Freemasonry was officially established
and recognized in England in the 18th century but actually, the roots
of the organization reach back to the Crusades in the 12th century.
At the focal point of this old story is an order of crusaders called
the Knights of the Temple or the Templars, for short.
No matter how much many people may believe that the Crusades were
a product of Christian faith, they were basically wars undertaken
for material gain. In a period when Europe was experiencing great
poverty and misery, the comfort and wealth of the East, especially
of the Muslim Middle East, attracted Europeans. This motivation took
on a religious appearance decorated with the symbols of Christianity
but actually the idea of the Crusades was born out of a desire for
worldly gain. This was the reason for the sudden change among Christians
from their former pacifist policies in earlier periods of their history
to a tendency towards military aggression.
The initiator of the Crusades was Pope Urban II. He summoned the Council
of Clermont in 1095 in which the former Christian doctrine of pacifism
was changed. A holy war was announced that was to wrest the holy lands
from the hands of the Muslims. Afterwards, a huge army of Crusaders
was formed composed both of professional soldiers and tens of thousands
of ordinary people.
Historians
think that this venture of Urban II was prompted by his desire to eclipse
the candidacy of a rival for the papacy. European kings, princes, aristocrats
and others greeted the Pope's call with excitement but their intentions
were basically worldly. "The French knights wanted more land. Italian
merchants hoped to expand trade in Middle Eastern ports... Large numbers
of poor people joined the expeditions simply to escape the hardships
of their normal lives."1 Along
the way, this greedy mass killed many Muslims and even Jews just hoping
to find gold and jewels. The crusaders even cut open the stomachs of
those they had killed to find gold and precious stones that the victims
may have swallowed before they died. The material greed of the crusaders
was so great that they did not hesitate to sack the Christian city of
Constantinople (Istanbul) in the 6th Crusade during which they stripped
off the gold leaf from the Christian frescoes in Hagia Sophia.
So, this band called Crusaders reached Jerusalem in 1099 after burning
and looting many places and putting many Muslims to the sword. After
a long siege of five weeks, the city fell and the Crusaders entered.
As one historian put it, "They killed all the Saracens and the
Turks they found... whether male of female.2One of the Crusaders, Raymund of Aguiles, wrote these words in
praise of this savagery:
Wonderful sights
were to be seen. Some of our men (and this was more merciful) cut
off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that
they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting
them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen
in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one's way over
the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared
to what happened at the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious
services are normally chanted ... in the Temple and porch of Solomon,
men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins.3
The Crusaders reached Jerusalem in 1099 after burning and looting
many places and putting many Muslims to the sword.
According to the same historical source,
the number of Muslims pitilessly slaughtered was 40,000.4
The crusaders made Jerusalem their capital and founded a Latin Kingdom
stretching from the borders of Palestine to Antioch.
Later, the crusaders began a struggle to hold their position in the Middle
East. In order to sustain the state they had founded, they had to organize
it. To do this, they established military orders, which had never existed
before. Members of these orders came from Europe to Palestine and lived
in a kind of monastery where they received military training to fight
against Muslims.
One of these orders was different from the others. It underwent a change
that would influence the course of history. This order was the Templars.
From the Templars
to Freemasonry
The Templars, or, their full name, The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ
and the Temple of Solomon, was formed in 1118, that is 20 years after
the crusaders took Jerusalem. The founders of the order were two Frenchmen,
Hugh de Payens and Godfrey de St. Omer. At first there were 9 members
but the order steadily grew. The reason that they called themselves
after the temple of Solomon was that the place they chose as a base
was the temple mount where this ruined temple had been located. At the
same time, this place was where the Al-Aqsa Mosque stood.
The Templars had called themselves "poor soldiers",
but within a short time they became wealthy. Christian pilgrims coming
from Europe to Palestine were completely under the control of this order
which became very rich on the money collected from the pilgrims. In
addition, for the first time they set up a cheque-bond system similar
to that of a bank. According to the BBC commentators, Michael Baigent
and Richard Leigh, they established a kind of Medieval capitalism and
led the way to modern banking by their management of interest.5
The Templars were the ones mainly responsible for the crusaders' attacks
against and murder of Muslims. For this reason, the great Islamic commander
Saladin, who defeated the crusaders' army in 1187 in the Battle of Hattin
and afterwards rescued Jerusalem, put the Templars to death for the
murders they had committed even though he had pardoned a large number
of Christians. Although they lost Jerusalem and suffered heavy losses,
the Templars continued to exist. And despite the continual diminution
of the Christian presence in Palestine, they increased their power in
Europe and, first in France, and then on other countries, they became
a state within a state.
There is no doubt that this political power made European monarchs uncomfortable.
But there was another aspect of the Templars that also made the clergy
uneasy: the order had gradually broken its ties with Christian faith
and while in Jerusalem, they adopted a number of strange mystical doctrines.
There were also rumors that they were organizing strange rites to express
these doctrines.
