This Is How People Lived Inside a Knights Templar Fortress in 1250 | AI Reconstruction

[00:00:00]The year is 1,250.

[00:00:04]Along the narrow strip of Levventine coast that still answers to the crusader kings from the walls of Antioch in the north to the ramparts of Ascalon in the south. A chain of stone fortresses marks the last footholds of Latin Christendom in the Holy Land. Behind those walls lives the most disciplined military order of the age, the Knights of the Temple. This documentary reconstructs with the help of artificial intelligence and on the basis of historical studies and records of the period the daily life inside a typical Templar fortress [music] at the moment when everything hung in the balance. If you enjoy walking through the vanished world of the Middle Ages brought back into sight, subscribe to History Reconstruction and leave [music] a like so that more of the past may return. The moment matters.

[00:00:57]Only weeks earlier, the seventh crusade led by Louis the 9th of France had collapsed in Egypt.

[00:01:04]After the disastrous battle at Mansura in February of 1,250, the king himself had been taken prisoner during the retreat toward Damietta [music] and released in May only after the surrender of that port and the payment of 400,000 leas for the ransom of what remained of his army. Among the fallen in Egypt was the Grandmaster of the order, Guom Donak, who had already lost one eye in the earlier fighting and lost the second at Mansur and who died within weeks. In his place, the chapter of the order raised Reno de Vishier.

[00:01:42]Until then, preceptor of the Templar House at Sanjandac and a companion in arms of the French king. When Lewis at last landed at Acre in the middle of May of 1,250, he would remain in the east for 4 years, pouring the resources of his kingdom into the repair of the walls of Achre, Cesaria, Jaffa, and Siden. The great order of the temple stood at his side. A typical fortress of the order in this age is a fortified world within itself shaped on the model of the great strongholds that anchor the Christian coast. Along the sea south of Hifa rises the chatau Pelar at Athlete begun by the Templars in 1,218 during the fifth crusade and in siege conditions able to shelter as many as 4,000 souls. Inland above the hills of Galilee stands the Citadel of Safet rebuilt from 1,240 at enormous cost by more than a thousand laborers working each day for 2 and 1/2 years. Financed in large part by the Benedicting Bishop of Marseilles, Benedict of Alignon, and completed toward 1,243 at a sum of some 40,000 Bzants. It is said to be the largest castle in the kingdom of Jerusalem, dominating the route between Damascus and [music] Acre.

[00:03:09]Along their walls run concentric rings of masonry, deep rock cut ditches, corner towers pierced with aeroslits, sistns hollowed into the living stone, storooms, [music] stables, a chapel at the heart of the enclosure, and at Athletic harbor opening directly onto the sea.

[00:03:29]Life inside such a fortress begins [music] long before the sun. The rule of the temple drafted at the council of Troys in 1,128 with the council of Bernard of Clairvo and expanded in the following decades binds the brothers to the ancient rhythm of the divine office inherited from the rule of St. Benedict. Deep in the darkness, the bell calls to mattens sung in the choir of the chapel by the light of oil lamps. A short rest follows and then at the first hour of daylight [music] the bell rings for prime tur sounds at midm morning sexed at noon none in the middle of the afternoon vespers as the sun touches the horizon and compline before the community withdraws to sleep around this skeleton without exception no matter the weather the campaign or the exhaustion of the previous day every other duty of the house is [music] arranged the community that answers the bell is layered and highly ordered. At the top stand, [music] the Knight brothers, men who take solemn vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, wear the white mantle marked with the red cua pate, [music] granted by Pope Eugenius III and 1,147, and ride into battle as heavy cavalry with three or four horses [music] and one or two squires. Beneath them stand the sergeants at arms of lower noble or non-noble birth clad [music] in black or brown mantels marked with the same red cross forming the backbone of the fighting force garrisoning the towers maintaining the equipment and administering the estates. From 1,139 onward, chaplain brothers form a third rank, ordained priests forbidden to bear arms and consecrated to the sacraments.

[00:05:23]the mass and the pastoral care of the household. Unlike the fighting brothers, Chaplain brothers shaved their beards.

