Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [36]
“Why?”
“The Templars became too powerful too fast. It all goes back to Saint Bernard. You’re familiar with Saint Bernard, of course. A great organizer. He reformed the Benedictine order and eliminated decorations from churches. If a colleague got on his nerves, as Abelard did, he attacked him McCarthy-style and tried to get him burned at the stake. If he couldn’t manage that, he’d burn the offender’s books instead. And of course he preached the Crusade: Let us take up arms and you go forth...”
“You don’t care for him,” Belbo remarked.
“If I had my way, Saint Bernard would end up in one of the nastier circles of the inferno. Saint, hell! But he was good at self-promotion. Look how Dante treats him: making him the Madonna’s right-hand man. He got to be a saint because he buttered up all the right people. But to get back to the Templars. Bernard realized right away that this idea had possibilities. He supported the nine original adventurers, transformed them into a Militia of Christ. You could even say that the heroic view of the Templars was his invention. In 1128 he held a council in Troyes for the express purpose of defining the role of those new soldier-monks, and a few years later he wrote an elogium on them and drew up their rule, seventy-two articles. The articles are fun to read; there’s a little of everything in them. Daily Mass, no contact with excommunicated knights, though if one of them applies for admission to the Temple, he must be received in a Christian spirit. You see what I mean about the Foreign Legion. They’re supposed to wear simple white cloaks, no furs, at most a lambskin or a ram’s pelt. They’re forbidden to wear the curved shoes so fashionable at the time, and must sleep in their underwear, with one pallet, one sheet, and one blanket...”
“With the heat there, I can imagine the stink,” Belbo said.
“We’ll come to the stink in a minute. There were other tough measures in the rule: one bowl for each two men; eat in silence; meat three times a week; penance on Fridays; up at dawn every day. If the work has been especially heavy, they can sleep an extra hour, but in return they must recite thirteen Paters in bed. There is a master and a whole series of lower ranks, down to sergeants, squires, attendants, and servants. Every knight will have three horses and one squire, no decorations are allowed on bridles, saddles, or spurs. Simple but well-made weapons. Hunting forbidden, except for lions. In short, a life of penance and battle. And don’t forget chastity. The rule is particularly insistent about that. Remember, these are men who are not living in a monastery. They’re fighting a war, living in the world, if you can use that word for the rat’s nest the Holy Land must have been in those days. The rule says in no uncertain terms that a woman’s company is perilous and that the men are allowed to kiss only their mothers, sisters, and aunts.”
“Aunts, eh?” Belbo grumbled. “I’d have been more careful there...But if memory serves, weren’t the Templars accused of sodomy? There’s that book by Klossowski, The Baphomet. Baphomet was one of their satanic divinities, wasn’t he?”
“I’ll get to that, too. But think about it for a moment. You live for months and months in the desert, out in the middle of nowhere, and at night you share a tent with the guy who’s been eating out of the same bowl as you. You’re tired and cold and thirsty and afraid. You want your mama. So what do you do?”
“Manly love, the Theban legion,” Belbo suggested.
“The other soldiers haven’t taken the Templar vow. When a city is sacked, they get to rape the dusky Moorish maids with amber bellies and velvet eyes. And what is the Templar supposed to do amid the scent of the cedars of Lebanon? You can see why there was the popular saying: ‘To drink and blaspheme