_01]: Secondly,
[SPEAKER_01]: Like where would it be found?
[SPEAKER_01]: We will talk about how the Knights Templar got so incredibly rich and the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they were stupidly wealthy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is actually, it is actually unbelievable how much power and how much money this group of people will get, especially because they really have no business like me.
[SPEAKER_01]: like, okay, I want to make another that is like, look, sometimes we have people today who are really, really wealthy powerful businessmen, but they tend to be like, you know, people who did business for thirty to fifty, you know, Warren Buffers.
[SPEAKER_01]: I spend his whole life in business and unsurprisingly, he's a very wealthy business mogul, but you're like, okay, I can understand that he, he's a business man who made a lot of business decisions.
[SPEAKER_01]: That kind of thing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not the nice simpler aren't that though.
[SPEAKER_01]: They aren't they become that, but they're not starting out with I'm going to be these wealthy intelligent businessmen and make money.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was incillary.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a side thing that happened and yet they become one of the most powerful business organizations that ever exist in human history.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it wasn't even their goal and it wasn't by necessarily making like these amazing business of you know decisions and vending the next Facebook or you know your Tesla or did I that it was purely like the circumstances they were in anybody would have become rich doing what they did and yet none of them even realized they were going to when they started it
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's why they get this legend attached to them, a Solomon's treasure.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do we explain how much money they had?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, some people try to put like, oh, it must be these other things I had it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really just very straightforward.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you look at what they did, you'll go, I get how that made money.
[SPEAKER_01]: It would have made, there's no way it wouldn't have made money.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a very logical thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it made just so much more money than anyone could have ever possibly expected it to.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so, night's simpler operating for roughly a couple hundred years, eleven hundred to thirteen hundred.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you said.
[SPEAKER_01]: You ever say, yeah, it's about two hundred years.
[SPEAKER_00]: What, what a, like, is there a modern day comparison?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will make a modern day.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the only modern day I comparison, I can truly think of, and this gives you an idea of how weird it would be.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mentioned it in this script, so I was gonna get to this, but it's like, imagine the Southern Baptist Convention, one day goes, we're gonna start hiring Navy Seals to take cities in other places, like far away, like imagine, you know, Nigeria or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna send them over to a city where Christians are having trouble, and we're gonna just have our Baptist Navy Seals
[SPEAKER_01]: Go over there and take that city for them and make it safe for Christians.
[SPEAKER_01]: And on top of that, if you're worried, like, I'm worried about how these Navy SEALs are gonna act.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't worry, they're gonna swear at oath where they don't, because Baptist, so they're not gonna drink alcohol, they're not gonna dance.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're gonna be like, they're always gonna be in suits.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're gonna be your most Baptist-y Baptist people possible while they use machine guns to clean up a city.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as weird as that sounds, you're gonna be like, well, the problem I have with them is not,
[SPEAKER_01]: Whether they're drinking alcohol, probably, or whether they're in their Sunday.
[SPEAKER_01]: Best, my problem is they have guns and they're killing people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And is that what the church should be doing?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not the problem, anybody has.
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem everyone has is like, wait a second though, if we send them over there, are they living a good solid Christian monk lifestyle?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's the part that everyone was concerned about, not the machine guns.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not the part where they travel halfway across the world to fight and kill people.
[SPEAKER_01]: That part, everyone was okay with.
[SPEAKER_00]: interesting and just in the dust on like a pretty pretty good movie though like I Yeah, I'd gone watch that was fascinating.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean I look I We're our job.
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't say our job is not a judge because one thousand percent we judge everything we're saying and I you know, but our job is did not you know If you were convinced to Southern Baptist need maybe seal operating maybe you will be inspired by the Knights Timblar I will say though as I researched them read them and did this work and we put together the story and let's all them
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds crazy as it sounds.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we often kind of paint the crusaders in the night's Templars, people who were just religious zealots and one day they picked up swords and like, ah, I'm gonna kill a bunch of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's not what they were doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not what they were about.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not saying every one of them had good intentions, but it does make me reflect like what?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's easy to look at them and go, oh, you know, these guys are so crazy and out there, but what am I willing to do for God?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think we should be picking up machine guns and taking random cities.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when I look at why they did it, I go, ah, you know, though, it does, I do see their reasoning.
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe we should be doing more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe not picking up a shingun's informing the Navy SEALS of the Southern Baptist, or, you know, the Methodist Marines or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: But maybe we should be doing, which is actually kind of sounds cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, we should, but I'm just saying maybe we should be doing more than we are doing though.
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe they had some ideas actually more correct than we do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: All righty, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, let me think, let me think.
[SPEAKER_00]: any more questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're going to talk through like how they started up and then they're they're rise to fame and what's going on there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is we're going back.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, you said early, eleven hundreds, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not Joel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this your first deep dive, my friend?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, come on now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will say with the typing rebellion, it really did start with Hong Shuchu and we stuck with him the whole way through.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, maybe you got spoiled, Joel, but that one episode, that one time we didn't go back.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you recall with the Joan of Arc episodes and with all the, the first crusade, we had to go back in time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Joel,
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go back because I have the question for starters that the nice simple are they are monks like they are Christian monks warrior monks and you and I have both if you've done much research in history on Christianity you know that monks are not supposed to fight right like how many for hundreds of years the Vikings are pillaging in Europe and the Christian monks are getting slaughtered because they're not supposed to fight back
[SPEAKER_01]: Yet somehow, somewhere suddenly, we have these guys who are swearing these monk-like oaths, and then they're running down the Jerusalem and killing people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so for me, the first question I had is, when did it become okay for Christian monks to fight back?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like when did we suddenly become okay with like not only could Christian, you know, these Christian, previously like people, could not only fight back, but all of Christian the enemy was gonna be behind them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought the answer I would find was right around the first Crusades, there was kind of a shift.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's not what I found at all, Joel.
[SPEAKER_01]: What I found was actually there has always been a group of people fighting, fighting in Christian warrior monks.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were just on the other side of Christianity.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we think of Christianity.
[SPEAKER_01]: We often think of Western Europe, Christianity in the medieval era.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's another side called the Byzantine Empire.
[SPEAKER_01]: And over all the way back to the ancient Roman Empire, we actually find evidence of these Christian warrior monks.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, we find a lot more evidence of martyrs dying for the faith, but there are just a little sprinkling of these other guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: On the year is six forty one Egypt we're going all the way back to seven century and over there we're going to have there's this Egypt is the home to cop to Christians and cop to Christians at this point and just gotten kind of conquered by the Arabs Islam is taking over the area and as Islam began to you know enforce its new rule
[SPEAKER_01]: They were the Christians were going, we're not interested in becoming Islamic.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as the Islamic took over Egypt, they began to put harsh penalties on Christians, forced them to convert against their will, high taxation, and any other form of persecutions they could embrace.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this led to what are called the Baz-Humaryck Revoltes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, you remember reading about the bad sumeric of holds in history, classical, it's a classic part of every childhood.
[SPEAKER_01]: But these revolts were named after a region in Egypt called, I mean, I was like, bad, some are, I'm not sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: They, they have been written down in both the Arabic and Coptic Christian sources.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Europeans have known about this for a long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like a new discovery.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've been researching them for a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: But between the year six hundred ninety three to a hundred and thirty two in Egypt there were nine different revolts from these people who were led who were Christians who were led by these monk communities to revolt against Egypt up in north Egypt the bazen the bash marians
[SPEAKER_01]: We're located in a particularly defensive part of Egypt.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was surrounded by marshland.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was very difficult to enter.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the people there would farm without irrigation.
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't need to be connected to the Niles floods because where they were at, they had natural water sources, which meant you couldn't cut them off.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Egypt, you normally, if you wanted to fight an enemy, just block the Nile, and now they don't have farm water, they don't have food, and they're going to very quickly give in.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, on our episodes on Ethiopia, we mentioned that small little Ethiopia challenged the Egyptian giant empire to a fight by saying, hey, we will block the Nile, and that was such a threat that they basically were like, Ethiopia, let's make peace, don't block the Nile.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can't afford to block the Nile.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this didn't affect these guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: These guys were not getting their water from the mile.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nile.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you couldn't cut them off.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had lots of boats for fishing and trading.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were good friends of the Byzantines because they were Christians.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was just no way to cut them off.
[SPEAKER_01]: At one point, the Islamic Egyptians will cut off their weapons.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they just started making their own.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they learned how to like create their own swords and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, it didn't work out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And most
[SPEAKER_01]: of the papyrus in Egypt was created by these guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they always had lots of money in the Egyptians who love their papyrus, always needed to go back to them and it made them very difficult to conquer.
[SPEAKER_01]: So these Christian monk communities held out for a year's.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, at one point, they will start a revolt in the year, seven hundred and sixty seven.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they'll just stay in revolt until the year eight hundred and thirty two.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for people, if you're born in seven sixty seven, that's an entire lifetime.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like,
[SPEAKER_01]: seven years old by the time the revolt is over.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you basically grew up outside of the control of that country.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were in the entire time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I different points.
[SPEAKER_01]: Different people will try to take them down.
[SPEAKER_01]: The sultan of this very large caliphate going all the way from Egypt deep into the Middle East will bring his entire army down just to subdue these guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he will fail.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another time another Sultan will capture like their bishops and monks take them into a city, but the Bajmarians will like show up in the middle of the night, siege the city, burn it down, and take their bishops and like sneak back into their marshlands to not be conquered again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's this again we're seeing Christian monks fighting back and not going down quietly into the night.
[SPEAKER_01]: And finally, it all kind of came to a head in eight thirty two.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other tribes alarmed the Bashmarians for kind of giving up the March strategy.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were helping Egypt out for some favors.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the Bashmarians were taking a particularly hard fight this time.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they were also fighting very hard back.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Sultan's army was getting hammered by them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And both sides were just losing lots of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the Sultan said, ceasefire.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's just, what do you say?
[SPEAKER_01]: We stopped fighting for a bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Bashmarians agreed, and they said, let's all keep our word.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as soon as the Bashmarians kind of put their weapons down and went home, the Sultan betrayed them, marched in the marshlands, and took them all in the Bashmarians.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not able to regroup fast enough to deal with this kind of quick turnaround betrayal.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as he gathered all of them up, he took all their weapons from them, he killed a lot of them, he took the women, and he sold them off, and he gave you an idea of how big this guy's empire was.
[SPEAKER_01]: He took them from Egypt and sold the women of this community off into Iraq.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I mean, this is a very large empire, and he's selling them off to be slaves and to be inheritance very far away, terrible things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Sultan just didn't do anything he was supposed to be completely broke down the deal.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Bashmarians as a group just never really recover.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they're still a people group, but they just never get back on their feet.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're never able to revolt again.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're never strong after this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just that was the moment they were broken.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for about a hundred and fifty years, almost, there was a group of a Christian monk community leading the Christians in how to revolt and fight and war.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, for almost seventy years, they were successful in being completely independent.
[SPEAKER_01]: of the land that they were living in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, most of this information comes to us from the optics, and the optics are the Egyptian Christians, and they're not actually all that kind to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: The historians didn't really say why they weren't.
[SPEAKER_01]: They basically said, hey, Roman's certain means submit to government.
[SPEAKER_01]: These guys didn't submit to government and look what happened to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: They got what they deserved.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that they're writing that just kind of justified the fact that they don't develop.
[SPEAKER_01]: They never rebel against the Egyptian Islamic people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe that's kind of like, or they're trying to like, hey, Islamic people look, we're not like them.
[SPEAKER_01]: We think they're bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or that was genuinely in their mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Bashmarians were breaking Romans their teen and so they got what they deserved.
[SPEAKER_01]: A Syrian Christians also were eyewitnesses to this and they were much more nice to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were like, hey, the Bashmarians were right to be upset.
[SPEAKER_01]: Egypt was out of line.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were conquering Christians and forcing them to become Islamic.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they died.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so who can blame them for rebelling?
[SPEAKER_01]: They were, they were in the right.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I tell this story to me because I go, okay, here we have a group of Christians and monks leading them and they're not sitting idly by letting Islam conquer them.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're fighting back.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of our earliest examples of Christian monks fighting back is with Islam.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I found that there's a very deep connection between these warrior monks and fighting back in Islam.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like for then, that is where it really starts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another example, you can see it in some of the monasteries they built.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is one of those moments where I do wish we had a video feed for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you Google Monastery of St.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anthony, you're going to see that this is a very beautiful monastery, but it's also built like a castle.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are walls.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are like turrets, certainly not turrets, but they're like, you can very clearly see.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was not a peaceful,
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll urge that you walk into and, you know, everything's fine and army could take it no problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: The people who built this monastery in Egypt were clearly expecting there to be future battles and so they built it with the idea that they're going to fight back when that comes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, it's actually important to take a minute to talk about Anthony himself because Anthony is an Egyptian monk who lived in the third century and you're going, we're going to talk about the Knights Templar by going all the way back to the third century.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you started in the six hundreds and you're now you're going back further.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going even further, and here's why Anthony is the original monk.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is the guy who kind of came up with the idea of being a monk, being that monastic guy who lives way back in the past.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for starters, let me just read part of his story to you because it is very, for lack of a better word, colorful.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's unique.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also, this is the kind of motivation, all of the monks are the next thousand years at the Catholic Church and everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the guy that they're going to be emulating.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the Roman Empire, man, and Anthony was a gymship monk, he purposely moved into the desert to get away from everyone else.
