No. The treasure, such as it was (a collection of saints' relics), stayed on Cyprus and was given to the Knights Hospitaller in 1312. There is no record of how much money the Templars had in their treasury on Cyprus when they were arrested in 1308. The records made by the king's officials show very little cash. It is possible that the Templars had already spent their cash reserves on hiring mercenaries and ships for their planned crusade. It's also possible that the king's officials took any cash for the king! Although the account of events on Cyprus, the Chronique d’Amadi, states that the Templars' possessions were handed over to the Hospitallers in 1312, it doesn't say how much money was involved. The Hospitallers did not record how much money they received – or, if they did, the record has not survived. The Templars' treasure of religious relics were taken by the Hospitallers to their new base on Rhodes, and pilgrims recorded seeing them there later in the 14th century. Alain Demurger, in his book Les Templiers: une chevalerie Chrétienne au moyen âge (Paris: Seuil, 2005), pp. 324–5, notes that in the records of the French king's chambre des comptes for 31 August 1321 there is a record that Brother Hugh Peraud, visitor of the Temple, had deposited with Brother Pierre Gaudes, commander of the Templar houses of Dormelles and Beauvoir (in the Gâtinais, near Moret-sur-Loing), a small chest containing 1,189 pieces of gold and 5,010 pieces of silver. Hearing rumours that something was going to happen to the Order of the Temple,On 22 September 1307, the commander entrusted the chest to a fisherman of Moret-sur-Loing, who hid it under his bed. After the Templars' arrest, the fisherman handed the money over to the royal authorities, the royal bailli Guillaume de Hangest. The story of the finding of the chest was recorded in 1321 when Guillaume de Hangest's accounts were audited. However, Alain Demurger points out that it is not clear where this money came from – whether it was Hugh Peraud's personal money, or funds from the Templars' treasury in Paris. Perhaps it was the money which Hugh had collected in the West for 1306–7, ready to send out to Cyprus for the new crusade which the Templars were planning – but which never took place. Whatever the origin of this money, it ended up in King Philip IV of France's treasury. Because the Templars were always collecting money for their military work in the the East, and built impressive castles in the Holy Land, writers in western Europe always assumed that they were very rich – and complained that they didn't make good use of their wealth. The Templars, however, always claimed that they were poor, because all the money that they raised in the west was immediately spent on the war in the East. Contemporaries did comment on the fine church plate in their chapels. However, when the Templars were arrested in 1307–8, the chapels contained the only expensive property in their houses; everything else was plain – cooking utensils, tables, benches – and worth very little. It seems that the Templars had indeed poured everything into the war in the East. When outsiders went into the Templars' treasury in their house in London, or in Paris, or in Barcelona, they would see chests full of money – but that money did not belong to the Templars: it belonged to the king, or to nobles, or to merchants, who had deposited it there for safe keeping. King Edward II of England was convinced that the Templars must have more money than his officials had found when they arrested the Templars in early January 1308; and he had searches made, but nothing more was found. The simplest explanation is that the Templars had spent their money on the crusade that they were planning, and that there was no treasure – except, of course, for the treasure which the Templars believed they had stored up in Heaven through their brave deeds for Christ. In modern times, the French writer Pierre Plantard claimed to have found Templar treasure at Gisors (Gisors et son secret: 1961), but was never able to substantiate this claim. He and his friend Philippe de Chérisey (1923–85) forged documents to ‘prove’ that the Templars’ treasure was at Rennes-le-Château in the south of France, and in 1968 Philippe de Chérisey published a novel, Circuit, which was based on these forged documents and describes a (fictional) search for this treasure. The modern myths about the Templars’ lost treasure are based on these forgeries. |
|