[00:05:31]Alongside them serve the Turkipoles, [music] light cavalry recruited from local Christian populations and skilled with a bow whom the order employs because the fighting brothers, by long custom, leave the bow to auxiliaries and reserve the lance, the sword, and the shield for [music] themselves. Beyond the sworn brethren circulates a wider household of squires, [music] grooms, cooks, muleers, armorers, tailor, carpenters, masons, coopers, blacksmiths, notaries, and paid servants, both Latin and [music] Syrian.

[00:06:06]In a great house of the order, the grandmaster rules from acre since the loss of Jerusalem in 1,187.

[00:06:14]He is supported by the senaw, by the marshall who has charge of war, horses and arms, by the draper who oversees clothing and linen, [music] and by the commanders of the kingdom of Jerusalem, of acre, of Tripoli, and of Antioch, [music] each with the authority of the master within his own domain. Night brothers and sergeants rise from straw pallets in long dormitories where the rule requires a lamp to burn through the night. They may wear a shirt, breaches, hose, a woolen tunic, the circoat over male, and the mantle. Nothing is owned in private, and every garment [music] is issued and returned through the office of the draper. Beards are worn full in the manner that a chronicler at about this time will call the order of the bearded brethren, and the hair on the head is conjured so [music] that it can be examined from the front and from behind.

[00:07:09]Beneath the mantle before [music] battle goes the padded gambison and over it the hall of iron male that covers chest, arms and knees. From the middle [music] of the 13th century, the male kif is worn as a separate piece rather than sewn to the harbor. A great flat helm of iron, a heavy double-edged sword of some 3 ft, a lance, a dagger, and a large almond-shaped shield of wood covered in painted leather complete the equipment.

[00:07:39]The rule requires for a knight of the order a destrier for battle [music] and a poulfry for the road. The marshall holds authority over every horse and weapon in the house. After prime the brothers gather in the chapter house.

[00:07:53]Here the affairs of the day are assigned. The injunctions of the ruler read aloud and once a week the chapter of faults is held. Any brother who has transgressed against the rule accuses himself before the community and the commander after taking counsel with the brethren [music] decides the penance.

[00:08:12]Penalties range from the temporary loss of the mantle to eating on the floor with the servants to fasting on bread and water and in graver cases to expulsion from the order. There is no private absolution for faults against the rule. Discipline is communal and the whole household bears witness. Meals are taken in silence in the refactory while a brother reads aloud from scripture [music] or from the rule. The community sits two by two and the food of one bowl is to be shared. On Sundays, in honor of the resurrection, the fighting brothers receive two servings of meat. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, in general, meat is permitted. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, [music] the meal is of vegetables, pulses, or grains eaten with bread. On Fridays, and during the long fasts of Advent and Lent, meat is set aside, and Lent and fair is shared. The staples of the table are bread of [music] wheat and barley from the orders mills, pulses, olive oil pressed from Palestinian groves, cheese, eggs, fish from the coast, and the fruits of the country, dates, figs, pomegranates, almonds, and raisins. Wine is served in measured portions, watered and sometimes flavored with anis, rosemary or spices. Sugar refined in the sugar mills of the coastal plain and exported from acre to Europe. sweetens the drinks of the sick in the infirmary.

[00:09:41]Two meals a day are the ordinary rhythm, one about the middle of the day and another in the evening. Between the hours of prayer, the fortress moves to another rhythm entirely.

[00:09:52]In the yards, sergeants and squires groom the horses of the order, clean harness, inspect saddles, and sharpen lance points. In the smithy, [music] the ring of hammer on anvil marks the making of nails, horseshoes, hinges, arrowheads, and the repair of mail. In the workshops, tailor cut and stitch circoats and mantles under the eye of the draper. Saddlers stitch leather.