[SPEAKER_01]: And his, and he has a story of fighting Satan in the graveyard while living alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is unique, it is, it is odd.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you've wondered why did these monks live off by themselves?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what was their goal?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is like their constitution, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The United States is founding document as a constitution of the Declaration of Independence.
[SPEAKER_01]: this is the founding document of these guys who go off to live on their own to live these different kind of monastic lifestyles and let me read this because it is one of the wildest things you'll ever read and and just to clarify off the top I think the stories at the very least a little exaggerated it's a little bit different let's go
[SPEAKER_01]: Now that he was tightening his hold on himself, Anthony went to the tombs, which were quite a waste from the village.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had one of his acquaintances shut him up alone in a temple and bring him bread different intervals on many days.
[SPEAKER_01]: The enemy, that is Satan, could not bear it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was afraid that Anthony would soon fill the desert with this kind of discipline.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he came one night with a multitude of his demons and began to cut him, and cut him up so badly that he lay on the ground speechless from the pain.
[SPEAKER_01]: The torture was greater he said that anything that human blows could inflict.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the Lord never overlooks those that have opened him, and by his providence the next day his friend came bringing the bread.
[SPEAKER_01]: He opened the door and saw him lying on the ground as if he were dead, and he carried him to the church in the village.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many of his relatives and the villagers sat around Anthony, thinking he was going to die.
[SPEAKER_01]: But about midnight he revived and got back up, seeing them asleep around him, and his comrade was alone, he told him to come over and ask him, carrying him back to the tombs and don't make anyone else.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the man did, he carried him back to the tombs, and shut him up alone in the tombs again.
[SPEAKER_01]: He could not stand up on account of the blows he had received, but he prayed lying down.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when he had finished praying, he shouted out, here I am, Anthony.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will not flee from your alashes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you inflict more, nothing will separate me from the love of Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he sang the song, though I can't be set against me, my heart shall not be afraid.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that song personally.
[SPEAKER_01]: The enemy was the- that's me speaking.
[SPEAKER_01]: The enemy was astonished that he dared to return after his beating, Satan cried out to his hands, since we have failed to overcome this one with the spirit of lust and with our physical blows, let us find another way to attack him, changing shape is easy for the devil, so in the night they made such a noise, it seemed like an earthquake and the demon seemed to enter in breaking through the walls coming in the form of all animals.
[SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly the place was filled with lions and bears and leopards and bulls and snakes and scorpions and wolves.
[SPEAKER_01]: The lion roared, the bull tossed its horns, the serpent rides, like on the floor and the wolf seemed to rush on.
[SPEAKER_01]: But none of them actually came near him, all together the noise was terrifying.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that his pains also became worse than ever, but lay watching with unshaken soul.
[SPEAKER_01]: He grown from physical English, but his mind was clear, and then he mocked them.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you had power, just one of you would be enough for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, the Lord has made you weak, so you have to try and terrify me by your numbers.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you have the power, don't hold back attack me, but if you can't, why are you bothering me?
[SPEAKER_01]: Faith in our Lord is a wall of safety for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord did not forget Anthony's wrestling was what was at hand to help him.
[SPEAKER_01]: As Anthony looked up the roof seemed to open in a beam of light then descended on him, and the demon suddenly vanished all at once.
[SPEAKER_01]: The pain of his body was ceased, and the building was suddenly whole again.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when Anthony felt this help and caught his breath, he then asked the vision, where were you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why did you not come at the beginning to make my pain stop?
[SPEAKER_01]: And a voice said to Anthony, I was here, but I waited to see the fight, and because you endured and had not been defeated, I will always be with you, and will make your name known everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: On hearing this, Anthony got up and prayed and received such strength that he realized he had more power in his body than he had before.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was at the time, thirty-five years old.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the story of Anthony.
[SPEAKER_01]: What were you saying, Jill?
[SPEAKER_00]: I just said, wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is Anthony in the in the three hundreds.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so this is the guy that like the Egyptian monks will base the monastic lifestyle on, and that becomes the blueprint for Catholic monks all around the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the exciting story, you know, it would be cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it was true, I don't want to doubt this wonderful Christian gentleman, but I do have some, you know, I do some questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, why, why were they all shaped like animals and cutting them up in the tombs and why was he living in the tombs in the first place?
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay question questions yeah questions but but this is you know and yeah we keep going but we won't we won't we won't the point is this was their their founding document this is to them that the ideal Christian life is this battle against Satan disciplining your body living in this like basically intentionally reducing what you rely on lifestyle
[SPEAKER_01]: to the glory of God and through doing so you will spiritually battle Satan and over time your body and your spirit will be subdued to God and then you will be kind of basically unstoppable.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is why the monks will go off and live on hills far away from everybody else they were trying to induce the same state of
[SPEAKER_01]: of, you know, I'm away from the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: The world doesn't have power over me.
[SPEAKER_01]: That Anthony does.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I don't think this is what Christians are supposed to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do not see and scripture.
[SPEAKER_01]: This idea of isolating oneself from the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we are to know, you know, the world is our enemy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just as first John says, the eyes of the flesh and the less of the world is one of those enemies.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't think we beat it by
[SPEAKER_01]: isolating ourselves on a hill or living in a tomb waiting for Satan's demon army to fight us.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that we, you know, break it down by loving.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's Christ has told us and by following his commands.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is what Saint Anthony's monastery is going to develop on.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what all of these monasteries are going to develop on this spiritual struggle.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in Europe, they're really going to take the idea that this is a spiritual struggle.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in in
[SPEAKER_01]: Egypt in the Middle East is going to be much more physical for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is okay to fight.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these monasteries would collect relics and bones.
[SPEAKER_01]: They would have all these different people.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then other people would come in and just like the Vikings would rush in and steal these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Persians and the Bedjuins and some of these groups in the Middle East would also try to break in and steal these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the differences, they wouldn't let them.
[SPEAKER_01]: The monasteries were not interested in giving up their relics and stuff at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: To quote one source, they said the monastery was fortified against the raids.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like a fortress as much as it was more fortress like than it was religious.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another quote said, the monastery possessed many endowments and possessions.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is surrounded by a wall.
[SPEAKER_01]: It contains many monks within the wall.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a garden.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are fruitful palm trees, apple trees, pear trees, pomegranates.
[SPEAKER_01]: And every other tree embeds the vegetables and springs that flow water.
[SPEAKER_01]: And a garden that is irrigated, which the monks used to drink.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they had a vineyard for supplying all the wine that they would need.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll say it's for communion, but I think they drink it for fun as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they had a garden containing a thousand trees.
[SPEAKER_01]: And inside of it, they had their, they had built an oasis.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was nothing like this monastery and have it in all of the places you would find.
[SPEAKER_01]: These people were ready for sieges.
[SPEAKER_01]: They built their churches with the idea that like we're going to build a church here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to have relics here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we're going to make sure we build our churches in our monasteries in positions to fight back when the time comes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another one is St.
[SPEAKER_01]: Paul's monastery at the anchor.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's located in Egypt as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you look, again, look at the pictures of these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are fortresses.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not churches.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the way that we think of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another one is in Sinai.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was built by Emperor Justinian of the Abizantine.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was built in the sixth century, giant walls, ready to defend itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another one called St.
[SPEAKER_01]: Catherine's Monastery.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just interesting to me because when I think of monasteries, when I think of monks, I think of the ones in Europe.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think of how the Vikings just beat them down for hundreds of years.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they never fought back.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was their whole thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Christians are going to be passive.
[SPEAKER_01]: Christians are going to trust God to fight the wars for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just so interesting to me that at the same time, the Vikings are killing all of the Christians up north in Europe.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Christians in Egypt and the Middle East are not having it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these monasteries were just fighting back tenaciously and here's the thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it wasn't for these monasteries, if they hadn't fought back, they would have lost their relics and they would have lost also with them a lot of really important historical documents that we used today.
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, if you do any kind of study on Bibles and translations and what are the earliest manuscripts
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the really important manuscripts we have is called Codex Sinite.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not really good at saying those kinds of words.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as a fourth century Greek copy of the New Testament, it is the oldest, complete copy of the New Testament.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very valid resource within a couple hundred years of the New Testament written.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have one complete from beginning to in copy of the New Testament in the early three hundredths.
[SPEAKER_01]: The entire thing is there ready to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, we have scraps that go, you know, for the first century and second century, we have lots of scraps in the New Testament, but by the three hundreds, we have the entire thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we find it here in this document that was sitting in one of these monasteries.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another one is called, another document they have is called the Pantacrater, Pantacrater.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure a Catholic person is very upset about the way I saw that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it is the oldest picture of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you think of like pictures of Jesus in your Google panto crater, you're like, oh my gosh, I've seen that picture before.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know what it was.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the oldest picture of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the reason we had this very, very, oh, I don't know if it's not like a photograph.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I don't know this.
[SPEAKER_01]: What they don't think there's any evidence is what Jesus actually looked like.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when you think of a picture of Jesus, you have seen this picture before and probably never even realized it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do we have this picture?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it was in
[SPEAKER_01]: A monastery in the monks of that monastery fought tooth and nail to keep anybody from breaking into that monastery and stealing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it kind of puts it in perspective because you go, huh?
[SPEAKER_01]: All the monks and relics and stuff in Northern Europe were stolen by the Vikings and who knows where they are.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had their stuff burned down.
[SPEAKER_01]: The guys in the Middle East are fighting and when you become a monk, it's expected a little bit that you're going to be able to hold down a siege when it comes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And thanks to them, we have really important historical documents that would have probably been lost to history.
[SPEAKER_01]: If they hadn't done it and I go, maybe these guys were right, actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: The idea of putting the sword down was the wrong way, because I'm very grateful that they were able to preserve all this history that helps defend their faith today and proves that we weren't built on nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: All these documents and things that would have been lost.
[SPEAKER_01]: If they had been doing things the way it was done in France and England and Northern Europe at that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, they were doing things differently with the idea that there is going to be a battle here.
[SPEAKER_01]: The same site that has all that stuff, by the way, also claims to have the Bush of Moses.
[SPEAKER_01]: I googled the picture.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very large bush.
[SPEAKER_01]: not convinced it's the same bush that was burning for Moses thirty four hundred years ago i'm sorry i'm not an expert i'm not a horticulturist okay i think those are the people who do but you know that kind of stuff but it doesn't look like a new place i'd like to go visit it but yeah
[SPEAKER_01]: other ones that are being built in Turkey.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a military installation from the ninth century.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're just seeing it slowly start to work away.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the first one we see like it in Hungary is in the year nine, ninety six.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it wasn't built actually by like your traditional Europeans.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was built by a group called the Maggers.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are tribal group out from like the city and step area.
[SPEAKER_01]: Out where the, where the, you know, those kind of people kind of weigh out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: They kind of moved into Europe and some people.
[SPEAKER_01]: they kind of become who the people of Hungary are today are kind of from this group or maybe not some people disagree with that but either way as they moved in some of them are Christians and they built one of the first kind of military style monk installations and hungry it's got a very long difficult name man Panohama you're not here for that the point is though we do see these things start to get into Europe but it takes a while it's coming from the Middle East at this idea of these military monk castles
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a UNESCO heritage site with four hundred thousand volumes of history preserved in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's got, again, another great library of historical documents that were really grateful historians and all the people of the world to do research are very grateful that it was built.
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, it would have been lost if these guys weren't fighters.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I really challenged my thoughts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I kind of was going in with the idea of like, no, monks and Christians are not supposed to fight.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I think and that kind of, you know, martyrs is good.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then I kind of got to the end of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, well, man, I sure would hate to have lost all that history and stuff and we would have if it hadn't been for these guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, in our episode on the first crusade, we talked about this strange period where the church of Europe tried to rain in all the feudal warlord battling that was happening in Europe.
[SPEAKER_01]: They kind of imposed rules, like you can't fight on feast days and you can't invade church lands and you can't fight on Sundays.
[SPEAKER_01]: uh, and it basically made it difficult and bureaucratic to wage war because of England wanted to go to war with France.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had to like look at their calendars and be like, okay, I can't fight that day.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the feast day there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't fight that day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, there's a Thursday three weeks from now.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can fight on that day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's get our armies together and fight there.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was, it didn't work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the armies, either ignore the rules to Catholic Church was putting them place or they would just set up their battles on that one Thursday they could fight and they would just say, we'll just fight on that day then.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you can't stop us from fighting by putting a bunch of red tape on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you can see here that the church is trying to figure out how can I read tape or how can I get as they're trying to stop or they're also kind of putting their hand in there and starting to get control of and get into war.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think one of the one of the craziest parts of the pre-Christian monk war effort as it's going to move in the night's Templar was that there was another type of Christian monk that was also happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is like straight out of a movie.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if you've seen this, you maybe in kids movies or whatever, but you've seen this movie where your hero is just beginning his adventure.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's going through the woods or something, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: When suddenly, bandits attack him, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no, he's getting attacked by bandits.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's gotten, you know, he's begun his journey, but things are going wrong when out of nowhere, an old man with a walking stick comes out and beats up the bandits for him, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's a classic plot, classic movie thing that you've seen.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's kind of, you know, and then, you know, this guy, you know, he explains to him the words, his known man, he can maybe train him, whatever your movie is, right, whatever you need.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've seen that a thousand times.
