Before Gualdim Pais could lead his small band of Portuguese warriors to participate as Templar Knights in the second crusade, considerable preparations were necessary to provide finance and to decide the mode of travel. As with modern expeditionary forces, to place one fighting man in the front line required the support of least seven non-combatants plus the costs of their transport, services and victuals.

Three horses were needed for each knight and a squire who was charged with their care and with the maintenance of armour, weapons and an array of equipment for battle. Most of this equestrian support and weaponry had to be bought in western Europe. Their cost was to increase six-fold between 1152, when the Portuguese brethren set out, and the late 13th century. Additionally, each knight was attended by one or more sergeants who each had his own horse and lighter weaponry and by servants who either travelled with their masters or were hired on arrival together with white slaves of Slavic and Caucasian origin.

The year 1152 also marked the start of a two century long commercial revolution in the mediterranean basin which was driven by the crusades and the incessant demand for construction of new towns and fortifications in the Holy Land with imports of iron and timber being balanced by the export of spices, fabrics and slaves. This was coupled with an increase in shipbuilding. Galleys, often double or triple decked and propelled by oarsmen and sail, were used both for transport and warfare. Until mid-13th century, cargo capacities were limited to between 50 and 200 metric tonnes but ship designs were then improved by the Italians so that mammoth triremes were produced which could carry 500 MT. These and the “hulks” were carvel built with fairly shallow draughts and plied their trade between the equinoxes of March and October when calm conditions prevailed.

It is most probable that Gualdim Pais and his band embarked from a Spanish port with stopovers for replenishment of supplies in Sicily, Crete and Cyprus but it is possible that he left from Lisbon or Porto using the clinker-built Cogs and “coach” craft which were with single mast and flat bottom. These small, sturdy boats had been used by the English and Flemish crusaders who aided the 1147 siege of Lisbon. Whatever may have been the choice, the conditions onboard were of extreme discomfort even for the most pious. Accommodation was crammed and each passenger was responsible for bringing his own supplies including food and water for livestock. Horses suffered immensely with no room to turn and constant buffeting; little wonder that those which survived needed several weeks for recovery when finally they were winched to land.

Fortunately, a meticulously conserved library of more than 400,000 mediaeval manuscripts and documents, mostly hand-written but also printed in Aramaic, Latin and Arabic languages, were preserved in the old Cairo genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue. Painstaking analysis by scholars of ships´ logs, manifests and receipts have revealed a comprehensive picture of mediaeval commerce which was undertaken by Christian, Muslim and Jewish merchants often in unison to establish a chain of cargo movement by ship and/or caravan with a supportive system of bills of exchange and credit to finance both crusaders and opponents.

The Knights Templar and other military Orders later integrated this commercial service by adopting a corporate status which owned vessels and provided a primitive banking system with commanderies acting as branches throughout Europe and the Levant. In addition to providing a currency of credit to finance crusader operations, they provided a secure depository for managing and guarding the assets of pilgrims. The wealth thus accumulated was often set to work through loans made to both State and Church at interest rates (with consolidated expenses) often reaching 20%. It was a volte face to the vows of humility, chastity and poverty undertaken by Hugh of Payns and his eight noble French knights as the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ on Christmas Day 1119 and was to lead to the eventual downfall of the Templars in 1307.

Gualdim Pais returned to Portugal in 1157 as a changed man following his sojourn of five years on active service in the Holy Land which had been financed by levies of the Church and income from estates which had been given to the military Order. He immediately began the construction of a castle at Thomar which was to serve as the headquarters of the Templars in Portugal until eventually it was transferred to the Order of Christ. In 1160 he granted a city charter to the village which had grown in its shadow to accommodate the lay workers of the Order many of whom were Sephardim being adept as merchants and as a form of civil service in tax collection and other financial matters.

Some historians have speculated that a number of Templars took Sephardic mistresses and that their sons entered the order as knights and sergeants or became managers of the vast estates which were acquired over many years. But what seems certain is that the initial requirements for an austere, monastic observance of the Office gradually gave way to a more worldly lifestyle in which spirituality was replaced by mundanity.

Roberto Cavaleiro Tomar 02 July 2024