Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici

First Grand Master

Hugues de Payens


Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici


After the First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099, many Christian pilgrims travelled to visit what they referred to as the Holy Places. However, though the city of Jerusalem was under relatively secure control, the rest of the Outremer was not. Bandits abounded, and pilgrims were routinely slaughtered, sometimes by the hundreds, as they attempted to make the journey from the coastline at Jaffa into the Holy Land.[9]

Chroniclers write that the French knight Hugues de Payens approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem with eight knights, two of whom were brothers and all of whom were his relatives by either blood or marriage, in order to form the first of the Knights Templar. The other knights were Godfrey de Saint-Omer, Payen de Montdidier, Archambaud de St. Agnan, Andre de Montbard, Geoffrey Bison, and two men recorded only by the names of Rossal and Gondamer. The ninth knight remains unknown, although some have speculated that it was Count Hugh of Champagne himself—despite the Count returning to France in 1116 and documentary evidence showing that he joined the Knights on his third visit to the Holy Land in 1125. They proposed the creation of a monastic order for the protection of these pilgrims.[10] King Baldwin II of Jerusalem agreed to their request, and in 1118 gave them space for a headquarters in a wing of the royal palace on the Temple Mount, in the captured Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Temple Mount had a mystique, because it was above, what was believed to be, the ruins of the Temple of Solomon.[5][11] The Crusaders therefore referred to the Al Aqsa Mosque as Solomon's Temple, and it was from this location that the Order took the name of Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, or "Templar" knights. The Order, with about nine knights, had few financial resources and relied on donations to survive. Their emblem was of two knights riding on a single horse, emphasizing the Order's poverty.