[SPEAKER_01]: As ridiculous as that plot sounds to you, that is actually kind of what started happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, maybe they were old men, but that same vibe started happening in the eight hundreds, nine hundreds and thousands.
[SPEAKER_01]: the ninth, ninth and tenth century.
[SPEAKER_01]: Christians began to make pilgrimages to important holy sites around Europe.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as they made these pilgrimages, they became dangerous bandits and people started waiting for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're carrying money with them to these sites with relics to pray.
[SPEAKER_01]: They make easy targets.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as monks started to see that these different places were become in targets, they realized it was kind of on them.
[SPEAKER_01]: to make safe passages.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as they saw pilgrims and people moving through, they would start to kind of like build up little forces as job were to kind of patrol the roads and make sure that these pilgrims and people could make it to their sites after all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody's going to get over the relics and donate money.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just a purely financial perspective.
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to keep the roads open so you can keep making the money.
[SPEAKER_01]: But also, they really genuinely wanted people to come and pray at these relics.
[SPEAKER_01]: They believed that that was how you got closer to God, even though I don't agree with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was very important to them, and so they couldn't have banished, breaking that process down.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's even more to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: According to a book, wandering monks, virgins, and pilgrims, which is an interesting title for a book,
[SPEAKER_01]: A real part of the Christian monk style was this other group of hermit monks.
[SPEAKER_01]: They literally like they took the Saint Anthony approach where they genuinely wouldn't have a home and they would just kind of wander through life and if they saw somebody in trouble their job was to kind of spring in and help them and they really remind me of like Japanese samurai like how these stories or movies were like
[SPEAKER_01]: this old Japanese samurai or something's just wandering around helping people in need.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of what these guys are doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they're just they had this kind of a lot of philosophical like belief to them that they're in this order or basically where you're supposed to help people in need wherever you can.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you would just have these kind of hermit monks wandering in the town.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, how to ban it or raiders been here will go fight them off for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just a weird aspect of like Christianity and monk life that I just, I don't know for me, I, you know, if you've ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons, there's a class called monk, but I guess I never actually would have thought that monks were actually out there doing fighting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like to me, that's something you maybe see over in Asia.
[SPEAKER_01]: It didn't feel like a European thing, but it's based on a real thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: These guys were actually going around taking on different European crime people to stuff and they were wondering in a town, punching and fighting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you say the majority of monks and monasteries are still your docile peaceful folk these days?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this has to be a minority, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's definitely a minority, but it's not such a minority that it was nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it was enough that it got into legend.
[SPEAKER_01]: It got into reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have some of the stories and slowly over time, it was a thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I didn't last a super long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think that it was still happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, forever, I think, you know, certainly by Martin Luther's day, the wandering monks, you know, the states and governments were well established at that point, but it was not, like, it was not impossible that if you were traveling through medieval Europe and you ran into some man, as it was not impossible that the person who'd come to your aid was a nearby monk who would hear what was happening, it would rush to fix the situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that to me was just not what I was expecting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I just was like, I don't know, it's fascinating by these guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, it's such a different imagine your local Baptist church is like, hey, things are tough.
[SPEAKER_01]: We see a lot of crime out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to start training, you know, our pastors to go through the neighborhoods.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when they see people getting beat up, they're going to spring an action.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we don't do that in seminary.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine that is a part of our Christian duties.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could, I can't even imagine if you did do something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure you're breaking a lot or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be a big deal.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this was what Europe started to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: It tells you the situation in Europe that crime is so bad that nobody can be relied on that you have these people.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it also is an interesting idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, okay, what if you are living in a crime-ridden area full of bandits, et cetera, et cetera?
[SPEAKER_01]: Should Christians start to be the ones to clean it up?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because on the other hand, like, man, it's a, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: People were probably pretty grateful when the band has got beat up, and they probably were very interested in what they had to say afterwards.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, one thing that we do, and this didn't happen very often, but one of the rarest things that occasionally happened to is these monasteries would kind of build up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes they would be in competition with each other too.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have this relic of the finger of Mary Magdalene.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we have this finger of Paul or whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who's going to run this area?
[SPEAKER_01]: Who's going to be the monastery?
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... kind of in charge and so they would kind of usually they would use politics money and legal stuff in the kings here and they would try but there was occasionally times where these two monasteries would actually come to violent blows uh... one case was in the eight hundreds of monastery obvio italy either attacked a rival church to kind of like put them out of business so they would be the only church operating or
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe they didn't directly attack them, but they basically hired the people that did go attack them to eliminate their rival for power.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I want some wild.
[SPEAKER_01]: These were your monks might have actually been turning on each other to make sure they were the only game in town too, because you've got a relic and people are coming and donating money.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the business if you're not careful.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of these are just precursors, but just giving you an idea of like, what was the world like a medieval Europe and what was the idea of these monks and these people and why, you know, how do you get from the Knights Templar where we're going to all dedicate ourselves to a monk lifestyle to how do you get from point A to point B?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, for starters, you don't just start one day with all of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You look at
[SPEAKER_01]: a flow of these people who've been doing it for a very long time and this is just kind of the next evolution of it like this is it's there it's already starting to become present and now skipping out you know we've had the first crusade we see Christians going fight and take the holy land and now the next phase the next you know the next part of it is going to be what the night's Templar do
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll skip over talking about the first crusade.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you haven't listened to our first crusade, deep dive, you definitely should.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a great episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: It tells you everything you would ever want to know about the first crusade.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to retell the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was important to me to kind of see that we move forward in history.
[SPEAKER_01]: And eventually we get to this guy, Hughes of Payons, or Hugo de Paganus, or Hughes de Paganus, or also Hugh of the Paganus, or Hugh of Payne,
[SPEAKER_01]: or Hugo.
[SPEAKER_01]: The guy's name is translated differently depending on the several different versions.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one difficult to do is there are two guys with almost the exact same name as the founding of the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of them I'm going to just call Hugo.
[SPEAKER_01]: and the other is Hugh, and that's mainly to differentiate these two guys who have, again, almost the exact same name.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, if you heard pagans and you thought, oh, this was like a pagan guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just a part of France that was called that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's actually Champagne, and it kind of got shortened down the pagan.
[SPEAKER_01]: This wasn't like he's Hugo of the pagan religion, more like Hugo of the area of France that he would have been from.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I will say for a person super, so important to history, the founder of the Knights Templar, we don't really have a lot of information on him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was born maybe in the year, ten, seventy, but that's just a guest.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the best guest most people have, but it's not confirmed.
[SPEAKER_01]: uh he would have had to have been an adult to sign something in the year ten eighty six and so that's why people are like well if he was an adult in a young man at this age then he was probably born in this year but that's not a birth certificate that's just we know he was an adult by this year so ten seventies
[SPEAKER_01]: Another thing we aren't sure about is where he was born, and you're like, but his name is of the pagans.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's where he lived with some region called Payans.
[SPEAKER_01]: But where he was born is unclear.
[SPEAKER_01]: It might have been Spain because he wrote to one of his cousins in a letter and talked about some things happening in his childhood that made it sound like he was from Spain.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It also could have been in Champagne France where he ended up in Eastern France.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not clear.
[SPEAKER_01]: The earliest record of him is account Hugh of Champagne, which is why I changed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's why I'm using Hugo for one and Hugh of the other because you have Hugh of Payne's and you have
[SPEAKER_01]: Hugh of champagne, so let's make one Hugo and one Hugh just for clarity sake.
[SPEAKER_01]: But thanks a lot of the two of the nine founding members of this group have almost the exact same name, which is not helpful.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Hugo Knights, there's two, there's a Hugh and there's a few go.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Hugo is the English way of saying Hugh.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're both Hugh.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is Hugh of Payons, and the other is Hugh of Champagne.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very similar.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're the one who goes and they come from cities, but also those cities.
[SPEAKER_00]: So kind of sound away.
[SPEAKER_01]: It takes exactly right, very unhelpful, and they grew up together basically from the way it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, not helpful.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is a count, and so I'm going to call one count Hugh, and the other, the guy who officially found the night's Templar, we're going to stick with the English version Hugo, some kind of keeping these two names separate from each other a little bit, or it's a little easier to kind of like keep them from bouncing into each other here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hugo ends up in a bunch of court documents around the year one eleven one one thirteen we know he gets married and has a son or at least has a wife and a son by the year eleven thirteen so the age is forty three probably he's married with a kid so that's kind of helpful
[SPEAKER_01]: went to Jerusalem in eleven o'clock for Jerusalem and he also seems to have made a return trip around eleven thirteen and fourteen so it's very likely that he took you go and at least the first trip and if you didn't take it on the first trip we definitely took on the second trip because around because the year eleven fifteen is when he go starts the night's Templar and he had to get there somehow it makes sense that he would have gone with his friend and leader count you so the pieces make sense but there's no confirmation as technically possible he went another way and we just don't know
[SPEAKER_01]: By the year eleven twenty five grandmaster of the night is his name and the official document in Jerusalem so we know he has been run in it he's been running it long enough that he is officially recognized by Jerusalem by the year eleven twenty five but that's a big gap between these two timelines and you kind of like a little bit more information now
[SPEAKER_01]: At the time there was a group established by the Pope in ten ninety nine after the first crusade took Jerusalem and their job was to protect Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is called the order of the holy Sepulchry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sepulchry, Sep
[SPEAKER_01]: Their job is to protect Christians in the Holy Land, specifically to protect Jerusalem's Christians.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is good evidence that Hugo was a part of this little group that was protecting Jerusalem for a few years.
[SPEAKER_01]: The count was probably a part of this group as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then eventually Hugo decides, I don't want to be a part of the group protecting Jerusalem's Christians that are already there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to start a new group that's job is to protect
[SPEAKER_01]: the pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like the same job, but it's actually not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, I mean, they're traveling a very long distance and they can be attacked anywhere along the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas the Christians in Jerusalem, they're going to be attacked in Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_01]: So one group is going to be stationed in Jerusalem and the other group is going to be traveling up and down the coast, trying to take on bandits and stuff to protect the
[SPEAKER_01]: Travelers and you can see when you go back to those wandering monks who are taking care of bandits and stuff and you can kind of start to see this is an evolution of that you can see that kind of idea of we're gonna go around and protect these relics sites and make people safe and three hundred years later this group is doing that in the Holy Land and you can really kind of tell okay there was a connection between these ideas here
[SPEAKER_01]: The nice Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: By the way, at least some nice Templar members say, hey, whoa, don't say Hugo founded us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We think there's a third in different Hugh and that he was a crusader who battled alongside his brother for twenty years before founding the nice Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: I personally think the historians and the other Knights Templars are correct that is Hugo, but it's from the let's you know one of the biggest issues with figuring out who started the Knights Templar is which of the many hues it was he was a popular name I guess in that era like that was if your kid wasn't named you and what were you doing um Hugh Hugo's were all over the place uh I'm gonna go again I'm sticking with our Hugo from pans not the other guy
[SPEAKER_01]: At the time, Jerusalem would have, eventually, what we talked about earlier, Joel, five different communities, quote, chivalry communities.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chivalry were these nights they had a chivalry code, you've heard of a code of chivalry.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are the rules that these communities had.
[SPEAKER_01]: And each of them had to follow these rules of
[SPEAKER_01]: shivalry these in shivalry like when he's a today it's like you know he's a shivalrous guy it means he's like you know he's he's a woman with respect or something like that there was not which I mean shivalry did mean treating women with respect it was often a part of their rules but it was a whole they had a whole lifestyle of rules and the nice timpler will have two different sets of rules applied to them the rule is saying Augustine and the Benedictine rules
[SPEAKER_01]: Now the rules of St.
[SPEAKER_01]: Augustine go all the way back to Augustine that guy lived in the Roman Empire and, you know, he did a bunch of different important things if you don't know much about him.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have super many, we have always several St.
[SPEAKER_01]: Augustine episodes to go check out him in five thoughts.
[SPEAKER_01]: But at one point he wrote down like a, and this wasn't like he didn't write it down going like, I'm planning to write a list of rules that churches and nights, Templar, people, warrior monks will use in the future to be better monks.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was just like, here's my eight rules for living if you want to live a good lifestyle for God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do these eight rules and you will be in good shape.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and here I wrote them down.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're pretty short.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were like short chapters.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just kind of ran through them because to be honest, I thought they were interesting and they're not bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not bad rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like we could all use some of them at least.
[SPEAKER_01]: The first one is prayer.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were expected to pray together at certain hours and pray more if you desire it without being stopped.
