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Knights at the Opera, Part 11 – Ivanhoe

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Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, as well as a number of the writer's other works such as The Talisman (source for Balfe's 1874 opera The Knight of the Leopard), satisfied staid Victorians' desire for fiction that, while filled with all manner of vicarious romance and adventure, was ultimately moralistic. Ivanhoe was the 1819 equivalent of what we would call a "mainstream novel" and is in fact not as dense as its modern reputation would make it out to be. It is quite readable, and entertainingly contains elaborately detailed descriptions of each character's appearance and what he or she is wearing, not unlike the historical "bodice-ripper" fiction of our own time.

The novel's Baddie brings us to a very special issue of the Crusades: the increasingly self-serving Knights Templars. The Templars began as knights who, until the arrival of the Crusaders in Jerusalem, based themselves in a hostel in the Holy City and acted as protectors to the Christian pilgrims passing through the Seljuk-held lands. Following the Christian recapture of Jerusalem, they became their own religious order in 1119. The Knights Templars were bound by the Church to live an austere life as monk-knights. However, sending out a call for funds and supplies for their new order -- and now excluded from paying any taxes and tithes - they grew richer and richer, especially as they set up branch offices all over Europe, where people could easily make donations (brings to mind those unscrupulous modern charities whose funds barely make it to their presumed recipients, doesn't it?).

To their credit, the Knights Templars did establish a number of castle-strongholds that took in Christians who required safe shelter along the eastern coastline of the Mediterranean Sea, an area that waffled back and forth between being governed by Christians or Moslems. But, in time, the Templars became so corrupted by their wealth that their order was finally abolished by Pope Clement V in 1312, who asked that their properties be given to their rival order, the more dedicated and ascetic Red Cross-like Hospitallers who cared for ill Christians passing through the East (while not ministering to the ailing, the Hospitallers also proved to be skillful and intelligent soldiers who successfully defended their buildings against the Turks). The Hospitallers, instead of growing fat on their profits, used the funds to buy the island of Rhodes to serve as a safe base for their work. They eventually shifted islands to become the Knights of Malta.

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