[00:10:18]Carpenters shape beams for siege engines and for roofs. Coopers bind barrels for wine and oil. Masons work on the walls since the great fortresses of the coast are never fully finished. At athlet continues through the whole of the 13th century. In the scriptorum and the chancery, chaplain brothers and notaries copy charters keep the accounts of the estates and draft the letters that carry the affairs of the order from Jerusalem to Paris, from Acre to London, from Tripoli to Compostella. The infirmary, tended by brothers instructed in medicine, receives the sick and the wounded, and the rule requires that old and infirmed brothers be treated with particular care [music] and served meat more often than the rest. The wealth that sustains all this comes from a vast web of estates. Modern historians estimate that at the height of the 13th century, the order holds some 870 houses, castles, and commanderies across Latin Christsendom, from the county of Portugal to the borders of Poland, from Scotland to Sicily, and counts roughly 7,000 brothers in all ranks. Each commander in Europe is a working agricultural estate with its graanges, mills, vineyards, fish ponds, [music] forests, sheepfolds and rents, sending revenues and at the appointed time men, horses, [music] arms, wheat, wine and cloth to the east. Every year the great round ships of the order sailing from Marseilles and other Mediterranean ports and arriving at Acre Tortosa or the harbor beneath Chateau Pelaran carry these supplies across the sea together with pilgrims and reinforcements. Out of this network of estates has grown what modern historians call the protobanking role of the order. Since about the middle of the 12th century, a pilgrim who deposits a sum with the Templars of Paris or London can receive a sealed and coded letter that allows him to draw the equivalent amount less a small charge at a Templar house in Acre or Jerusalem, sparing him the peril of carrying gold on the road. Sums are kept in the fortified treasuries of the order for kings, princes, bishops, and merchants.

[00:12:37]Itemized receipts are issued and by 1,250 [music] the temple of Paris already functions as one of the principal treasuries of the crown of France. In the Latin East Templar houses lend to the barrens of Utramare to the pilgrim companies and in the year of Mansura to Louis the 9th himself whose ransom is partly advanced from Templar funds held in Acre. The role of the fortresses is never merely military or economic. They are also outposts of religion, [music] of law, and of a particular vision of Christendom. Within the chapel of the fortress at Athlete and at other Templar houses, a stone church rises on a plan common to the order. Sometimes round, sometimes polygonal in imitation of the holy supplr in Jerusalem. The chapel of the castle at Athlet is the only known polygonal church built in the Holy Land in the 13th century. Its altar is oriented to the east. Its stones are cut by masons trained in the workshops of northern France. Here mass is sung daily. Here the dying are anointed. Here new brothers are received into the order in a long and solemn ceremony that [music] binds them for life. Outside the chapel in the outer bailey, an active market sometimes gathers. Peasants of the surrounding villages bring grain, oil, cheese, chickens, and vegetables in exchange for silver. And long-d distanceance merchants pass under the archbearing spices, silks, dy stuffs, [music] timber, and pottery. Above all, the fortress is a house of arms in a [music] land of uneasy truses, a permanent garrison guarding pilgrim roads, coastal shipping, [music] and the frontier of the shrinking kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1,250, that frontier is already trembling. In Egypt only days before the release of Louis Vinth, the young Aayubid Sultan Turancha has been struck down by the Bahari Mamluks of his father's guard at Forescore. [music] From that moment, power in Cairo passes into the hands of the Turkish military cast that will in a single decade forge the Mamluke Sultenate that fights the Mongols at Ain Jalut and turns its full weight against the crusader coast.

[00:15:01]Within a few years, the Mongols themselves will appear in northern Syria. Within four decades, in the spring of 1,291, Acre itself will fall after a siege of 6 weeks, and Chateau Peller at Athlete will be evacuated in the following weeks, ending the crusader presence on the Levantine coast. Within a little more than half a century, in October of 1,37, [music] the king of France will order the arrest of every Templar in his kingdom. And in 1,312 at the council of Vienn, Pope Clement V will formally dissolve the order by the bullvox in Excelsso, transferring most of its estates to the hospital.

[00:15:47]None of this is yet visible from the towers of the fortress in the year 1,250.

[00:15:54]What can be seen from the parapit at the hour of vespers is the long line of the Mediterranean turning from gold to violet, the sails of a Genoies round ship making [music] for acre, the smoke of the kitchens rising above the inner bailey, and the columns of dust on the road inland where a caravan of mules brings grain from the harvest of the estates. Below in the courtyard, sergeants lead horses to water. In the chapel, the chaplain brothers move to the choir stalls. In the refactory, the tables are laid. In the treasury, behind the double doors of iron, the coffers of silver rest under seal. The bell will sound, the community will gather, and the ancient office of the church will once more fold together. Within these walls of white stone raised at the edge of the Latin world, the discipline of a monastery, the vigilance of a garrison, [music] and the ambition of what has become in 130 years one of the great institutions of the medieval Best.