[SPEAKER_01]: Further, when you pray to God and Psalms and hymns, think over in your heart, the words that come from your lips.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's interesting, like how many people, like when you pray, you're just like, I'm saying it, but I'm actually not paying attention to it or something, or you read that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Augustine was having the same problem, a sixteen hundred years ago, and he's like writing his rules, don't forget to actually pay attention to what you're saying.
[SPEAKER_01]: Subdued the flesh is a real number two, as far as your health permits by fasting and abstinence from food or drink.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, when someone is unable to fast, he should still take no food outside meal time unless he is ill.
[SPEAKER_01]: He did make exceptions for health if you were sick, but strict eating and clothes were to be worn.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't really do that one.
[SPEAKER_01]: anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is not a rule but maybe we should consider being a little more careful with how much food reading.
[SPEAKER_01]: Although your eyes may chance to rest upon a woman or someone else, you must not gaze upon her.
[SPEAKER_01]: Seeing women when you go out is not forbidden but it is sinful to desire them or to wish them to desire you.
[SPEAKER_01]: for it is not by tough or passionate feeling alone, but by one's gaze at lustful desires arise.
[SPEAKER_01]: And do not say that your heart's appear if there is a modesty in your eye, because the unchased eye carries the message of an impure heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wins such heart's discloser, unchased desires, and a mutual gaze, even without speaking, then that chastity suddenly goes out of them, and their bodies will remain unsold by the unchased acts.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I want to say lust and how you dressed is, you know, as bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's pretty straightforward one there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another rule was he got to be clean, another rule was make sure you're taking care of the poor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another one was seeking forgiveness, but he had an interesting caveat where basically like you should seek forgiveness and pardon, unless whenever the good discipline requires you to speak harshly and correct you to subject.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you were unduly harsh, you are not required to ask your subjects of forgiveness, because by practicing too much humility, they may, the rule of your authority may be undermined, but you should still ask forgiveness from God, who knows the deep affections of your love, and will happen to correct it over time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Besides this, you are to love on another with a spiritual rather than an earthly love.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I love his like, yeah, definitely ask forgiveness of people unless you're like their boss and you yell at them, then don't forgive us and forgive this because your boss andliness will be undermined.
[SPEAKER_01]: So just go talk to God about it instead, which I found strange and I don't think I agree with Augustine on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Respect your superiors as more important than yourself and then one of the last rules was follow the rules I've written, which is a clever rule to put in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's another one he wrote.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought it was interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that you may see yourselves in this book as an amir having it read once to once a week so as to neglect no point through forgetfulness.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you find that you are doing all that has been written, get thanks to God, the giver of all good.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when any of you find you have failed in some area, let him be sorry for the past, be on your guard for the future and pray that you will be forgiven by your faults and not let into temptation.
[SPEAKER_01]: So these are the rules that are adopted by the Knights as the official way of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Augustine side of them, they'll talk about the Benedictines ones later because there's a lot more rules there when we get to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is also the way most monk communities have kind of on top of making St.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anthony their leader idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is like the rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've kind of all agree to at least any of them that are following Augustine, which is pretty much all of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if you've ever wondered, where do monks kind of get their rules from?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, like honestly, like I'm not really a fan of monks, I don't want to be a monk, but like if you were going to run a Christian monk society, these rules make a lot of sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of them are maybe not
[SPEAKER_01]: how much fasting we're supposed to be doing as Christians but I definitely think like these are not bad rules to live by in general like I wouldn't make a pastor do it necessarily but if you had a problem with some of them like you know the whole like yelling at your employer and then not apologizing that seems wrong some of these rules do seem like basic Christian rules though
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, so these rules were adopted by the Knights of the official ways of life they had to live.
[SPEAKER_01]: This does have a pope in the Catholic Church could justify having these large military forces as by combining them with their monk like rules and orders.
[SPEAKER_01]: These weren't just armies that the Catholic Church had built.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were these people living these monk like priestly lies following these rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the thing is now your church has a military organization and like I said the earlier like it's one thing to say you know eight hundred years ago the Catholic church ran several armies but it put it in our own day if the Southern Baptist did this at the Methodist Marines showed up at the you know the the Episcopalian Navy seals
[SPEAKER_01]: we would find that really weird.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if we found out like the Southern Baptists were running military military units or the Presbyterian Church down the road was training for, it would just be strange.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of us would find that very much not how we imagine churches supposed to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the argument would be, look, we're sending them to protect missionaries in the Congo or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they're out there doing good work.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's still in a military unit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you told us, yeah, but it's a Christian military unit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're not, you know, we made these guys swear, oh, so we check on them regularly.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have to submit to their elders.
[SPEAKER_01]: They can never get divorced.
[SPEAKER_01]: They can never look at pornography.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't drink alcohol.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're really great guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we really hold them to a high standard.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are, they're elder qualified, living very severe Christian lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we send them the fight for Christians.
[SPEAKER_01]: Would that make you feel better?
[SPEAKER_01]: would we would we be okay then when we watch videos of like Baptist soldiers jumping out of helicopters with machine guns to take over a city to protect the Christians inside knowing that they were doing it while drinking no alcohol and you know living very baptously and singing good solid old-fashioned hymns when they got their offline way
[SPEAKER_01]: in helicopters.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very strange.
[SPEAKER_01]: Five different communities in Jerusalem will be formed.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Knights Hospitaliers, the Knights Templar, the Knights of the Holy Seppel Cur, the Knights of St.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lazarus, and the Knights of the Hospital of St.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mary of Jerusalem, which will be shortened to the titanic nights when they are later come about.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the titanic nights are a German version of these other communities, and they are actually really important in the downfall of the Knights Templar, but we'll get to them way later.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the time, the nice Templar specifically dedicated themselves to the cause of protecting pilgrims.
[SPEAKER_01]: Weri Christians, traveling all the way to Jerusalem, traveling halfway across the world, were regularly the targets of bandits and bedrooms.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just like they had been in Europe, their targets all the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: The whole reason the first crusade had happened in some degree was because of these bandits and Bedju and tribes attacking them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so somebody needed to stop it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, because they were bringing all this money with them, it was such a dangerous thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: A group of people picked up swords and said, we will be the ones to stop this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jerusalem in the Crusader states almost immediately fell into trouble after the Crusades.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of the armies went back to Europe if you remember the end of the first Crusades pretty much everyone went home and when pretty much everyone goes home that leads you a wide open target and all the warlords and cheese and people that had been there were mad that their land was taken and so when everyone went home it was like okay let's go take our lands back and that made the lands very very dangerous.
[SPEAKER_01]: After about a decade of the Knights Templar being a pretty small group of maybe nine to ten people, maybe up at this point, a couple dozen people.
[SPEAKER_01]: The King of Jerusalem at the time, King Baldwin II sent them to France and said, like, hey, we like what you're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not enough of you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go back to Europe and start recruiting more people.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is going to be kind of an official ascension recruitment trip.
[SPEAKER_01]: You just don't have enough to do what you need to do, but we think what you're doing is really good.
[SPEAKER_01]: He specifically sent them to a man named Bernard of Clarevo.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the most famous bishops living in Europe at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bernard was born to a very well-off family.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was taught by priest at school.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he often dreamed of joining them when he got older.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when a new order was kind of being established called the Rules of St.
[SPEAKER_01]: Benedict, much like St.
[SPEAKER_01]: Augustine had his rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: St.
[SPEAKER_01]: Benedict has a group of rules as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: that's the kind of group Bernard of Clarevo decided to join and we talked about how we've done episodes on him before and when he joined he convinced thirty other people to join him like let's all become monks together and one of the people he convinced was his own dad like he was like that give up being a you know a businessman or whatever we're done with that we're gonna become monks now and he I mean think of how much charisma and persuasiveness you have to have to convince thirty different people one of which being your dad to become a monk with you
[SPEAKER_01]: He really liked the idea of reforming the Catholic Church and making it more strict and making it live like Christianity he thought needed to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: After three years Bernard had little church had outgrown its space and so they had to set up new orders of this group and eventually they get to a new big house that's in an area called Clarevo which is where he gets his name Bernard of Clarevo.
[SPEAKER_01]: But our took his duties to be in a monk super seriously.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was extremely ill, not because he was a health conditions, but because he was fast so much that his body became very weak and he would get sick purely from his fasting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Despite Bernard's incredible zealousness, tons of people joined him and his over-the-topness, they thought he was great and they really loved him.
[SPEAKER_01]: In his lifetime, he will plant sixty different churches in this order promoting people to live very serious lives in their opinion for God.
[SPEAKER_01]: After a while, the Pope will promote him and make him like a diplomat preacher that goes around doing a bunch of different stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's still some problems.
[SPEAKER_01]: His life is imperfect, at one point one of his cousins will try to take over his operation and another point his brother will die and he'll become depressed for a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lots of things going on in the Catholic Church at that time too, for example, the Catholic Church will accidentally elect two popes.
[SPEAKER_01]: which is not the only time they do that and I just don't like I don't know how I'm not Catholic but I don't understand how that's a problem like I've seen churches get new pastors before and they've never accidentally hired to and I just don't feel like it would be that hard not to hire two popes so anyway he'll help kind of heal that rift and get them back down to one pope
[SPEAKER_01]: He was also called on the battle heresies at the time and many of the people he led and taught would become really important and influential people across all of Europe and many of them including some of them will be future pop some cells and they will call on their old teacher Bernard whenever they whenever they they get in trouble
[SPEAKER_01]: Now he will also be instrumental in setting up the second crusade and that will not be necessarily such a good thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in the year eleven twenty seven Bernard and he go cross pass and he goes going around Europe and at this point when he meets Bernard he's already been kind of crisscrossing Europe.
[SPEAKER_01]: He made it as far north as Edinburgh and Scotland which was kind of crazy to me that a guy from the Middle East like used to job as to protect Jerusalem is like way up north in Scotland looking for new people and he sets up a house and they set up these little like
[SPEAKER_01]: They call them houses.
[SPEAKER_01]: These little nice Timpler houses, which were little allocations meant to recruit people and resources for the work they do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he set up one in London.
[SPEAKER_01]: They set up one in Edinburgh.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these houses were kind of strange to me too, because I'm like, you're a little army fighting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do you need these houses?
[SPEAKER_01]: But the houses were basically like, hey, people can donate money to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: People who are going to be pilgrims can kind of get started at these houses.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you want to join us, these houses are here to recruit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they grow really fast.
[SPEAKER_01]: These houses do a really good job.
[SPEAKER_01]: And some of the buildings that these guys set up are still in existence are like still around with us today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the buildings themselves have not gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: The most famous of which is called Temple Church London.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's a business building now, but it was originally created by Hugo in these guys to set up recruitment for the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's, again, just a wild thing to me that they're setting up buildings that will last nine hundred years later.
[SPEAKER_01]: These buildings would be important structures over time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't really understand fully why they were doing it, but it was very important to their recruitment and it was very successful.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I just don't know how they got that idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, back to Bernard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bernard's over here.
[SPEAKER_01]: He meets with Hugo in France.
[SPEAKER_01]: He loves it.
[SPEAKER_01]: He thinks this, this, this nice, Timpler thing is like the coolest greatest thing ever.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so at the council of Troy, which is don't Troy as T-R-O-Y-E-S, and I Googled it in according to the French, it's like, Troy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And eleven twenty nine uh... they have a big council council was not attended by the pope but he sent like all his lawyers there this was a really big deal in their day and uh... the main issue they were trying to figure out is like how much who had more power the king or the clergy there was a fight kind of happening in france uh... but number two on their list of issues to deal with was what do we do with this tiny group called a nice templar
[SPEAKER_01]: And at this point, they might have only had only nine members still, but I think it was probably up to a few dozen, but it's very small.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Bernard of Clarevo is just like, we've got to make these guys something.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are great guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're doing good work.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Pope would just grant them like official recognition.
[SPEAKER_01]: We will see the Knights Templar just do amazing things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the world, they're fighting for God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's give them everything we can.
[SPEAKER_01]: He convinces the council to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they said, okay, but you need to write some rules for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he right Bernard writes the rules down.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're called the quote Latin rule under the Benedict stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, guys, a lot of rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: The main thing is this is going to be the rules of the Knights Templar from now on.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as they become more powerful and influential, uh, this is what the Knights Templars going to end up looking like.
[SPEAKER_01]: By the way, interesting to note, Bernard's maybe a reason why he was so motivated by these guys wasn't just that he liked Hugo.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bernard's own uncle was also one of the founding nine Knights Templars.
[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe that's why he liked them so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm a family member in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the Latin rule, as it was called, would be written down and you guessed it, Latin, but most people couldn't read Latin, so they very quickly translated it into French.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now something else I learned, the nice Templar, were like, people from all over, joined the nice Templar, but it was mostly French.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then I did not know that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was definitely like, eighty percent membership French in, like, twenty percent everyone else, maybe maybe it was more like, seventy-thirty, but it was definitely a very French-led group.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's because France was actually really powerful and important back in those days.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now these rules were written with Bernard and Hugo together.
[SPEAKER_01]: The group had already existed for ten years.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think some of the rules were probably already in place.
[SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, here's kind of the rules they came up with.