Finally, in 1307, the French king Philip the Fair and
Pope Clement V jointly decided to arrest the members of the order. Some
of them managed to escape but most of them were caught. Afterwards,
a long period of interrogation and trial began and many of them admitted
that they were actually heretical, that they had rejected the Christian
faith and insulted Jesus in their masses. Finally, the leaders of the
Templars who were called "grand masters", beginning with the
most important of them, Jacques de Molay, were executed in 1314 by the
order of the Church and the King. The majority of them were put into
prison, the order dispersed and officially disappeared. But although
the order "officially" ceased to exist, it did not mean that
it had actually disappeared. During the main arrest in 1307, some Templars
escaped and managed to cover their tracks. According to a thesis based
on various historical documentation, a significant number of these escaped
Templars took refuge in the single kingdom in Europe that did not recognize
the authority of the Catholic Church in the 14th century-Scotland. There
they reorganized under the protection of the Scottish king, Robert the
Bruce. A while later, they found a good method of camouflage to allow
them to continue their existence: they infiltrated the oldest guild
in the medieval British Isles-the wall builders' lodge.6
The wall builders' lodge changed its name at the beginning of the modern
era and called itself the "Masonic lodge". (The dictionary
defines the term "mason" as a master wall builder.) The Scottish
Rite is the oldest branch of Masonry and goes back to the beginning
of the 14th century to those Templars who took refuge in Scotland. And
the names given to the highest degrees in Scottish Rite are titles that
were given to knights in the order of Templars centuries earlier. It
is still the same today.
In short, the Templars did not disappear and their philosophy, beliefs
and rituals still continue under the roof of Freemasonry. This thesis
has many historical proofs and is accepted today by a large number of
Western historians whether they are Freemasons or not.
The thesis that the roots of Freemasonry go back to the Templars is
often pointed out in magazines published by Turkish Masonry for its
own members. On this topic the Freemasons are very open. One of these
magazines is called Mimar Sinan which describes the relationship between
the Order of Templars and Masonry in these words:
In 1312, when the
French king, under pressure from the Church, closed the Order of Templars
and gave their possessions to the Knights of St. John, the activities
of the Templars ceased. The great majority of the Templars took refuge
in Masonic lodges that were operating in Europe at that time…
Scottish Masons, who inherited the Templars' heritage, gave it back
to France many years later and established there the basis of the
rite known as the Scottish Rite.7
Again, the Mimar Sinan
magazine gives much information about the relationship between the
Templars and Freemasonry. In an article entitled "Templars and
Freemasons", it says that "the rituals for the initiation
ceremony of the Order of Templars are similar to those of present-day
Masonry."8 According to the
same article, "just as in Masonry, the members of the Order of
Templars called each other 'brother'."9
Towards the end of the article we read,
The Order of Templars and the Masonic organization
have influenced each other to a noticeable extent. Even the rituals
of the corporations are so similar as to have been copied from the
Templars… To summarize, as we said at the beginning of this essay,
we can say that the starting point of Masonry's royal art and initiatic-esoteric
line was the Templars and its end point is Freemasonry.10
The Impact of the Crusade Philosophy
to Our Day
It
is clear that the roots of Masonry stretch back to the Order of Templars
and the Masons have adopted the philosophy of this order, which was
established by the Crusaders. While considering the impact of Crusaders
to our day, we need to remember this point and the far-reaching influences
of Masonry on the world. The aims of Masonry are explained by one of
the most well-known Turkish Freemasons Selami Isindag in his book Masonluktan
Esinlenmeler (Masonic Inspirations):
According to Freemasonry,
it is necessary to rid people of a character inspired by metaphysical
divine sources, and instead establish a character based on the love
of man, which is free from relativity. In its basic ethical principles,
Masonry considers the inclinations of man, his needs, satisfactions,
the laws and order of social life, consciousness (conscience), freedom
of speech and thought and finally, the entire plan of nature, and
therefore aims to establish and develop values centered around man
in all societies.11
This is the final purpose of Masonry: to eradicate religion
and to establish a humanist and godless world where the concept of
"man" will be held sacred; where people will deny God Who
created them, and take themselves as "idols".
For this reason, it is essential to protect the society from this
disaster by shattering the godless suggestions of Masonry and thus
save the faith of people. What we have to do is tell people about
the existence of God and the values of religion by supporting them
with the facts revealed by science. When Muslims undertake this responsibility,
by the will of God, this verse will come true: "Rather
We hurl the truth against falsehood and it cuts right through it and
it vanishes clean away!" (Qur'an, 21:18)
When this is realized, the representatives of the evil will "vanish
clean away" and the 21st century will be the age of Islamic values
rather than the evil's alliance as they presume.
1 World Book Encyclopedia,
"Crusades", Contributor: Donald E. Queller, Ph.D., Prof.
of History, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, World Book Inc.,
1998
2 Geste Francorum, or the Deeds of the Franks and the Other Pilgrims
to Jerusalem, translated by Rosalind Hill, London, 1962, p. 91
3 August C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eye-Witnesses
and Participants, Princeton & London, 1921, p. 261
4 Ibid., p. 262
5 Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, The Temple and the Lodge, London,
Corgi Books, 1990, p. 78-81.
6 For more detail about this thesis on freemasonry, please see
John J. Robinson, Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry,
New York, M. Evans & Company, 1989 7 Ender Arkun, "Masonlarin Dusunce Evrimine
Katkisina Kýsa Bir Bakis" (A Quick Look at the Intellectual
Evolution of Masons), Mimar Sinan, 1990, No. 77, p. 68
8 Teoman Biyikoglu, "Tampliyeler ve Hurmasonlar" (Templars
and Freemasons), Mimar Sinan, 1997, No. 106, p. 11
9 Ibid., p. 9
10 Ibid., p. 19
11 Dr. Selami Isindag, Sezerman Kardes IV, Masonluktan Esinlenmeler
(Masonic Inspirations), Istanbul 1977, p. 62
It
is clear that the roots of Masonry stretch back to the Order of Templars
and the Masons have adopted the philosophy of this order, which was
established by the Crusaders. While considering the impact of Crusaders
to our day, we need to remember this point and the far-reaching influences
of Masonry on the world. The aims of Masonry are explained by one of
the most well-known Turkish Freemasons Selami Isindag in his book Masonluktan
Esinlenmeler (Masonic Inspirations):
