Ironclad: Vikings, and Templars, and Magna Carta, Oh My!

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Derek Jacobi, Ironclad, James Purefoy, King John, Knights Templar, Magna Carta, Medieval England, Military Stuff, Monks and Nuns, Paul Giametti

Recently I decided that I needed to review a film on Tudor history. I turned on Netflix and went looking for one of the classics—Anne of the Thousand Days, A Man for All Seasons or perhaps one of Cate Blanchett’s movies about Elizabeth. I discovered two things. 1) Netflix has no films on Tudor history at all, just a bunch of not very good-looking documentaries. 2) Ironclad (2011, dir. Jonathan English). I’m not sure why Netflix suggested this film, because the only thing it has in common with any of the above films is that it’s set in England. But I faintly remembered hearing about it when it first came out, so I watched it.

It’s a small independent film; the financing was apparently such a big challenge that at one point they had to recast all the supporting roles, after Megan Fox dropped out. But despite the modest budget, it’s the largest independent film ever made in Wales. And, a little improbably, it’s based quite solidly in history, albeit with some important liberties.

The Siege of Rochester Castle

On June 15^th, 1215, King John reluctantly signed the Magna Carta, a charter of liberties in which he agreed to a variety of restrictions on his powers as king and lord of vassals. Most of the charter was limited to John’s relationship with his vassals and therefore applied only to nobles, but a few details applied to everyone in the country, most notably the establishment of what can be called the right of due process for all non-serfs and the abolition of double jeopardy in trials.

However, soon after John signed it, he repudiated it, and Pope Innocent III declared John released from his oath to support it. This triggered the First Barons’ War, in which the rebellious barons, supported by King Louis VIII of France, essentially attempted to depose John. The rebels were also supported by Stephen Langton, the archbishop of Canterbury.

In October, Langton sent the nobleman William d’Aubigny to occupy Rochester Castle. The castle had been in John’s hands, but the Magna Carta had required John to return it to Langton because it was the property of the archbishopric of Canterbury. John persuaded the castellan, Reginald de Cornhill, to open the gates and D’Aubigny occupied the castle with a small force, much to John’s great frustration. Rochester Castle controlled the southern road to London, which the rebels had taken control of. John could not risk bypassing Rochester, and so he laid siege to the castle for two months.

Rochester Castle. Note how close it is to Rochester Cathedral

John’s forces occupied the city of Rochester and destroyed the bridge linking the city to London, thus making it difficult for the rebels to relieve the siege. For two months, d’Aubigny’s small band of men, variously numbered between 85 and 150, struggled to keep hold off John. John’s forces broke through the outer wall of the castle, forcing the defenders to retreat to the keep. John’s forces sapped the keep, digging a tunnel under it and then burning the tunnel supports. This caused part of the keep to collapse, but the rebels held out in the part of the castle that remained. Some of the less-able-bodied defenders were forced to leave because of dwindling supplies, and some sources report that John cut off their hands and feet. Eventually, the remaining defenders surrendered; John imprisoned all of them, including d’Aubigny, except one archer whom John executed because the man had served him from childhood but then rebelled.

Sadly for John, the capture of Rochester did not improve his position significantly. He was able to force the rebels into a stalemate, but suffered a setback when his baggage train was lost crossing a tidal estuary. He contracted dysentery or something similar and died on October 18^th, 1216, about a year after starting the siege of Rochester.

King John was a complex figure. He was widely disliked by his nobles, and his various defeats sharply colored his posthumous reputation, especially in comparison with his more famous and accomplished father Henry II and brother Richard the Lion-hearted. He has been remembered by derisive nicknames such as ‘Lackland’ and ‘Softsword’, and most historical literature treats him poorly; he is, after all, the main villain in modern Robin Hood stories, and The Lion in Winter makes him seem like a pathetic joke.