[SPEAKER_01]: Seventy two different rules are not going to read them all.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I do want to read some of them to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: But maybe I'll start with just the opening because when you hear this opening like this is
[SPEAKER_01]: Your sales pitch, the first thing when people go, what are the Knights Templar?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is kind of like our opening document we have.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, our founding document for the Egyptian monks was the guy fighting Satan.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is our founding document for the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: The first church recognition of who they are and let me just read it to you because it's powerful stuff like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is going to make you want to put some armor on a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me read it to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: We speak firstly to all those who secretly despise their own desires and will, and want to live with a pure heart to serve the sovereign king as a knight.
[SPEAKER_01]: And with studious care to desire to wear and wear permanently the armor of obedience.
[SPEAKER_01]: Therefore, we admonish you, you who until now have led lies as secular knights and soldiers, to which Jesus was not your cause, but which you embraced for human enjoyment only, to now follow God.
[SPEAKER_01]: To follow the path God has chosen from the mass of sin, and whom He has ordered through His gracious mercy to defend the Holy Church, that you will hurry to join them now and forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Above all things, whoever would be a night of Christ choosing such holy orders and rules as your own, you and your profession and faith must unite pure diligence and firm perseverance, which is so worthy and so holy and is known to be so noble.
[SPEAKER_01]: That if it is preserved untainted forever, you will deserve to keep company with the martyrs who gave their souls for Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this religious order has flourished and has revitalized the order of nighthood.
[SPEAKER_01]: This nighthood at despise the love of justice that constitutes his duties and did not do what it should.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is to fin the poor, widows, orphans and churches but strove to plunder, dispoil and kill.
[SPEAKER_01]: God works well with us and our Savior Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has sinned his friends from the holy city of Jerusalem to the marshes of France and Burgundy who for our salvation in the spread of the true faith did not cease to offer their souls to God a welcome sacrifice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we and all join all brotherhood at the request of Master Hugo.
[SPEAKER_01]: By whom the aforementioned Nighthood was founded by the grace of the Holy Spirit, assembled at Shrawh, from diverse provinces beyond the mountains on the Feast of this Day in the Year of the Lord, will eleventh twenty-eight in the ninth year after the founding of this Nighthood, and the conduct in the beginnings of the Order of the Nighthood we heard in common chapter from the lips of this aforementioned Grandmaster.
[SPEAKER_01]: Brother Hugo and according to the limitations of our own understanding was seemed good to us and beneficial we praised and was seen wrong we did not we did not listen to.
[SPEAKER_01]: Therefore I, Gene Michael, to whom was interested and invited this divine office by the grace of God served as the humble scribe of the present document by order of the council and the venerable father Bernard of Clarevo.
[SPEAKER_01]: I listen to that words.
[SPEAKER_01]: You once lived at the city night, but now you can put on the noble armor of obedience.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a heroic stuff, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it makes you want to get in there and do it too, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is something good to live for.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the first few rules were kind of what you might expect.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, kind of normal stuff from monks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's how you excommunicate someone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's how you test them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't let children join the order because they're not old enough to really commit to this and you can't really, you know, one of them regret their decisions.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then they got to some more interesting orders and rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, rule fifteen, it has been made known to us that some of you, when you hear the divine service, do so while standing.
[SPEAKER_01]: We do not ordain that you should do so while standing and we disapprove of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: We command the strong and the weak to avoid such a thing, sing the songs and the inventory him, sitting and say their prayers and silence, softly, not loudly, so the proclaimer does not disturb the prayers with other brothers.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like I guess you couldn't go to church and stand in there you had to be sitting and it's interesting because he's like don't be strong sit instead of stand which I kind of think of sitting as usually the weaker but anyway
[SPEAKER_01]: They also had rules on how to dress.
[SPEAKER_01]: You couldn't wear, you couldn't, you had to dress very modestly, but because you lived in the Middle East in the Middle East was hot, you could wear a linen shirt because they understood that you were melting in the desert out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Pope, by the way, will actually change their rules to dress later on.
[SPEAKER_01]: He will actually say, now you have to dress in all white.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then eventually he will add the very famous red crosses.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you think of a crusader, you often think of this guy with that big red cross down the middle.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, that was not crusaders.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was only the Knights Templar, the Knights Templar, wearing the red cross of Jesus Christ blood.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were the only ones allowed to wear that outfit.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in your classic crusader, picture in your head of a guy in all that armor and chain mailing, he's got the white with the red.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is actually only Knights Templars who are allowed to wear that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where were Nights Templar?
[SPEAKER_00]: Did they fight in Crusades?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are a big deal in the Crusades.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me tell you, we're going to get to the second Crusades.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they will be Crusaders, but they're not considered, so it's a, maybe it's just a Catholic way of looking at, but the Crusaders are going to die in fight.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if they die in these fights, it's like they're forgiven of their sins by the Pope.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the nice Templar have a different guy they answer to.
[SPEAKER_01]: They do technically answer to the Pope.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they're following their grandmasters.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they're oftentimes fighting.
[SPEAKER_01]: If your job is to protect pilgrims, pilgrims need to go to these sites, you're going to fight with the crusaders and pretty much every battle the crusaders are there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you're not serving the crusaders.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like a team up with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like when they get there, you're there on the sidelines, working with them, fighting and killing people.
[SPEAKER_01]: But your job is slightly different than theirs.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that will become a big deal because some of the crusaders will basically start ordering them around.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in other times, it'll be the nice Templar who are basically running the crusade and basically just shut up and do what we tell you because we know what we're doing here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it'll be a big contentious thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we will go through a lot of the crusades more than I ever thought I would because the crusaders and the Knights Templar are right neck and neck in those battles together.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you learn a lot about who the Knights Templar were by how they behave in these crusades.
[SPEAKER_01]: And some of the things they do in those crusades,
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of them will be heroic, and some of them will be like, that's a stupidest thing you could have possibly done.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they were very interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another rule they had.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, just the weirdest rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember in Bible College, one of my favorite parts of being in Bible College was sitting around the table with Joel and other friends of mine eating food, laughing, talking about our classes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not the nice Timpler.
[SPEAKER_01]: You had a silently.
[SPEAKER_01]: The rule was, you had a silently, you couldn't speak, and you could make little hand gestures.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you weren't good at the hand gestures, you were kind of new, you could whisper, but you shouldn't do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or you need to learn the hand gestures.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess like a hand gesture for like, this needs some salt.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or I didn't get enough butter.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Quote, eat your bread in silence.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to quote the solmus, I held my tongue.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is, I thought my tongue would fail me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I held my tongue that I would not speak any ill.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you weren't allowed to eat and talk at the same time, which I just imagine would be really sad and depressing.
[SPEAKER_01]: They also had a rule about bowls, because apparently they were very regularly short on bowls.
[SPEAKER_01]: So quote the rule.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because of the shortage of bowls, the brothers will always eat in pairs so that they may study each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's make sure that neither of them were eating too much or too little.
[SPEAKER_01]: It also seemed just that the brothers would each get the same amount of wine in their cup to equally distribute it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they never shortage of cups.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cups did not seem to be a problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: You didn't have to share a cup, but you did have to share a bowl with the guy next to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of those rules also kind of make sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't go by yourself, travel in pairs.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then you have other rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like only the grandmaster was allowed to have a lockable purse or bag that could have personal items in them.
[SPEAKER_01]: No one else was allowed to have that.
[SPEAKER_01]: If your family members wrote you a letter, hey, we haven't seen you in a couple years, hope you're doing good, you're loving family.
[SPEAKER_01]: The grandmaster would decide if you were allowed to read that letter and you weren't allowed to actually physically hold it, he would have somebody read it to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which kind of bothers me, you wouldn't actually know, you wouldn't know for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: if you were even being read the letter correctly which is kind of a weird thing to think like you could be getting letters for years and that the guy was messing with you in line and he probably didn't happen but I mean like he could just pretend to read the letters correctly or they could just say yeah sorry we don't think you get letters from home anymore and there's nothing you could do about it they decided that
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, you were also not allowed to talk about your life beforehand, although idle words are generally known to be sinful.
[SPEAKER_01]: They can be the spoken of and pride, or you could also, uh, brag about your sinful exploits before you became a knight.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, so you weren't allowed to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You just weren't allowed to talk about life before you became a knight because you would either brag about your sinful things you did with women or whatever, or you would brag about your exploits as a knight, and it would just hurt people, quote, no one should give ear to the peddler of filth.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're just not allowed to listen to people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Women are super not allowed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that kind of makes sense, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice, Tim Blar.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're trying to be holy monks.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I get that they wouldn't have a bunch of women traveling with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: The quantity of women is a dangerous thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: For by it, the old devil has led many off the straight path to paradise.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there will be no ladies or sisters added to the house of the temple.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is why dear brothers, it is not fit to have them in your presence.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then the rules got even more strict.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where I think a lot of this would go, whoa, nice, Tim Blar, chill.
[SPEAKER_01]: quote, the next part of the rule.
[SPEAKER_01]: We believe in a dangerous thing for any religious to look upon the face of a woman for too long.
[SPEAKER_01]: For this reason, none of you should kiss a woman.
[SPEAKER_01]: And remember, in Europe, people greet each other with a kiss.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he goes even further.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if it is a widow, a young girl, your own mother, a sister, or an aunt, the knighthood of Jesus Christ will avoid at all costs, any embraces of women, by which so many men have perished, and returned internally before the face of God with a pure conscience and a sure life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I gotta be honest with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Paul even says green each other with a holy kiss.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, I don't do that particular command.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it does seem extreme that the guys couldn't hug their moms.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that might, if I can speak, might have been going a little crazy there.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the rules with the, with the, with the monk lifestyle, though, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You're the monastic, you're separating yourself from from the, the material world, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, it does fit, but I just always assumed that like a monk could still hug his sister or his mom.
[SPEAKER_01]: I never got the impression that like those people were off limits, but in the in the in the night's Templar, they were.
[SPEAKER_01]: So these are the rules that Hugo and Bernard come up with to make them official.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is now Catholic church sanctioned not just a group of guys calling themselves the night's Templar, but they are officially the church
[SPEAKER_01]: the church of the entire, you know, not the Roman Empire, the entire European world is now backing them and saying, we acknowledge you as a real thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: The King of Jerusalem had a second reason for sending Hugo that is often not talked about.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was because he was trying to get another crusade going.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this was a crusade for Damascus, the city Damascus, you know, the city from the Bible that Paul is on his way to when he gets blinded, that very important biblical city
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not called the second crusade, and I'm not sure why it's not because it was a crusade.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I found out there are actually a handful of side crusades.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you know, you're doing a video game in their side quests.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it seemed like the Middle East had a few side quests.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of my favorites was the King of Norway called the Norwegian crusade around the year eleven o seven.
[SPEAKER_01]: He just packed up five thousand men in sixty ships and sailed down from Norway over to the Middle East to do some fighting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah,
[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, they weren't Vikings anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were Christians.
[SPEAKER_01]: but like the Viking age had only ended about sixty years before that how much different had they really changed in the way they didn't military operations and so basically the hangout in England then they go down the Spain they start to run out of food so they you know they start getting food they start looting and pillaging the the Spain Spain people Spanish people is a giant group of like Vikings and like the Muslims they're trying to fight them and they dominate them they absolutely crush them
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they move on and they like land on an island called Lisbon.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a half-Christian half-Muslim city and I've read so many things where historians are like Muslims or so advanced Europeans were so behind Muslim armies could crush Europeans in battle.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when these guys go up against this Norwegian army, this Norwegian army absolutely just crushes everyone in their way and I really wonder
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, if the Muslims had had to fight Vikings on a regular basis, would they have been very strong?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the Vikings seemed to crush the Muslim armies like nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this, you know, again, former Viking army.
[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't even the real Vikings, like the back of the day, real legit, like they didn't believe in God.
[SPEAKER_01]: They would do whatever they wanted Vikings.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the Christian Viking army.
[SPEAKER_01]: coming through and just cleaning house and they would take down and they took down an island of pirates that were run by Muslims in the area and they saved a bunch of Christians just get on their way to the holy land they land in Sicily and the rulers like a twelve year old and he becomes like their best friend they all hang out there and have a great time in Sicily and they don't raid Sicily because this guy's their buddy
[SPEAKER_01]: And then eventually they arrive in Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when they get there, the King of Jerusalem at the time, King Baldwin from the original Crusades meets up with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: He loves them.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, you guys are great.
[SPEAKER_01]: Think you're awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go do some stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: He gives them a splinter of the cross of Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have my questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, quote, Martin Luther, there's enough pieces of the cross of Jesus Christ to like, build Noah's ark or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah, I guess that is not quite right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, you know, he likes him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's giving them relic pieces.
[SPEAKER_01]: They go over to Damascus, they're not getting to Damascus, they attack side on instead.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they take it, they capture it, they have a great time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the King of Norway goes up the Constantinople where he meets Alexios, this old Byzantine ruler who started the whole crusades in the first place.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he looked down on all the Europeans, he thought he was better than them.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he loved the King of Norway, he had a great time with this guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He gives him some relics and treasures too.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the guy goes back to Norway.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just like,
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the most random story where like this Viking like former Viking group just comes down and has like a party in the new land and they just they just have so much fun and then they go back home and that's what they do and that's just kind of what's happening in Europe during this time it was kind of like the Republic of Venice is going to do the same thing they're going to send an army down have a little mini crusade and capture the ancient biblical city of tire like
[SPEAKER_01]: Why it was the fashionable thing to do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you were king in Europe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you went down.
