Templars, Poland and Portugal

The history of the Knights Templar and its legend intrigues people all over the world. Treasures, the Holy Grail and symbolism, which is attributed to unions with Freemasonry, create an atmosphere of mystery around the knights of monks.

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The Order of the Temple was also in the Polish lands. In the 13th century, Henry the Bearded brought the monastic knights to Silesia. They were then given land on which they built commodities comparable to those from Western Europe. After the liquidation of the Order in 1314, it is not very clear what happened to these knights, but the Portuguese and Spanish sources indicate that part of the Knights entered the Teutonic Order and part of the Order of the Knights. What is certain, however, is that Templars do not work on Polish soil harm - there are no traces or documents indicating that they would be persecuted.
Chapel of the former Templars' commandery in Chwarszczany in the West Pomeranian Voivodeship (fot. Jan Jerszyński, published under license Creative Commons Attribution - On the same terms 2.5).

Zbigniew Nienacki in the book "Pan Samochodzik i Templariusze" suggested that the Knights Templars and Teutonic Knights had more in common than we think. These relationships certainly existed. Both orders emerged in Jerusalem, the Teutonic Knights watched as the Templars built their power, and their cross on the mantle and religious rule were very similar to those used by the Knights of the Temple. An important date in this story is the transfer of the capital of the Teutonic Order from Venice to Malbork in 1309 - two years after the Templars' imprisonment and the beginning of their famous trial, full of lies and politics. Did the Knights of America feared a similar fate and preferred to build a strong state on the outskirts of Christian Europe? It is hard not to get the impression that they wanted to leave the Pope and the West in this way ...

Interested in the origin of the word "templar" in Polish for some time, while watching the Portuguese document about the order (very strong in that part of the Iberian Peninsula), I paid attention to pronunciation. "Os templarios" means in Portuguese the "Templars" in the plural. The word is "templar's ears". Completely differently pronounced is a similarly written word in Spanish - "los templarios" is simply "los templarios", in French "les templiers" is pronounced "le tymmplie", and in English, knights-monks is called "templars". Only in Polish and Portuguese, we pronounce the word in the same way (the only difference is the singular in Polish and plural in Portuguese). How is it possible for countries located at the two ends of Europe to have a similar word in one word?
Is the Polish word "Templar" from Portuguese? Did the religious brought by Henry the Bearded come from Portugal? Sources do not say much about it. However, how did the word go to Polish? Is it through the Teutonic Knights? There is one more Polish word from the Middle Ages and from the Portuguese language. This is "battle", meaning battle, fight. This is exactly what is said in Portuguese "batalha", a word from the period of fighting between the Castilians and the Portuguese. The result of the battle of Aljubarrota in 1385, won by the Portuguese, established the boundaries between the two countries to this day. In the city of Batalha a beautiful monastery and church was created to commemorate this event (moisteiro Santa Maria da Vitoria). These two words may be a signpost that the medieval connections of the Kingdom of Portugal and the Kingdom of Poland were greater than it seems.

Monastery of Santa Maria da Vitoria in Batalha (photo: Waugsberg, published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license).

It is important that the Order of the Knights Templar in Portugal was transformed into the Order of Christ (Ordem do Cristo), which allowed the Templars of Portugal to survive and not be refugees as it happened in France after the Pope's liquidation of the Order. Legend has it that it was the Templars fleeing France who had escaped from France to take their treasures. Henryk Żeglarz, a Portuguese explorer, was one of the masters of the Christ's order. The symbol of the order resembles the Templars cross. Is it a coincidence or is it really a continuation of the Knights Templar? Portuguese historians do not agree on this.

Bibliography:

• Guinguand Maurice, El oro de los templarios, Apostrofe 1996.
• Jasiński Kazimierz, The rise and fall of the Templars' empire, "Rzeczpospolita", 6 April 2017.
• Martín Javier, Tomar, nostalgia de los templarios, "El Pais", 17 March 2015.
• Olival Fernando, As Ordens Militares e o Estado Moderno - Honra, Mercê e Venalidade em Portugal (1641-1789), Estar Editora, Lisboa 2001.
• Polish Language Dictionary, PWN Publisher, Warsaw 1994.

The article comes from histmag.org written by Justyna Zembrzycka under license CC BY-SA 3.0