Detail of a fresco in the Templar chapel in Cressac-Saint-Genis, which shows Saint George protecting a lady from a dragon. Built between 1150 and 1160 on a major pilgrimage route, the chapel was eventually inherited by the Hospitallers after the Templars' downfall.
Hospitaller nuns and Teutonic Order half-sisters tended the sick in their orders' hospitals, whilst in Catalonia, a Templar sister called Ermengarda was commander of a preceptory, with several Templar brothers under her command. In Bohemia, one Hospitaller nun even raised an army against her order.
Women and the orders
The Templars originated in the Holy Land in the years after the First Crusade (1095-1099). Once the crusaders conquered Jerusalem, most of them went home, leaving the new Crusader States vulnerable. They were short of manpower, surrounded by hostile forces that they had attacked or threatened, and plagued by bandits along the pilgrim routes whose protection had spurred the Crusade in the first place. In response, two knights from northern France, Hugh de Payens and Godfrey of Saint Omer, banded together with several other knights to help protect the pilgrim routes.
In 1120, the group was instituted at a royal council of leading churchmen and nobles at Nablus. Given a wing of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem as their headquarters, a building known to the Crusaders as Solomon's Temple, these men became known as the Knights Templar. Nine years later, they were recognized by the Church and given their own rule at the Council of