[SPEAKER_01]: You conquered some random city from the Bible and you went back home.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was kind of whatever everyone was doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to be fashionable and cool in Europe.
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to have at least one random Bible city under your belt, you know, otherwise what were you doing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So King Baldwin the second, he gets kidnapped, he's having some trouble, but he overall things have been going okay for him, but he needs help.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wants to take Damascus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Damascus is like the last biblical city that they haven't taken.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's only fifty miles from Jerusalem and it or not Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's only so it's not that far away, it's what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very close.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you could definitely take it if you, it's only for the miles, sorry, from another biblical city, like it's this in a nearby area.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you take Damascus, that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you've cut the Muslims out of the land completely, but they still have this one city.
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem is, the Damascus crusade is different than the other crusades, and this is why it's not called a crusade, it's because the pope and the church didn't orchestrate it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the kingdom of Jerusalem that asked for the help.
[SPEAKER_01]: They sent Hugo to recruit people.
[SPEAKER_01]: They asked for people to come join them, not the church sending them themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: So instead of the crusades being sent from Europe to them, it's the crusaders asking the Europeans to come join them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, according to the sources, this army was pretty large when they get to their defyte Damascus about the same size as the first crusade in the tens and tens of thousands.
[SPEAKER_01]: Recruits from England and Scotland got there, but most of them still came from France.
[SPEAKER_01]: The King of England won't go, but he'll donate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Henry I, but he'll donate like a gigantic amount of money.
[SPEAKER_01]: Large group of Normandy, their king died and they had nowhere else to go, so when he, like, they're not their king, but they're Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: was assassins since they didn't know where to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't have a boss anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: They just decided to join the Damascus crusade because that's what people did that then.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this was going to be a big deal.
[SPEAKER_01]: They all get down there.
[SPEAKER_01]: They originally were going to take a nearby town.
[SPEAKER_01]: It took way too long and they didn't know why.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then they kind of were like, well, that took a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: But let's get over to the Damascus.
[SPEAKER_01]: They get over there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fifty miles from the coast right between Jerusalem and Antioch.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all going.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is where all the problem happens.
[SPEAKER_01]: When they take, try to take this last biblical city.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've taken side on.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've taken tire.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've taken Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've taken anti-Og.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've taken NYC, which is not biblical, but it's got the nice and creed behind it.
[SPEAKER_01]: This would be the last one, but they can't take it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The siege goes terribly.
[SPEAKER_01]: They started in winter, never a good idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: You run out of food pretty quickly and you're fifty miles from like your nearest help.
[SPEAKER_01]: They sent a thousand nights out to like forge for food, but the Damascus people figured out what they were doing, sent an army attack the foragers and pretty much all of them died and that wasn't good.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they didn't have any food on top of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: after a bad attack like that King Baldwin was like okay you know what they're attacking us let's just go get them forget the siege let's just attack until we break our way in but as he goes to send the army into Damascus it's terrible like super strong thunderstorm blocks their way and it goes on for like a day just lightning thunder rain like crazy okay we'll go and attack them the next day well the next day there's so much fog the army cannot see
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, let's go the next day.
[SPEAKER_01]: It starts raining again and this rain is so bad that roads.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been there for a long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Become completely washed out.
[SPEAKER_01]: The forces can't walk through the roads.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so then all the kind of crusaders kind of get together and they go, hey, what if God is trying to tell us not to tack Damascus?
[SPEAKER_01]: What if he's like upset with us and attacking Damascus is out of his will?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they pray about it and they decide, you know what, we all came all this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of us all the way from England and Scotland, but we don't think God wants us to attack Damascus, so we're not going to.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, they struck a deal.
[SPEAKER_01]: According to Damascus, their version of the story is they ran away as scared.
[SPEAKER_01]: The army of Damascus was too strong.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another legendary account is they accepted a bribe from Damascus like, hey, we'll pay you a lot of money not to attack us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another group said the Muslim army attacked them while they ran away.
[SPEAKER_01]: And another group said they prayed and decided God didn't want them to attack anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: You'd be the judge of what ended up happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this was the second attempt to take Damascus, and it doesn't go, or sorry, the third attempt to take Damascus, and it doesn't go well, the final attempt will be in the second crusade, but it just, they decided God didn't want them to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is kind of the end, too, of King Baldwin the second, the guy ran into Islam, his dream of never having any enemy cities nearby will never be fulfilled when this fails.
[SPEAKER_01]: When he returns to Jerusalem, it expands.
[SPEAKER_01]: He may say, well, what does this have to do with the Knights Templar?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the thing was, the Knights Templar were there.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were fighting, and they are kind of the only good part of the siege, like people see the siege of Damascus as a giant waste of time and a failure, but they remember.
[SPEAKER_01]: The nice Timpler being there and it's like seeing this kind of like a validation like these guys from the Council of Traw.
[SPEAKER_01]: These guys with their new rules and their new things.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're doing good stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're good to have around.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we like what they're doing and they're starting to become very very very popular and very very powerful.
[SPEAKER_01]: As people are swearing, oh, they're saying these, these noble men and people all over Europe, they're giving up their houses, their money, their lands and they're saying we will stay poor for the rest of our lives or at least for a determined amount of time to serve the Knights Templar and as they donate their money.
[SPEAKER_01]: This money has to go somewhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: As pilgrims put their money in the hands of the Knights Templar, some of these pilgrims die.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now that money is forever in the hands of the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Noble men will say how, go spend five years fighting the Knights Templar, who will watch my business in the state for me while I'm gone is the Knights Templar job to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And many times, if these noble men died, then the land then passed on to the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mentioned earlier in this episode, I said, well, if anybody did this, you would make a lot of money.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, listen to what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone who gives their money gives their land gives their estate to the Knights Templar is now in control and all of them who die.
[SPEAKER_01]: That becomes nice Templar forever, it's seen as from you as a sacrifice in the gift to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even the ones who don't die if you spend five or ten years in the night's Templar and they go home, or you spend the rest of your life there, that land is now the nice Templar for that time, all the money they made while you were gone, all the things they farmed and sold is theirs now to use.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not just that though.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody in the nice Templar is allowed to hold on to money.
[SPEAKER_01]: Only the grandmaster or like the commander of each group even has a purse with any money in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they can only use it for food and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like no one's allowed to own anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the nice Templar getting massive amounts of money and real estate and land and farms and vineyards and boats and stuff like that from these people swearing their lives to them, to fight for them, to go be crusaders alongside them.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they're not allowed to own it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not allowed to use it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They can't reinvest it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The lands that they are managing, they're taking care of all these people's lands for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they're not allowed to actually spend the money on themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what do you do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you just continue to pour it into the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: You continue to use it to try to take the promised land and you put it into savings.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one more thing, the Pope himself, because it's officially sanctioned.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Knights Templar are allowed to exist by the power of the Pope.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are now tax exempt.
[SPEAKER_01]: You cannot tax them.
[SPEAKER_01]: France, England, Scotland.
[SPEAKER_01]: Any money don't even notice that the Knights Templar is free from anybody taking money out of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whether it's the Knights Templar who wants to use it, you can't.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's against the rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: And whether it's the government that wants to tax that money, they can't.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's against the rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: As I said earlier, anybody who did this and could get away with creating this organization would be creating one of the most wealthy organizations just by virtue of what it was doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hundreds and thousands of people over the course of two hundred years will dedicate their lives to the Knights Templar, die fighting in the battlefields of the Middle East.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of that money will go straight to the Knights Templar and they can't even spend it on anything except for running the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Other than that, the nice simpler began to have ideas to remember their job is to get pilgrims to the Jerusalem and keep them safe.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of their goals was to help poor pilgrims to get there but the pilgrims keep getting attached because they have money but what if they didn't?
[SPEAKER_01]: What if as bandits went to attack them, they found that they just were holding a piece of paper that said, this money is worth a certain amount of money at the next night's tempar, way lay station, and you can't take anything from them because they don't have any money.
[SPEAKER_01]: Today, we do this all the time with credit cards and debit cards, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't actually carry all my money with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It sits in the bank and I go to an ATM and I pull money out the money exists somewhere, but it is not on my person and the bank has the money and it gives it to me, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what these guys are doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: They realize if we just, if you dump all your money in London or wherever, then your houses will give you like little pieces of paper that you can carry with you to each of these stations and they will cut you a check.
[SPEAKER_01]: We know we have the money.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our Knights Templars will run the money from station to station.
[SPEAKER_01]: But now instead of poor pilgrims being forced to carry all the money with them, it will be the nice Templars and they're soldierly, you know, escorts carrying the money to these stations where they can defend it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you're just taking out the money you need to get from one pilgrim spot to another.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now the bandits and robbers are not even bothering with you because they know you don't have any money.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're getting your money safely to Jerusalem to donate it and pay it back.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're safer and you still get to feed and eat.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just you dumped it all in the first spot.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I simpler if you fail to make it all the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: are now getting access to all your money early, so they get to keep the money of course, but also they are doing their job of keeping new safe.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the first system of credits like this in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was an invention.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again,
[SPEAKER_01]: modern banking and the entire world of like credit all of those things that we use in the financial world would not exist if someone hadn't thought of this idea and who thought of it was the night's Templar if I put money here but I go over there I will have a piece of paper or something that allows me to take money out
[SPEAKER_01]: later on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, it seems like such a basic idea, but it was so radical.
[SPEAKER_01]: No one was doing this before them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this allowed them to become so powerful because they just had so much money.
[SPEAKER_01]: And because they didn't have all their money in one location, they didn't have it all in Jerusalem, they had it scattered in all their different houses that people were dropping money off and picking up so they could use it as a traveled.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, not only were you a super powerful organization with a lot of money, now you're a super powerful organization with a lot of money spread out all across Europe in the Middle East.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have it on a mobile location where it can all be robbed from you at once.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have it in bunches of locations where you can access it as you need it.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you were trying to create an organization that could be both very militarily, militarily,
[SPEAKER_01]: powerful and financially overwhelmingly powerful in the medieval age, you couldn't have even dreamed up an organization like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: It happened by accident and yet can you see how that would be, I mean, an amazing, powerful group.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now as they get going, and again, this isn't even including the fact that people are just donating money to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lots of kings and people are just giving them money as well because they see the nice Templar as doing a good work.
[SPEAKER_01]: He'll go a little die, somewhere between the years, eleven, thirty-six and eleven, thirty-nine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of the sources said thirty-six, but a few said thirty-nine.
[SPEAKER_01]: As he died, he was able to kind of successfully transition the power from him to the next grandmaster with no problems, which will set up a policy of basically the grandmasters will continue what we have started here.
[SPEAKER_01]: The organization was becoming both militarily and financially extremely successful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And at one point,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it looked like it was going to dissolve in the very early days.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just only had nine guys running around doing stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now it is a force to be reckoned with that is both militarily helpful in crusades and financially doing the work that no one else can do and protecting pilgrims getting to Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_01]: However,
[SPEAKER_01]: And not all will go perfectly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And a few years later, another Christian little city will be kind of conquered by the Turks, the city of Edissa.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this will make Christian Europe realize, hey, those Crusader states that we put over there, they could very easily fall back into the hands of Muslims.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is like the first Christian one to actually get conquered.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so Jerusalem starts like sending out a trumpet like, hey, we need aid.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna fall again.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're not careful, we don't wanna become Muslim again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the Pope will be a monk that used to work under Clarevo.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he will reach out to his old spiritual father, the guy who helped set up the nice Timbler Bernard.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he'll say, hey, Bernard of Clarevo, we need some help.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you rally the people to have another true crusade to protect Jerusalem?
[SPEAKER_01]: Bernard of Clarevo at this point in Old Man through all his weight popularity is influenced and to bring the second crusade together.
[SPEAKER_01]: He gave the Pope was giving out indulgences if you die or go in straight to heaven anything you've done before will be forgiven.
[SPEAKER_01]: Same rules is the first one and Bernard's going to go out and preach up and rally Europe to get back into the crusades.
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of the siege of Damascus, the Crusades weren't really cool anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Bernard is going to get them going again in a way.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's not many people.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not many times you can point at a preacher at one preacher, one sermon that completely changes history.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think maybe you could a couple of the preachers from like the great awakening
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, Peter the Hermit from the first crusade would kind of clarify it would be one of these guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is maybe one you would look at and go like, I don't know like he changed history, but maybe not for the best, but this one sermon is going to change history, whether you think it's good or not, whether you even think it's a sermon or just a speech, he called it a sermon.
[SPEAKER_01]: On Apollo Sunday in eleven forty six the king of France and attendance with his royal robes he had to make it a break-it-moment to rally Europe Bernard of Clare voted he was sitting there the king of France roll-robes all these noble men are there thousands several thousands of people watch as Bernard Clare of Oak gets up on a hill and he begins to speak to them
[SPEAKER_01]: And he reads the message from the Pope how we need a second crusade to get your Jerusalem safe.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he gives us speech that for better or worse will change the lives of everyone there and will change the lives of Europe forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's how it sounds and again it's just one of those things and like I can see how this would rally you or can see how this would get you going.
