Who Was the First Grand Master of the Knights Templar?
The first Grand Master of the Knights Templar was Hugues de Payens (c. 1070–1136), a French knight from the County of Champagne. He led a small group of knights to Jerusalem in 1119 and founded the Order that would become one of the most powerful institutions in medieval Christendom. He served as Grand Master for nearly twenty years, from 1119 to 1136, and he secured the Order’s recognition at the Council of Troyes in 1129.
This article is a brief biography of Hugues. For a more detailed account, see Hugues de Payens and the First Templars.
Origins in Champagne
Hugues was born around 1070 in the village of Payens, near Troyes in the County of Champagne, a region in north-central France. The Payens family were minor lords who held small estates in the region. Hugues was related, by blood or by marriage, to several of the great noble families of the region, including the Counts of Champagne themselves.
The connection to the Counts of Champagne was important for Hugues’ later career. The Count of Champagne was the most powerful lord in the region, and he was a major patron of the new Cistercian order. Hugues was a household knight of the Count of Champagne, and it was through this connection that he came to be involved in the founding of the Templars.
For more on the regional context, see The Founding of the Order.
The Crusade of 1101
Hugues had gone to the Holy Land with the Crusade of 1101, one of the smaller follow-up expeditions to the First Crusade of 1096–1099. The Crusade of 1101 was a disaster — most of the army was destroyed in Asia Minor — but Hugues survived and remained in the Latin East.
He settled in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Crusader state that had been established in 1099. The young Kingdom was precarious: it was surrounded by hostile Muslim powers, its population was small, and its resources were limited. Hugues established himself at the court of the king, Baldwin I (r. 1100–1118), as a household knight.
For nearly two decades, Hugues served in the Kingdom. He fought in several campaigns and acquired a reputation as a loyal and devout knight. He also acquired extensive contacts in the Latin East, both with the local French-speaking aristocracy and with the Italian merchant communities in the coastal cities.
The Founding of the Order (1119)
In 1119, Hugues approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem with a proposal. Together with a small group of companions — most sources say seven or eight other knights and a chaplain — he offered to form a small religious brotherhood dedicated to protecting Christian pilgrims on the dangerous roads of the Holy Land.
Baldwin, who had no military resources to spare, agreed. He gave the new brotherhood quarters in a wing of the royal palace on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This association with the Temple of Solomon would eventually give the Order its famous name.
The story of the founding is told in detail in The Founding of the Order.
The Council of Troyes (1129)
In 1127, Hugues left the Holy Land and traveled to Europe to seek support for the new Order. He visited the Count of Champagne and the great abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, and the two became enthusiastic champions of the Order. The visit culminated in the famous Council of Troyes of January 1129, at which the Order was formally recognized and given a Rule.
Hugues was at Troyes in person, as was Bernard. The Rule of the Order was drawn up by Bernard (or under his supervision), and it was approved by the bishops and abbots of the Council. From this point, the Order began to grow rapidly.
The Council of Troyes. See Bernard de Clairvaux and the Templar Rule.
The Later Years and Death (1129–1136)
After the Council of Troyes, Hugues returned to the Holy Land, where he continued to lead the Order as its first Grand Master. The Order was now growing rapidly, with new recruits arriving from Europe and new estates being acquired in the Latin East and the West.
Hugues’s last years were spent in the Holy Land. He served as Grand Master for twenty years, and he died in 1136 in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. His successor was Robert de Craon, a French knight who had been one of the early brothers.
Hugues was buried on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, in the church of the Order. His grave, like those of his early companions, has long since been lost.
Hugues in Templar Legend
Hugues has been a major figure in Templar legend. The medieval chronicler Walter Map (c. 1140–1210) claimed that Hugues had, during the founding of the Order, made a pact with the patriarch of Jerusalem to discover the secrets hidden in the bowels of the Temple Mount. This story, the foundation of much of the modern mythology of the Order, was taken up and elaborated in the Holy Grail romances and in modern esoteric writings.
The idea that Hugues had discovered hidden knowledge beneath the Temple Mount is one of the central themes of Templar Mythology, Symbolism and Hidden Knowledge.
Conclusion
Hugues de Payens was a relatively obscure French nobleman whose founding of a small brotherhood of pilgrims in 1119 led, within two centuries, to the creation of one of the most powerful institutions in medieval Europe. The Order he founded would become the most famous military religious order of the Middle Ages, would be suppressed in dramatic circumstances in 1312, and would give rise to one of the richest and most enduring mythologies of Western culture.