King John

But in recent decades scholars have tended to paint a more balanced picture of John. They have pointed out that he was an extremely skilled solider; his forces never lost a battle at which he was present, but his great tragedy was that the two most critical battles of his reign were ones he was unable to be at. He was a talented administrator, who paid far more attention to his kingdom than his older brother did. His servants were deeply loyal to him, but he lacked the skills to manage the nobles and clergy who truly mattered politically. Like his father, he was possessed of both enormous energy and a ferocious temper, but at key moments he seems to have been paralyzed by inaction; one historian has suggested that he might have been bi-polar. All in all, I like John, far more than I like his brother Richard.

Ironclad

The plot of Ironclad focuses entirely on the siege of Rochester, and it follows the events of the siege fairly closely, albeit with some significant deviations. The main character is the entirely fictitious Thomas Marshall (James Purefoy), a Templar knight with some sort of dark secret that is never revealed. The film claims that the Templars were the main reason that John was forced to sign the Magna Carta, which is completely untrue. John had good relationships with the Templars, and relied on the advice of Aymeric de St. Maur, the master of the Order in England at the time. Aymeric encouraged him to sign the Magna Carta, but that’s a far cry from claiming that the Templars forced him into it.

Like Arn the Knight Templar, this film seems to suggest that one joins the Templars like one joins the modern military. There are suggestions that Thomas might be allowed to “take a leave” from the Templars, and at the end, Archbishop Langton tells Thomas that he’s “earned his freedom.” But joining a monastic order was a permanent conversion; men did not leave the Order after a period of time. However, an archbishop would have had the authority to release someone from their monastic oaths, although it would have been highly unusual to do so. One of the reasons men joined monastic orders was that it was thought to significantly increase the chance of salvation, so leaving a monastic order would not have been seen as a good thing by most people at the time.

Also, the film claims that Templars had a “vow of silence”. Vows of silence were a real thing, but they’ve been badly misunderstood. In general, monks were expected to focus their thoughts on spiritual matters and to avoid frivolous conversations. Some orders employed a simple form of sign language so that monks could communicate simple ideas without speaking. But most orders allowed monks to talk, at least at certain moments. Monks met regularly in chapter meetings to discuss matters of importance. At meals, they heard texts read to them. Some monastic rules set aside time for the brothers to converse. And of course they sang the liturgy multiple times a day. But these are not formal vows of silence, which was a practice only employed by a minority of medieval monastic orders. The Templars most certainly did not maintain a vow of silence, since as soldiers, they needed to communicate orders on the battlefield. Clearly the screenwriter hasn’t thought this issue through.

Also, Thomas uses a Braveheart-style great sword. If it was too early for William Wallace, it’s way too early for an early 13th century Templar. Thanks, Mel Gibson. Now everybody apparently needs to use great swords.

Purefoy as Thomas Marshall, with his great sword

Early in the film, Thomas and William d’Aubigny (Brian Cox) are sent by Stephen Langton to hold Rochester Castle against John. They do a Seven Samurai number and recruit five more soldiers and then go to Rochester, where they convince Reginald de Cornhill (Derek Jacobi) to let them hold the castle, But Cornhill has only eleven men, so 18 soldiers and a few servants are left to hold off John’s forces. This is an absurdly small group to hold even a small castle; in an actual siege, a group that small would have been overwhelmed on the first day of battle.

Historically, John hired a mixed group of continental mercenaries during the Baron’s War, but in this film he hires a band of pagan Danish Vikings. This is the worst anachronism of the film. The Danes had been Christian for more than 200 years by the Baron’s War. The only purpose served by making John’s men pagan Vikings seems to be to make John look bad, for employing pagans when he’s allied to the pope. It’s an egregiously silly detail in a film that in many respects strives to be true to events.

King John (Paul Giametti) is actually quite well-handled. The script is written to make John seem like a complete asshole, but Giametti manages to capture John’s fierce temper in a way that humanizes him. When John’s forces break into the castle bailey and capture d’Aubigny, John gets a monologue that is written to make him seem petulant, but Giametti transforms it into an angry tirade fueled by John’s quite legitimate complaint that his rights as king are not being respected. It’s a speech that captures something of the actual attitude that medieval kings had about their position.