[SPEAKER_01]: The demon of heresy has taken possession of the chair of truth and God has sent forth his speech to his call upon for his sanctuary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh you who will listen, hurry to appease the anger of heaven.
[SPEAKER_01]: No longer ask him if he is good with your complaints.
[SPEAKER_01]: Clothe yourselves no longer in sackcloth, but cover yourselves in the impenetrable shields.
[SPEAKER_01]: Put on the din of arms.
[SPEAKER_01]: The danger is the laborers and fatigues of war.
[SPEAKER_01]: That will be your penance to God he has now imposed on you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hurry then to in your sins by the victories over the infidels and let the deliverance of the holy places be the reward of your repentance.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're announced to you that the enemy had invaded your own cities and your own castles and your own lands and we're revishing your own wives and your own daughters and we're hurting your own local churches who among you would not fly to fight and fight back.
[SPEAKER_01]: While then as these calamities and greater still fall upon your brother and on the family of Jesus Christ,
[SPEAKER_01]: which is war, war is why do you hesitate to repair against these evils, to revenge these outrageous?
[SPEAKER_01]: Will you allow the infidels to contemplate and peace the ravages they commit against the Christian people?
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember their triumph will be a subject for grief to all ages and in eternal condemnation upon the generation that let them do it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, the living God has charged me to announce to you that He will punish them, who shall not have defended against His enemies.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fly them to arms, let a holy anger animate you in the fight, and let the Christian world resound with the words of the prophets, curse it be He who does not stain His sword with blood.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Lord calls you to His defense of His heritage, do not think that He will not give you the power to do it, could He not send twelve legions of angels and breathe one word in His enemies would crumble in the dust?
[SPEAKER_01]: But God has considered the sons of men to open for them the road to his mercy.
[SPEAKER_01]: His goodness has caused a dawn for you a day of safety by calling on you to avenge his glory in his name.
[SPEAKER_01]: Christian warriors he who gave his life for you today demands yours and return.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are combat worthy of you, combat some which it is glorious to conquer and advantageous for you to die in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Alustrius Knights, generous defenders of the cross, remember the example of your fathers who conquered Jerusalem, and whose names are forever inscribed in heaven.
[SPEAKER_01]: Abandoned then the things that will someday perish, and gather on fading palms and conquer a kingdom that will someday have no end.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you go to France and that hill today, you'll see a cross still marks the spot where Bernard gave this speech.
[SPEAKER_01]: The king himself bowed low and went under a cloth signifying that he would join the bound to defeat them.
[SPEAKER_01]: The knights and counts and noble people all sign up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Eventually Bernard is giving out so many cloths that he runs out of cloth.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so then he tears his own robes and puts them on them and says, welcome, you know, to the crusade.
[SPEAKER_01]: He writes letters like this and has people read them in places like England and they all have the same kind of powerful, convicting message of your living life of peace while in Jerusalem the Christians are dying.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said Bernard himself said, cities and castles are now empty.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's not left one man to seven women.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everywhere there will be widows who are still living, who still have still living husband's going to the fight.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the first crusade, oh, so you can see he's saying, I've emptied out the cities for this crusade.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like this is the part of me that goes, you know, we see there are Christians all around the world suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: And many of us live in nations,
[SPEAKER_01]: that have militaries that could stop that suffering and I can see what how you could make the argument that like if I love Jesus and I love Jesus is family.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe I wouldn't send the Baptist Marines, you know, I wouldn't send the Methodist Marines and the whatever, but I could see how you could make the argument that doing nothing while Christians are dying and you have a country that could do something, how you could at least make the case that that's some kind of negligence.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I get it, I get the thinking behind it, even if I don't support it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the first crusade, right after the crusade was announced, Jews were attacked and killed and seen as infidels across Europe.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they started to happen again in Germany as Bernard was preaching to the crowns.
[SPEAKER_01]: They kind of got the same idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: An archbishop at the time was basically like
[SPEAKER_01]: Go after the Jews.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not giving enough money to the Crusade.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think I get the impression that this kind of archbishop in Germany just didn't like Jewish people.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the Pope himself and Bernard will like rush to stop this and be like, hey, no, we don't kill the Jewish people.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not what we're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going over to Jerusalem to protect the city.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not here to just kill a bunch of infidels.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so unlike the first Crusade where they do kill a bunch of Jewish people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the second Crusade, they start to, but they get it under control very, very quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: They learn their lesson.
[SPEAKER_01]: And handle things much better the second time.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there is another part of this crusade called the northern crusades where that's the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: They also go, oh, we're also just going to kind of go in northern Europe and start killing people over there too.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is like where Polish people check
[SPEAKER_01]: people, the Western Slaves are kind of in history.
[SPEAKER_01]: We recently covered an episode on Revive thoughts about the Wynnish people.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Wynnish people are going to get involved in this crusade and have a large war.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this crusade will be like determined to kill them and bring them to Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess it would not be in that order.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bring them to Christ or kill them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like
[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't get all the details, but it seemed to be that there were some human sacrifices, maybe happening during this time.
[SPEAKER_01]: One missionary to that region, the Wendish people.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was an early missionary for the tenth century.
[SPEAKER_01]: He went to see them and he would be both beheaded.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have his hands and feet cut off.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, so like they weren't a friendly people to Christianity.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it seemed that the Crusades as they were also going to the Middle East to protect Jerusalem and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: They also kind of got by-lined and sent another group up north in the Europe to start killing people there to bring them to Christ like why do why deal with just so they didn't go after the Jews, but they did go after a bunch of pagans living kind of in Northern Europe.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I read some of the weird beliefs.
[SPEAKER_01]: So these guys, I did mention some of them on a recent episode of my thoughts, but I went into much more detail here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And let me just read because they have a really weird group of beliefs.
[SPEAKER_01]: As a result, many, as is kind of the quote of their beliefs.
[SPEAKER_01]: As a result, many sacrifices were offered to placate their God Zernabog.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, a lot was also done to encourage the other God Bogu to provide, he would provide all that was good.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the other way would provide all that is that, this dualistic set of gods had preset respected their ancestors.
[SPEAKER_01]: According to an early writer, Procopius, the most important deity was originally the Thundermaker, kind of sounds like an Odin or Thor coming guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nate was peroon, and you could see his idols were made of wood with silver attached to it, and sometimes golden whiskers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another deity they served was the Vontavut.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was a foreheaded, four-necked, but two chests and two-backed creature, who carried a sword, and who had a spotless wise horse that would join him on his adventures.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oracles would obtain messages from Sevantan's horse, but they also would say that wherever he stepped would be left behind him, three rows of spears, which I'm not even sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: how a four-legged horse could lead three rows of spears behind.
[SPEAKER_01]: They would have a big harvest festival to the Vontet, which would be a ritual where you would drink a bunch of alcohol and eat a bunch of honey, but it was a very sad occasion, which was not what I would have expected for the guy with four heads and a horse running around.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another supernatural goddess, they worship the time, was a lot of the goddess of love and pleasure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Coppola, the god of fruits and earth in Calada, the god of festivals, just a god who's god of festivals.
[SPEAKER_01]: And a name still used in Christmas, they still call it Calota and Poland instead of Christmas.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another god they had was Dagsbogg, the day god, and Stri-bogg, the win god, and fairies and other spirits would have it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The woods in their world, water air as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another one, a well-known Serb Sormon writer, Alfonso Frenzel, like to talk about the Lucitean water man who lived in the rivers, and then he had the black miller, the magician who would trick you.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of legends going on with the windish people as you can see, so they're like legitimately very pagan.
[SPEAKER_01]: like there's this is not like this is like old school paganism right here and they would do all the things that pagans would do.
[SPEAKER_01]: When some of them started to become Christians there was one story of how like a windish priest worried that as people were becoming Christians apparently he went outside and like a white sheet and ran around as a ghost trying to convince people that the ghosts and fairies were real to keep them from becoming Christians but they found him in the white sheet and that did not help bring people to his idea actually kind of confirmed to them that he was making it all up.
[SPEAKER_01]: So just keep in mind that while the second crusade is sending a bunch of people down to fight in Jerusalem, there's like a second group going up north to fight all of these people for some reason as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: When, just like the second crusade, the first crusade, people kind of show up at different times.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the second crusade also has multiple people show up at different times.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Germans show up a little bit earlier than the other group.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Germans don't do very well.
[SPEAKER_01]: They get absolutely destroyed and crushed.
[SPEAKER_01]: But not after they've rated a few Christian cities like Constantinople on the way, which should not make the people of Constantinople very happy.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the Turks absolutely crush the Germans, and by the time like the battles are done, four out of five Germans end up dead, and that's not very good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another group, the French, get there, they're much more organized, they're doing much better, but the Byzantines are super mad at them because of all the Germans did, and it was actually the Knights Templar Grandmaster that basically gets the Byzantines to lay off, he uses his persuasion skill to get the French through and okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, when the French eventually catch up with the Germans, they had to pass through a very large valley in Mountain Pass.
[SPEAKER_01]: They end up getting split up from one another in a Turkish army that has secretly been following them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bam, attacks them when they're split up, crushes them in a bunch of ways, and it looked like the whole crusade was about to collapse.
[SPEAKER_01]: When, who would save the day?
[SPEAKER_01]: But the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Knights Templar are kind of much more organized.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're able to fight off the Turks.
[SPEAKER_01]: At one point the King of France will be unhorsted and will be like surrounded by Turkish soldiers, but the Knights Templar get in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: They save the King.
[SPEAKER_01]: they get everything together and they are like the true heroes of this crusade was so far like they've done everything they get the lines back up they kind of tell the kings like okay we're done letting you guys run the show you don't know what you're doing we're gonna march in this order from now on you're gonna go where we tell you because where we know to go is where it's safe your the luggage has to be at this part of the army because you're you're you're doing it all wrong
[SPEAKER_01]: And they tried it the nice time of our even try to tell them like here's when you eat your food and when you don't how it supplies you do like really basic army stuff these guys do not seem to know what they're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, they don't really listen to them in the the crusaders at very quickly eat through all their food they expected to get some food from the land but the Turks are doing the scorch or tactic and they just destroy all the supplies behind them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the Crusaders really have nothing while the Knights still have all their supplies and they're doing fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Crusaders will end up eating their own horses while the Templar Knights are pretty well successful.
[SPEAKER_01]: The only reason the Turks did not completely destroy this army all at once was because the Knights Templar were doing everything correctly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the second crusaders get to a port city run by the Byzantines and the King, the Queen and the Nobleman, just give up and sail to Antioch without their army.
[SPEAKER_01]: The soldiers left behind, and the Katdites Templar will join the King and Queen and Nobleman, and the army they leave behind, ends up getting killed, sold in slavery, or dies of plague.
[SPEAKER_01]: So not great.
[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, the King of France is completely out of money and needing help.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he needs someone to go to and it just so happens to be that the Knights Templar is very, very successful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they give him a loan worth half of the revenue of all the France at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And just that alone tells you in the year eleven forty nine within thirty years of the night's temple are being founded they can give the king of France alone worth half of the revenue of the entire country of France at that time and that's not going to break the bank or anything if that doesn't tell you that these guys are very powerful and like nothing will like you give a loan like that to a king expecting you'll get paid back sure but it's not going to
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a pinch in a penny kind of issue for them to do that now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's unknown why, but the rest of this crusade decides we're going to attack Damascus again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Damascus at this point, the Sultan of Damascus is actually a friend of Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's been helping them out against the Muslims.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's Muslim, but like he's not trying to conquer Jerusalem, but that no matter we're going after Damascus, they try to take Damascus, they fail.
[SPEAKER_01]: terribly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when the Turks see how bad they're losing, they like charge on them, wipe out the army.
[SPEAKER_01]: The French are mad at the Germans.
[SPEAKER_01]: They say the Germans mess this crusade up.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Germans are mad at the French.
[SPEAKER_01]: They say the French mess is crusade up.
[SPEAKER_01]: The German and French both think the Byzantines betrayed them.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Byzantines are mad because these guys ruined a good chance to actually do some good in the Middle East by wasting their army stupidly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's mad at everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Except for, the French are not met at the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: The French love the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: They think the Knights Templar did super good, and their reputation is great, and even more people are joining them and giving them money.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are like, everything in that crusade was terrible, but the one group we like is the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not the case with the Germans.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Germans thought the nice Templar were too French.
[SPEAKER_01]: They thought maybe that the Knights Templar secretly betrayed them for money.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no evidence to happen at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they didn't like how powerful the Knights Templar were.
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't like that the Knights Templar just gave the King of France a giant loan when they needed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They just didn't like the way they were.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, the Knights Templar
[SPEAKER_01]: Just never take off in Germany, and in a couple decades, Germany will found their own version of the Knights Templar.
[SPEAKER_01]: A German one called the Tutonic Knights.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, I mentioned earlier that Tutonic Knights will be very influential in the downfall of the Knights Templar later on.
