ABSTRACT
Shortly before the dissolution of his order, a young Templar lay dying in Cyprus. Clutching a crucifix in his hand, he cried out to the one whose death was depicted upon it: "You are the true God, son of God, O my saviour, my creator, and of the whole world! You alone, Christ, do I summon in my need, knowing that you can save me in this world and the next."1 Seldom are we offered such a haunting insight into the devotion of an individual Templar, which had impressed itself so firmly upon the memory of the witness that he would recount it during the Process. The young Templar's plea to Christ was personal and intense, the plea of one far from home and facing death. Behind it lay the human need for a comforter who had shared in his sufferings and conquered death on the cross, but the plea also drew upon a tradition of devotion to Christ that had inspired the Templars since their beginnings. Generally this devotion reflected the preoccupations of an increasingly Christocentric era, but its expression in the Temple, far from being a microcosm of contemporary piety, was nurtured by the order's unique background. Despite Bernard of Clairvaux's imaginative commentary upon this devotion we must be careful not to strip what was an instinctive spiritual bond between the Knights of Christ and their Lord of its potency by attempting an intellectual model of Templar Christology. Instead we can turn to the various images of Christ which both the Templars themselves and other religious employed to motivate the brethren. Three were central: the lordly Christ, whom the Templars served in battle; the suffering Christ, whom they emulated with their deaths; and the vulnerable Christ, whom they defended by defending his people.