The best part of this film

The film is also rather naïve about the Magna Carta. It is referenced as being a document “for the people” in a rather vague and unspecified way, as if it were a proto-constitution instead of the peace treaty it actually was. The film frames the Baron’s War as being a conflict between a tyrannical John and a group of nobles who are somehow champions of the common man. John was definitely being unreasonable, but nothing that he did prior to 1215 would have been seen as illegal or tyrannical; rather his nobles felt that he was abusing his rights as their lord, using legal rights in ways they had not been intended.

Despite all these problems, the film does a remarkably good job of following the outlines of the siege. Rochester Castle is realistically depicted (although it’s located out in the countryside, instead of in a city and within an arrow’s flight of Rochester Cathedral). When I watched the film, I thought that the siege details were being a little improbable, but upon researching the actual siege, I saw that the film actually follows the basic sequence of events fairly closely, although it plays with the time-frame of events somewhat, extending the first part of the siege and then compressing the later parts somewhat. But all the major details of the siege in the film have at least some basis in the actual siege, other than Thomas’ romance with Cornhill’s wife, and the deaths of Cornhill and d’Aubigny, both of whom are known to have survived the siege.

An Orgy of Violence

If you decide to watch Ironclad, be warned; it’s extremely violent. I’ve seen my fair share of modern action films, and this film goes somewhat beyond them. The film dwells on graphic violence in ways that I found a little shocking. The camera watches a number of extreme injuries, including the top of a man’s head being chopped off and a man being cut from shoulder to waist. In one particularly graphic shot, a man’s arm is hacked off, with four strokes that gradually hack through the bone. The film also dwells on John’s order to cut off d’Aubigny’s hands and feet.

I’m of two minds about the film’s use of graphic violence. One part of me feels that the film was being true to its nature as a war film and showing what war really looks like. In most Hollywood films, the graphic violence is somewhat ludicrous; limbs are easily chopped off even though most medieval swords weren’t sharp enough to accomplish that feat easily. In this film, the dismemberments actually seem plausible (d’Aubigny’s hands and feet are braced against wooden blocks, for example). The violence is shown as being psychologically brutal to the defenders of the castle; at the end of the film, Thomas and the two other survivors all seem moderately traumatized by what they’ve been through.

However, the other part of me feels that the film is just indulging in the pornography of violence that has become so common in modern action films. Many Hollywood films have decided to take the Grand Guignol approach to storytelling, without paying much attention to the consequences of the violence. So if you watch the film, be prepared for some gore.

Overall, the film takes some liberties with the facts, but fewer liberties than I was expecting. It’s a bit like The Warlord in that it’s a small-scale film, focused on a single conflict within a much larger picture, and it has a similar ending, with the hero worn down by his struggles. While I have some problems with this film, I’d rather watch a dozen films like this than a Braveheart or 300. Now I just have to hunt down a copy of a film on Tudor history.

Update: I review the sequel here.

Want to Know More?

Ironcladis available on Amazon. The best book I know on King John is W.L. Warren’s King John (English Monarchs), but it’s getting on in years. For a more recent take, and one more closely connected to this film, try Stephen Church’s King John: And the Road to Magna Cartadoes a good job of examining the Baron’s War and how it led to Magna Carta.

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Arn the Knight Templar: We’re the Clergy; We Don’t Need Rules

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Arn the Knight Templar, Joakim Natterqvist, Knights Templar, Medieval Europe, Monks and Nuns, Religious Issues, Scandinavia

In my last post, I talked about the Holy Land portions of Arn the Templar Knight. In this post, I’m going to focus on the Sweden portions of the film. In order to understand what’s going in Sweden in this film, we need to look a little bit at 12^th century Swedish history. Swedish history in this period is particularly complex and turbulent, so I may have gotten some of the small details wrong—the books on Scandinavian history in my personal library weren’t a lot of help on this topic.

12th Century Sweden: Folkungs vs Sverkers

Much of the Swedish action in the film is based around the districts of Västergotland, particularly the Cistercian monastery of Varnhem, and Ostragotland in central Sweden. The two most powerful families were the Eriks and the Sverkers, whose members struggled for control of the throne throughout the later 12^th century; the Eriks enjoyed the support of the Folkungs of Ostragotland. In 1160, King Erik the Saint (Erik IX) was murdered, reportedly by Emund Ulvbane, a supporter of the Sverker dynasty. Power passed to Karl Sverkersson (Charles VII).