[SPEAKER_01]: sewing the seeds of problems here.
[SPEAKER_01]: The second crusade is over and the Christians of Europe learn that at least sometimes God is not on their side against the Turks in the Holy Land.
[SPEAKER_01]: All that pomp and cheer and all those promises from Bernard of Clarevo
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't turn out to be very good.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Bernard of Clarevo lives long enough to hear about how they failed and didn't live much past that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I always wonder what he would have thought.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what was it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Did he regret it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Did he realize he was wrong?
[SPEAKER_01]: Did he think there would be another crusade to fix it?
[SPEAKER_01]: It didn't go the way it was supposed to.
[SPEAKER_01]: But money-wise, a nice Templar, we're in a very powerful position.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to read a receipt that they had.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is just one receipt that they had during this time of just like a, here's a quick inventory of one of their treasuries.
[SPEAKER_01]: Quote, five thousand golden marks paid from the papal chambers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thirteen thousand marks collected in England, conveyed by the four Templars,
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... with seventeen hundred eleven marks raised in hungry by the Hungarian hospitality years jointly worked with another five thousand marks raised in another part of England moved into the temple our treasury in Paris six thousand ounces of gold collected in Paris and on route to an office in another part of France a huge weight of coin from Spain in Portugal amounting to twenty five thousand pieces of gold and five thousand pounds of assorted silver currencies
[SPEAKER_01]: This is just one receipt where they're keeping track of some of their money that was currently in transit.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's an enormous amount of money.
[SPEAKER_01]: As they were getting started and they were also getting a lot of land and with that land came a lot of relics as we mentioned before.
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, there was a little town in Egypt near the kingdom of Jerusalem called Asglon.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it had been rated, it was Muslim and it caused problems for the kingdom of Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the king was like, hey, nice, sunflower.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why don't you have your own space, not the night temple mount that you've been living in?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you can keep that too.
[SPEAKER_01]: That can be your headquarters.
[SPEAKER_01]: But why don't you have this city over here if you can take
[SPEAKER_01]: ask along, I will give it to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they started building little castles around it to seed it and then eventually they do seed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Egyptians gave up the city quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't fight for it really at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so ask along was like help us out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody nobody does.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so as the city grew weaker, King Baldwin, the third puts together an army and the Knights Templar are going to be working alongside it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to get a
[SPEAKER_01]: A little bit of insight into the night's Templar, a part of the night's Templar we haven't seen, we've seen that they're wealthy, we've seen that they're doing well, but what are they like when they fight?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is kind of our first eye opening to who they were on the battlefield, and they're going to be working alongside the other group that's really important called the night's hospitalityers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now this movement, the Knights Hospitaliers grew up at the same time as the Knights Templar movement as a war force, but as a group of people, the Knights Hospitaliers have been around since Pope Gregory the Great in six o'clock.
[SPEAKER_01]: He built the hospital in Jerusalem, and in the year eight hundred Charlemagne, the Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire.
[SPEAKER_01]: sent a group like wanted to create an order around it that would run libraries and take care of it so he created the night's hospitality or that is would eventually become a group called the order of the nights of the hospital Saint John of Jerusalem the names aren't necessarily important the important part was this group
[SPEAKER_01]: was a well-known hospital pilgrims on the way to Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was a landmark that told you you kind of arrived.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were going to get taken care of.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were sick.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were hungry.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were miserable.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where you got healed along the way to the Holy Land.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the highest hospitality here had been doing this for a very long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as the Knights Templar became like a defensive force.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was protecting pilgrims, the nice hospitality, or kind of like we should do the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: First, they started hiring knights, but then they built their own military force themselves, and they basically copied the Knights Templar and became their own group.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they weren't the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: They ran hospitals, and they had a bunch of hospitals.
[SPEAKER_01]: not just in the Middle East, but also over in Italy, Italy, the Crop had given them hospitals that like Italian pilgrims used on their way out to the Holy Land, so they ran those as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as you can see, like both the Nice Hospitalia and the Nice Templar expanding across Europe, and we even even touched the part of the Nice Templar where they're in Spain and Portugal, we'll get to that later.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, as they're expanding the Knights Hospitalia, and this is not an episode on them, but I do want to just tell you their story real quick because it's crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just a few things, they would fight out in the Holy Land with the Knights Templar into the Holy Land eventually falls, and when the Holy Land falls, the Knights Templar will move over to the island of Malta, and they'll kind of chill in Malta.
[SPEAKER_01]: for a while, they kind of like, what do we do now?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, okay, what do we become when we're not protecting the Holy Land as an important question?
[SPEAKER_01]: And they basically say, we're gonna be anti-pirates.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they fight pirates off the island of Malta.
[SPEAKER_01]: Muslim world was sending pirates sailing into Europe, kidnapping, mostly women.
[SPEAKER_01]: bringing them back to these empires in the Muslim world and you know, using them as slaves.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the island of Malta will be the base where the night's hospitality year will fight them back and basically try to stop that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That'll be their new mission for a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: They'll end up getting colonies around the world, including they'll be the smallest ever colonial landholder in the new world because they'll have four baby little islands in the Caribbean for just like a couple years.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're all over the place.
[SPEAKER_01]: Eventually, the Protestant Reformation happens and splits the Knights Hospitalier into three different groups.
[SPEAKER_01]: Three of them will be Protestant, one of them in the Netherlands, Sweden and Germany.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's weird because even though the Protestant Reformation happens, all five of these groups of the Knights Hospitalier stay friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't split up.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're still Knights Hospitaliers.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're just different groups of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: At one point, they'll help in the Islam in Spain and Portugal and help Aragon and Catalonia and Spain and Portugal become reconquered in the Reconquista.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the sixteen hundred, they'll police the Mediterranean barbery pirates, which if you didn't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: First ever war America has once America is a country is overseas fighting the barbarian pirates because these Muslims pirates were kidnapping American soldiers and so like Thomas Jefferson sends American ships and stuff or is actually John Adams I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: over to fight these barbaric pirates and put it into their pirating by like Chris crossing the Mediterranean and killing these guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well alongside them, the nice hospitalityers were doing the same thing as century earlier.
[SPEAKER_01]: At first it was like less protect Christians in Europe, but over time it became more like a mercenary thing for them to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if you pay us, we'll send our guys over the take care of your pirate.
[SPEAKER_01]: They become like a nation state over time.
[SPEAKER_01]: During the French Revolution, yes, in the eighteen hundreds, this land will get seized by France, and Napoleon will show up in Malta.
[SPEAKER_01]: He'll like, I'm moving my army over to this other area.
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to shoot this dock here for a moment, and the nice hospitality area will be like, you can only dock two ships at a time, and Napoleon will just basically go, nah, I want to dock them all in once, and so he'll conquer this island in Malta, and force them to take all his ships at once.
[SPEAKER_01]: He ends the night's hospitality here,
[SPEAKER_01]: In this moment pretty much, which is wild to think that a group started by Gregory the Great, knighted by Charlemagne, that fought in the Holy Land by the Knights Templar, will end up on an island in Malta, and ended by Napoleon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then it doesn't actually end, because a group of them then leave, they go off to Russia, which is Orthodox Christian, and they start a new Knights Hospitalier group there by the year eighteen-tint, ninety percent of all Knights Hospitaliers will be Russian.
[SPEAKER_01]: which is not even the same branch of Christianity.
[SPEAKER_01]: Eventually the Pope will reinstate the original night's hospitalityers and to this day they are now a humanitarian charity organization.
[SPEAKER_01]: And actually, they have recently rebuilt hospitals in Jerusalem and are officially retaking care of patients and orphans again in Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're back doing what they did way back in Pope Gregory the Great State, but they are not knights anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: So all the fighting stuff is over.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not Russian.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not under Napoleon's care.
[SPEAKER_01]: but it's kind of weird, weird story about this, just one of the four orders when it did all that kind of crazy stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the weirdest part is Napoleon doesn't just in the Night's Hospital year.
[SPEAKER_01]: He actually ends another one of these four groups as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So just keep that in mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna run in a, again, a group finding in the Middle East and the Crusades in the eleven hundreds as going to be ended, not once, but two different groups are gonna be ended by Napoleon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Weird stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, so as you can see, these groups got around.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've got into a lot of different stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: The back-to-ask lawn.
[SPEAKER_01]: The nice hospitalityers are here fighting with the Knights Templar, taking over Ask lawn.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as they do, they build siege showers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything's going great.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then something happens.
[SPEAKER_01]: As they're approaching one of the walls, the Knights Templar break into this part first, and instead of waiting and gathering all the soldiers to break in at once, supposedly the story goes that the Knights Templar broke in for themselves and then wouldn't let the other soldiers in while they gathered the treasure for themselves to not share it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Asglon had time then to reinforce the walls and defeat the Knights Templar and the Grandmaster who broke in, and they died.
[SPEAKER_01]: The fortier so nice Templar who'd broken and died, the Grandmaster died, and because they didn't let anyone else in, the walls were rebuilt, and Asglon took a couple more days to be conquered.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: If that's true, the guy who wrote this story was William of Tyre, and it's not a lot of evidence that this actually happened, but this begins the rumor.
[SPEAKER_01]: This begins the idea, basically.
[SPEAKER_01]: This kind of out there thinking that maybe the Knights Templar aren't all good guys after all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe
[SPEAKER_01]: More than just being a super nice guy who's four hosts of poverty to fight in the holy land.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe these guys who have enormous amounts of money and just are sitting on top of mountains of treasure are actually greedy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the reason that they're doing what they're doing is because they like.
[SPEAKER_01]: having money.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this again, the guy who wrote this wasn't even there, but the rumors starts to spread.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've seen the Germans have kind of already said this themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now we have it going into the books.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe this battle would have been one quicker and people wouldn't have died.
[SPEAKER_01]: if they weren't fighting for the money.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I don't think that's true, by the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think what actually happened was, you know, the nice Templar jumped in there and fought and they were trying to get other people in, but nobody came in.
[SPEAKER_01]: They got killed and it shows how much the nice Templar were actually at the front edge of every battle, like the very tip of the battle has them at the tip of it because these dudes are suicidal and they're willing this to fight.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when we come back to part two, you will prove to you without a shadow of doubt.
[SPEAKER_01]: These guys are very much willing
[SPEAKER_01]: to die in battle and they do over and over and over again.
[SPEAKER_01]: But also this rumor and this idea that the idea that maybe the Knights Templar aren't always the good guys and the reason they have so much money is because they're greedy.
[SPEAKER_01]: is going to be sadly, whether it's true or not, they're undoing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we will cover that in the future.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is how they got started.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is how powerful they've become.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as we look at the next part, you will see them reach like the highest heights of power and strength.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you will also see their very ungloryous, very wretched crashing down.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in a lot of it has to do with this rumor and idea that all started in these very early days that they are doing it for the money, not for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how much time has passed here?
[SPEAKER_00]: How far into the ninth Templar tenure are we?
[SPEAKER_00]: We are fifty years into their story.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've only moved.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So are any of our founders still there?
[SPEAKER_00]: They have all died out by this one.
[SPEAKER_01]: The founders are gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those early guys have moved on.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've moved a couple grandmasters in.
[SPEAKER_01]: But to be honest, the spirit of it is still very much those early days.
[SPEAKER_01]: We will see a guy
[SPEAKER_01]: who's going to change a lot of what the nice Templar is he's coming up and he I think is kind of like if there's one guy who you can hinge is like if this guy hadn't lived I think the nice Templar would have turned very different he's coming up in our story and he is a guy who will change really change the vision of it a lot of ways it still stays a lot the same but this is
[SPEAKER_01]: There aren't that many people in the story who in on the Knights Templar side that you can point to and say, you kind of changed everything, but there is one guy I think that you can.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so and roughly how many people are part of the Knights Templar at this at this time.
[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, they're probably on the battlefields of the Middle East, six hundred to a thousand Knights across Europe running all their houses, thousands more.
[SPEAKER_01]: So most of the people are not actually involved in the day-to-day fighting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, ninety percent of people in the night's Templar are like running the houses, counting the money, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're the side people working it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the ten percent that are actually doing the soldier stuff is probably more like a thousand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fascinating.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is intriguing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do say.
[SPEAKER_00]: I enjoy it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm looking forward to part two.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm looking forward to recording part two.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not gonna lie that I think I'm gonna need to rest my voice for a bit because that was a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a long one.
[SPEAKER_01]: It does, it does wear on you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do hope, though, that you are feeling now very confident.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you're at that next party, the one that you told the stories of the typing rebellion, the one in fire, six or six, and the Ethiopian kingdom, and the Salem is trapped in the Joan of Arc, and the the first crusade.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now you're like guys, sequel, I've got part two, and you will, you will wow them with your knowledge of how the first banking system was created.
[SPEAKER_01]: And of poor wandering European pilgrims getting saved by their monks, and I think they will be interested, that's sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, so we wrap up this edition of, uh, Revive Thought's Deep Dives, and set it up for Revive Thought's Deep Two coming up soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, this is Troy and Joel, and this is Revive Thought's Deep Dives.