Hugues de Payens (c. 1070 – 1136)
Remarkably little is known about Hugues de Payens, and for this reason alone it’s controversial to count him as one of history’s greatest knights. But it is less for his life than his legacy that Hugues de Payens is best remembered: for along with his close friend Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugues co-founded, and was the First Grand Master of, the Order of the Knights Templar in 1128.
Regarding his early life, we know only that he came from either the Champagne or Burgundy regions of France and that after Pope Urban II’s incendiary speech that launched the First Crusade in 1095, he joined other European nobles on the journey to the Holy Land. We don’t know whether he was in one of the splinter groups that launched vicious pogroms against the Jews in the Rhineland in 1096, or whether he traveled directly to the Holy Land via Byzantium. We do know, however, that he was there for the fall of Jerusalem in 1099 and that he stuck around in the aftermath.
Hugues’s Order of the Templars were essentially seen as militia christi: Christ’s militia. They are the first historical example of doctrinally driven military Christianity. And it is the religiously sanctioned element that explains much of their appeal, for the idea of fighting against those branded enemies by the church provided an outlet for the excess military energies of the European knightly class who for years had been told that shedding Christian blood would send them to hell.
Hugues de Payens probably died in Palestine in 1136. We don’t know the cause of death, but the Templars would commemorate him on the 24th of every month on the assumption that he died of old age. His Order went on to have a long and turbulent history. Abandoning its absolute dedication to piety and poverty, it became an order of bankers—the first and foremost financial powerhouse in the Holy Land— with a vast network of monasteries stretching all across Europe.
It was common practice for banks to lend money to kings. Where the Templars made the mistake was lending money to a king who couldn’t repay his loan. Drowning in debt, the French King Philip IV conspired to have the Templars crushed, and on the fateful night of Friday 13th, 1307 he had them arrested, interrogated and, ultimately, sentenced. This marked the end of the Order, with many members burned at the stake including their leader, Jacques de Molay (from which we get the word “immolation”).