![]() Wars against Muslims were seen as righteous wars in which God fought on the Christian side and the promise of heaven for those soldiers who gave their lives to the cause was a powerful incentive. ![]() Replacing a policy of merely exploiting Muslim neighbours in Spain a programme of ‘reconquest’ was given a sharper edge by the notion of a crusade. The agents of change were the incoming French adventurers who were establishing themselves in Spain in the period 1080 – 1140 and the activity of Berber devotees of an Islamic fundamentalist sect, the Almoravides, who overran Muslim Spain (1090 -1120), all of which created greater urgency for a Christian army to act. It seems impulses were generated outside the Iberian peninsula. The restraint which had marked them was gradually replaced by more aggressive attitudes on both sides of the religious divide. The fundamental shift in the Templars deciding to set out on the Reconquista was due to the changing character of relations between Christian and Muslim. Their dearest desire was to lay down their lives on the battlefield in the war against evil, defending Christendom against its enemies, in the service of their divine king and queen, and so to win the reward of eternal life in Heaven, wearing the martyr’s crown. They were loyal to their families, to their old lords and their king, even when they had joined the Order of the Temple and were supposed to have left all their old ties behind.Īllegedly celibate, although that notion in reality is debatable the Templars were known to be devout soldiers embracing a simple faith based on Christ as king and Christ’s mother and bride, the Blessed Virgin Mary, as patroness and lady of the Order, who protected it as a medieval queen would protect her favourite religious Orders and knights. People of these social groups left very few records, but through the surviving evidence from the Templars we can catch some glimpses of their beliefs, what mattered to them, and their everyday lives. Most of the Brothers of the Order of the Temple came either from the lower ranks of knights or were not of knightly descent at all many were craftsmen, or people who performed ordinary agricultural tasks such as herding sheep and cattle. Far from being straight forward the bloody history of Spain and its early presence of Muslim kingdoms demonstrates a turbulent power game between Christian rulers and Muslims where a level of tolerance existed usually because of the exchange of money maintaining the status quo. As in the Holy Land, Christian rulers in Spain would also ally with Muslim rulers against other Christians. The situation was similar to that in the Holy Land in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries where the Latin Christian lords allied with Muslim lords for mutual advantage. After having fostered the threat of civil war the Christians intimidated Muslim rulers charging them a form of protection money called parias, in the exchange for their alliance and loyalty, and in return for not attacking them. The Christian rulers in northern Spain and the Muslims tolerated each other in a political-financial arrangement in a form of co-existence after the northern kingdoms took advantage of Muslim principalities ( taifas) that had become fragmented and weakened.
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