Templar Lament for Constantinople

This fine piece of Templar chant surfaced recently on YouTube. It's well worth having on in the background while you're working, relaxing or driving, but beware of 'information' like that included in the original YouTube post with it.

The YouTube text runs as follows:

"The Sack of Constantinople in 1204 by Crusaders was a devastating event during the Fourth Crusade. Originally intended to reclaim Jerusalem, the crusaders diverted their mission, culminating in the brutal capture and plunder of Constantinople, the heart of the Byzantine Empire. The Templars, known for their disciplined military prowess, played a role in this unforeseen attack. The sack led to massive destruction and looting, fracturing the city and exacerbating tensions between the Western Latin and Eastern Orthodox churches. This tragic episode significantly weakened the Byzantine Empire, altering the course of medieval history and deepening the divide within Christendom."

The sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade was indeed a terrible crime; it did open the way to subsequent Turkish/Islamic expansions, and it did create a lasting and understandable distrust of Catholicism in the Orthodox world.

But it had NOTHING to do with the Templars. As recounted in our official history of the Order 'Pilgrims of the Sword' (see the Books section in our online store), the Templars were deeply disturbed by the deal which the Venetian merchants and bankers did with some of the key Crusaders to divert to and seize Constantinople. The Order made the conscious decision to take no part at all in this assault on fellow Christians, and there were no Templar soldiers among the Catholic occupation forces, let alone those who sacked the greatest city of Christendom.

A Templar delegation did attend the subsequent coronation of Baldwin as King of the Byzantine possessions stolen by the Crusaders, but only to urge the knights to fulfil their original vows to fight against Muslim aggression in the Holy Land. The Order's leadership clearly foresaw that the availability of land stolen from the Byzantines would lead many Crusaders to settle near Constantinople, thereby being lost to the effort to populate and defend lands in Palestine and Syria.

In short, the Knights Templar shared absolutely no guilt for the terrible crime of the Fourth Crusade. Likewise, today, we speak out against the aggression by the godless 'West' (including the atheist Democrat regime in the USA) against Orthodox Russia - the bulwark of the modern Christian world.

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