Finding a decent map of medieval Sweden on the internet is hard to do

While Karl held the throne, Erik’s son, Knut Eriksson went into exile and his wife, whose name is unknown, was placed in a convent to protect her. In 1167, Karl Sverkersson was assassinated by Knut’s supporters, and Knut became king (Knut I) (and was reunited with his wife), although he struggled with Karl’s sons for 6 years before he was entirely in control of Sweden. His most important supporter was his jarl, Birger Brosa (“Smiling Birger”). He remained king until 1196, when he fell ill and died. But his sons were only minors, and so he was succeeded by Sverker II, son of Karl Sverkersson.

Knut I

After his father’s death, Sverker was taken to Denmark to be raised among his Danish mother’s clan. When Knut died, Birger Brosa and other Swedish leaders brokered Sverker’s peaceful succession. In 1203, Sverker exiled Karl’s sons from Sweden. They returned in 1205 with Norwegian backing, but Sverker killed three of them and drove the fourth, Erik, out of the country. Erik returned again in 1208, and confronted Sverker at the battle of Lena. Sverker’s troops were commanded by his father-in-law, Ebbe Suneson, but Erik defeated them, drove Sverker out of Sweden, and became king (Erik X). In 1210, Sverker attempted an invasion but was killed at the battle of Gestilren.

By the 1240s, the dominant figure in Sweden was Birger Jarl, who was a great-grandson of Sverker I and nephew of Birger Brosa, thus straddling the divide between these two important families. After defeating a branch of the Folkungs at the battle of Sparrsätra (which involved the first documented use of cavalry in Sweden), he was able to orchestrate the election of his son Valdemar I as king of Sweden, although Birger Jarl remained the power behind the throne until his death in 1266. Valdemar reigned until 1275, when he was deposed by his younger brother, but in many ways, Valdemar’s reign saw the emergence of a fully-unified Sweden.

With all that in mind, let’s get to Arn the Knight Templar

The Opening of the Film

At the start of the film, Arn is given to the Cistercian monastery of Varnhem, in Västergotland, at age 5 after he falls sick and his mother prays for his recovery. He is raised by the monks there, and receives military training from Brother Guilbert, a former Templar. But as a young adult, the abbot Father Henry (Simon Callow) sends Arn (Joakim Nätterqvist) back to his family, who happen to be the Folkungs. He shows up just in time to help Birger Brosa. Birger is trying to achieve a reconciliation with the Sverkers, but the Sverker agent, Emund Ulvbane, insults the Folkungs and maneuvers the elderly Birger into a duel. Arn steps in at the last moment and defeats Emund, initially showing him mercy, but cutting off his hand when Emund treacherously tries to attack him again.

This is a nice example of a fictional character being inserted into a historical conflict. Very little seems to be known about Emund Ulvbane, so having Arn maim him is a nice bit of hypothetical history that doesn’t disrupt the known facts at all.

Arn falls in love with Cecilia Algotsdotter (Sofia Helin). It’s not entirely clear what her situation is at the start of the film. She seems to be in Godhem Convent (along with her sister Katarina), but only part of the time. She’s singing in a choir when Arn walks into the church and sees her.

Arn and Cecilia on their first date

He falls in love with Cecilia and they sneak off and have sex, and Cecilia gets pregnant. She tells her sister Katarina, who is envious of her because Katarina feels that their father only has the resources to marry off one girl. Katarina fears having to become a nun, so she tells Mother Rikissa (Bibi Andersson), who happens to be a Sverker. Mother Rikissa writes to her cousin the bishop and informs him of what has happened. A plot is hatched in which Katarina claims to have had sex with Arn, which allows the bishop to accuse Arn and Cecilia of fornication and Arn of incest (which in this period included sleeping with two sisters). He excommunicates them and imposes a strict 20 year penance on the lovers; Arn is sent to Varnhem Abbey and Cecilia to Godhem. This establishes the central conflict of the film; Arn has to become a Templar and serve in the Holy Land, while Cecilia has to live at Godhem and endure the torments of the hateful Mother Rikissa. She is saved when Cecilia Blanka arrives at the convent. Blanka is eventually revealed to be the wife of Knut Eriksson and when Knut becomes king, Blanka returns to him and takes Cecilia with him.

