The Templars, by Piers Paul Read

Having nothing better to do while in the hospital (really, daytime TV is a wasteland), I read all of Piers Paul Read’s “The Templars”.

It’s a solid popular history of the Order of the Temple, the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ. Of course, the Templars were founded after the First Crusade in 1129 AD (or thereabouts), and Read starts his book with Herod the Great’s reconstruction of the Second Temple around 19 BC, and then covers Christianity, Islam, Rome, Byzantium, the Arabs, the Turks, and every power or creed to touch Jerusalem since, which some reviewers complained about.  But that’s all right – one cannot understand the Templars without first understanding the significance of Temple Mount, where Solomon’s Temple once stood and the Dome of the Rock now stands.

I especially liked his sections dealing with the interpretations of the Templars. Every age writes history through the lenses of its own particular obsession, which means that most recent writing describes the Templars as 1.) bloodthirsty, avaricious religious bigots, and 2.) homosexual. Read does a good job of exploding both those myths, and the various other Dan Brown-esque legends that have sprung up around the Templars. The Crusades, of course, are today roundly condemned as imperialistic and racist wars, but Read makes an excellent case that the nobles and clergy of Western Europe viewed them as perfectly justifiable defensive wars.

A solid popular history of the Templars, and the Crusading centuries in general, though it doesn’t go into heavy detail on any one subject.

-JM