The Knights Templar Were a Different Kind of Monk
Throughout most of the Middle Ages, from a military perspective Christian Europe was on life support. The Franks — the original Germanic tribe that had converted to orthodox Christianity instead of Arianism — slowly (over centuries) cobbled together a feudal society that clawed its way to victory against the 3 most deadly enemies of Europe — the arrow-shooting and horse-riding Magyars (related to the Huns and the Turks), the Islamist Moors, and the sea-raiding Vikings. The Magyars and the Vikings ultimately converted to the faith after centuries of war. The Moors were not so easy. Their attempt to conquer Europe through Spain was turned back at the Battle of Tours in France in 732. The Christians launched a Crusade to reconquer Spain that was not successful until 1492. The Reconquista was arguably the longest successful military campaign in human history.
The Byzantine Empire was mighty — the true heir to the Roman Empire. But in 634, Islamist Arabs conquered the Holy Land and subjected the Christians and Jews there to the dhimmi second-class status proscribed by Islamist law for infidels. In 867, after weathering an Arab offensive, the Byzantine Empire went on an offensive determined to reconquer the Holy Land and free the Christians there. They began a systematic campaign like that waged in Spain to do just that with similar gradual success. However, while they fought the Byzantines, the Arab Islamists subjected the Turks and Persians to a bloody conversion process. In 1071, arrow-shooting, horse-riding Turkish Islamists rode from the East and subjected the Byzantine Army to a shattering defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. This opened the Byzantine Empire to imminent conquest by the Islamist Turks.
As Western Christianity was clawing its way from the ashes and Eastern Christianity felt secure in the might of the Empire, Eastern Christianity remained nationalist. Although Arianism was by now dead, and both churches were soundly orthodox, there was a significant territorial struggle between the Emperor (via the Patriarch of Constantinople) and the Pope. In 1054, a dispute involving jurisdiction and a theological technicality (called the filioque dispute) caused both churches to excommunicate each other (declare each other outside of their Church) and enter into the Great Schism. These excommunications were not lifted until 1965. The Catholic-Orthodox schism remains to this day.
Needless to say the Battle of Manzikert changed everyone’s perspective.
Suddenly, the once-mighty Byzantine Empire and the Orthodox Church it sheltered were on their knees just as the Christian West emerged militarily strong. Emperor Alexios I begged Pope Urban II to come to the aid of the Empire and the Orthodox Christians. Urban called the Crusades with the help of the charismatic monk St Bernard of Clairveaux.
The Turkish Islamists were at this point heading straight for the throat of the Empire. The Pope and the Emperor believed that, strategically, the Turks had to be drawn into another front in the war that would spread them out too thin and allow the Byzantines to regroup. The Holy Land was just such a target. Furthermore, the Catholics believed that they could demonstrate magnanimity to any newly-freed Orthodox Christians there. The Catholics also chose the Holy Land because it was a holy pilgrimage site. There was also some aspect of self-interest. The Catholics were under no illusion that — were the Byzantine Empire to fall — the Turks would then leave the Catholics alone.
In 1099, the First Crusade — after having completed the long overland trek through Constantinople and across the desert — made the ultimately fatal mistake of ignoring the strategically essential city of Damascus and instead directly captured Jerusalem in a terrible bloody affair typical of the warfare of that time. The Turks proved to be no match for the heavily-armored Catholic Knights. However, once Jerusalem was captured, most of the knights celebrated and went home — leaving a skeletal force to defend the Holy Land.
The Pope commissioned three military monastic orders (warrior knight-monks) to serve as the primary defenders of the Holy Land — the Knights Hospitaller (who also invented hospitals), the Knights Templar (famous for banking and valor), and the Teutonic Knights (commissioned so late they almost missed the entire Kingdom of Jerusalem altogether).
These knight-monks were extremely ascetic (the Templars only ate 3 meals a week). They were extremely committed to valor (the Templars were under oath not to leave the field of battle until every Templar flag had fallen). And they were true monks. However, their work required a great deal more sword-wielding than most monks. The military orders had as their charism protecting Christians in the Holy Land. As necessitated by Christian doctrine, they never attempted to convert Muslims by force.
Ultimately, the radically inadequate strategy the Crusaders put in place failed them. The Islamists surrounded and outnumbered the Crusaders and fought them slowly back into the sea. The Second and Third Crusades failed in their military objectives. The Third Crusade ended with Richard the Lionheart of England essentially surrendering to Saladin.
The Fourth Crusade was arguably the worst managed expedition in history. It involved Venetian merchants upset about unpaid debts, two rivals for the Emperor’s throne in Constantinople, Catholic outrage at a 22-year old Orthodox massacre of Catholics, a Crusader army capturing Constantinople in 1204, everyone involved being excommunicated by the Pope, the Crusaders ill-fated 60-year establishment of a “Latin Empire” in Constantinople, and an utter dearth of any Islamists being fought.
The Crusades undoubtedly ended with a shockingly immoral and mismanaged whimper that has provided centuries of animosity between Orthodox and Catholic Christians.
But the Crusades (both in Spain and in the Holy Land) prevented the fall of Christianity to Islamist Moors and Turks. The Turks took centuries to recover from the Crusades and did not capture Constantinople until 1453. The Moors were slowly driven out of Europe.
At that point, the monastic military orders were needed to defend Christendom.
Sometimes peaceful monks alone are just simply not enough. Sometimes history demands monks with swords and spears wearing heavy armour and riding on horseback into battle.