But there are various problems with this whole scenario. Just as the film is unclear about how the Templar Order operates, so too is it unclear about everything else about the medieval church. Arn is given to the monastery as a boy; this is clearly supposed to be an example of oblation, in which a child was given by his parents to a monastery to become a monk. But oblation was dying out in the 12^th century, and the Cistercians in particular refused to accept them because they found the presence of children disruptive. Furthermore, if he had been given as an oblate, he wouldn’t have been allowed to leave the monastery as an adult. Father Henry seems to be a rather lax Cistercian at a time when Cistercians were known for their strictness.

The abbot’s laxness is also shown in that he allows Brother Guilbert to just stand around practicing archery, and he allows Guilbert to teach Arn to fight, apparently just because Arn is good at fighting. Medieval monks, especially 12^th century Cistercians, followed a fairly regimented daily routine that wouldn’t have allowed much room for archery or sword play. Overall, this detail is wildly improbable.

Brother Guilbert teaching young Arn to use a bow

Mother Rikissa is just as lax as Father Henry, because she seems to allow Cecilia to come and go from the abbey at will, and she allows Arn to just walk into the convent for no apparent reason. Noble girls were frequently sent to convents to be raised, but the whole point of that is to help ensure their virginity, which Mother Rikissa distinctly fails to do. The convent also has a male choir director, which would have been extremely inappropriate. But overall, Mother Rikissa is a bigger problem because she’s dressed as a Cistercian even though the Cistercian Order didn’t accept nuns in the 12^th century.

Why is there a male choir director in a house of nuns?

The bishop’s punishment of them is also historically dubious. I’ve already dealt with the problem of forcing someone to become a Knight Templar, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. In church one day, the bishop brings the accusation of fornication and incest against Arn and Cecilia and imposes penance on them right there and then. This is roughly the equivalent of a modern judge calling a press conference to announce that he will prosecute someone for a crime and then declaring the sentence.

Contrary to popular imagination, the medieval Church had a complex body of law (canon law) that governed how a bishop’s court could proceed. In this period, there had to be a formal accuser (who would be punished if the charge could not be proven), and the bishop cannot bring the accusation himself because he or his official acted as the judge and therefore had to be objective (at least in theory). The defendants had to be summoned to appear in the bishop’s court, where a trial would be conducted, with the accused having the ability to defend himself. If found guilty, the bishop can then impose penance, but he can’t impose penance without a trial unless the accused confesses to a sin. Since there has been neither a trial nor a confession, the bishop has no authority to impose penance on Arn and Cecilia. Furthermore, excommunication was a tool to force someone to submit and receive penance; it’s not really a punishment in its own right. There was no point in an excommunicated person performing penance, because excommunication was essentially a threat of damnation, and until the excommunication was lifted, no amount of penance would achieve any spiritual benefit because the person would be going to hell. There was no point in an excommunicated person going on crusade, for just the same reason.

Sentencing Arn and Cecilia to 20 years’ penance at monasteries is probably excessive, but the bishop is evil and out to get Arn and Cecilia, so I suppose this detail is not implausible.

Overall, the film seems to just be making up the religious details as needed for the plot. This is not uncommon in popular films about the Middle Ages. The assumption is made that the Church had enormous and largely unrestricted power which the clergy could exercise or not as they saw fit. In reality, the clergy were as tightly bound by canon law as modern police and lawyers are bound by modern civil law. Some certainly abused their authority, but this was taken as seriously as abuse of power by law enforcement is today.

