Jordi Molist: "Many legends have been invented about the Templars"

BarcelonaThe writer Jordi Molist (Barcelona, ​​1951) was researching the Templars when he came across a document mentioning Berenguer de Entença, an important member of a high-ranking medieval noble family from the 13th century. Entença, who has a street named after him in Barcelona, ​​accompanied Roger de Flor to the Catalan Company of the East. A few years earlier, his family had been involved in numerous armed and legal conflicts with their neighbors, especially with the Knights Templar and the Miravet Petition. This long-running dispute over deadlines, taxes, and rights of way along the Ebro River is one of the threads the writer explores in his latest novel. I'd give the sky for you (Rosa dels Vents / Grijalbo), with translation into Catalan by Mireia Alegre and Imma Estany.

Molist, who had already approached the universe of the Templars in The Ring: The Legacy of the Last Templar (2005), he once again delves into the religious and military order, founded in 1119 in Jerusalem, to protect pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. This time he speaks of its decline.

I'd give the sky for you It begins with the end of the siege of Acre in 1291, a city that fascinates the author. "It's a very dramatic episode that attracted me because it's the end of an era and a world. There were people who had lived in this city for generations, and it was very rich. It must have been spectacular. It had 40,000 inhabitants, while Paris had 200,000. There were Genoese, English, more cheerful people, Germans, French, and French Templars," Molist explains.

Molist describes the apocalyptic end of the last great Christian stronghold in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, in the hands of the Mamluks: "It was the end of a world and the beginning of the end for the Templars," explains the novelist. "They were the biggest travel agency in Europe, and they were the biggest travel agency in Europe. When they lost Jerusalem, the Templars couldn't find a new target," the writer asserts at Miravet Castle, where the imposing 25-meter walls built by the Templars still stand. It is an imposing castle, seemingly rising from the rocks and overlooking the Ebro River. Over the years and through various wars, Miravet has changed hands and shed its skin, but the stones have endured. It was an Andalusian castle and later a Templar fortress. It has survived the Catalan Revolt and the War of the Spanish Succession, the Carlist Wars, and the Spanish Civil War. The various restorations have made it possible to enter the imposing refectory nave, where the monks shared mealtimes while a cleric recited in a calm voice; the stables; and even the living quarters.

The Return of Roger de Flor

In I'd give the sky for youThe one who confronts the Entença family is Artal de Villalba, the book's hero. "Fleeing a threat, his uncle takes him to Jerusalem with the Templars when he is only eight years old, and he lives until he is 16 under the strict supervision of the order. He doesn't know what money is, he has never spoken to a woman, he has only learned to fight," Molist explains. When Artal flees Jerusalem after the Templars' defeat, he discovers a whole new world. "He meets a woman, and all the mysticism goes out the window," Molist explains. The hero returns to Catalonia accompanied by Roger de Flor, who also grew up with the Templars. A skilled navigator, Roger de Flor, who inspired both terror and admiration in the turbulent Mediterranean of the 13th and 14th centuries, had already appeared in another of Molist's novels. The heartbeat of the sea (2023). "I wanted to delve deeper, because Roger de Flor's story felt incomplete without this second novel. Like Artal, he was educated by the Templars, but he wasn't confined; he traveled from port to port. He could never be a Templar, but he commanded a ship with more than three hundred men," says Molist. Roger de Flor eventually commanded the Catalan Company of the East and was proclaimed Megaduke, but he met a tragic end: he was assassinated in Adrianople in 1305.

On March 22, 1312, Pope Clement V decided to abolish the Order of the Temple. He promulgated the bull Vox in excelso and suspended the religious and military order. Two years later, in France, the last Templar Grand Master, Jacques de Molay (1240-1314), was burned at the stake, accused of heresy. The inquisitorial machine, led by the French King Philip IV, had extracted confessions of all kinds from the warrior monks. The Templars of the Crown of Aragon were the last to fall. Unlike their French and Castilian brethren, they resisted for a year and a half in their castles, never confessed, and were able to negotiate their end more effectively. "Many things have been invented and much legend has been created about the Templars, especially since the publication ofThe Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. "They were actually very boring, because the monastic rules were very strict," Molist says. Perhaps that's why most of the action in the novel takes place outside the walls of the Templar fortresses.