After Odysseus Arn Returns Home

The last 30 minutes or so of Arn are focused on the period after Arn gets back to Sweden and is reunited with Cecilia.  His return must be around 1188 or 1189. Despite Cecilia’s royal connections through Blanka and Arn’s distinguished military career, they go back to peasanting, which mostly consists of throwing nets in shallow creeks, cutting boards, and making love. Personally, if I had important political connections that could lift me out of poverty, I’m pretty sure I’d use them to avoid a life of drudgery and hard labor, but modern movies about the Middle Ages typically emphasize the moral value of simple peasant life over the moral compromises of the nobility.

After this, however, the historical train goes completely off the rails. The time scale seems to collapse here. The villainous Ebbe Suneson shows up and tells them that Knut is dying and Sverker will come to power, so we’ve suddenly jumped to about 1195. We get a training montage of Arn teaching peasants how to fight, and then Arn and his men head off to fight what seems to be the battle of Lena in 1208. The film entirely passes over Sverker’s legitimate and peaceful election as king, as well as the intervening political upheavals. Sverker is supported by Danish troops led by Ebbe Suneson. But I suppose Arn can win the battle because he’s had more than a decade to train them to fight.

The ensuing battle is a mélange of random bits of medieval warfare. Arn’s troops are equipped with chainmail or leather armor, mid-11^th century Norman helmets, a mixture of early medieval round shields and 12^th century heater shields, and Welsh longbows, which wouldn’t be introduced to the wider European world by the English until the late 13^th century. This is the equivalent of equipping Napoleon’s troops with AK-47s. Sverker’s forces include a lot of cavalry (which, remember, wasn’t introduced to Sweden until the 1240s), with everyone in chainmail and great helms (which is about right for the late 12^th century).

Arn and his troops at whatever battle this is supposed to be.

Arn defeats and kills Ebbe because Ebbe is unfamiliar with the dangers posed to cavalry by the Welsh longbow (understandable given that he couldn’t have ever seen them before). The battle itself is staged as a mixture of the battle of Agincourt in 1415 and Braveheart’s version of the battle of Stirling Bridge, and probably bears no actual resemblance to the battle of Lena.

Sverker has conveniently gotten his troops to wear red, to tell them from Arn’s troops

Arn is wounded in the battle and dies after returning home to Cecilia. The film concludes with a shot of his funeral, and an epilogue text explaining that Arn’s efforts brought peace to Sweden for many years and that Arn was the reason Sweden was unified. The novels position Arn as the grandfather of Birger Jarl, but in asserting that Sweden’s peace and unification was brought about because of Arn, the film essentially passes from historical fiction into alternate history. It’s sort of like ending Saving Private Ryan with an epilogue that explains that the US won World War II because of Captain America.

To my mind, the film is at its best when it’s focusing on Sweden. It explores a largely neglected period of history and introduces high medieval Sweden to a wider audience. But unfortunately, it doesn’t clearly explain the historical conflict it’s using as its backdrop and instead resorts of clichés about the Middle Ages that obscure more than they educate. Perhaps the fuller, two-film version does a better job explaining the history it’s working with. So while Arn the Knight Templar is a decent story, it’s very muddled history.

Want to Know More?

Arn: The Knight Templaris available on Amazon.

As I mentioned, it’s based on Jan Guillou’s Crusades trilogy: The Road to Jerusalem: Book One of the Crusades Trilogy; The Templar Knight: Book Two of the Crusades Trilogy; and Birth of the Kingdom: Book Three of the Crusades Trilogy

Arn the Knight Templar: Crusading Swedes

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Arn the Knight Templar, Joakim Natterqvist, Knights Templar, Military Stuff, Saladin, Scandinavia, The Crusades

Right after I started this blog, a friend of mine asked me to review Arn the Templar Knight (2010, dir. Peter Flinth, Swedish and English with subtitles). The film is based on a trilogy of novels by Jan Guillou. It was filmed in Sweden as two films, Arn the Knight Templar and Arn—the Kingdom at Road’s End, in 2007 and 2008, and then edited into a single film in 2010. The two films together comprise the most expensive film production in Swedish history, and was a fairly big deal over there. The composite version is the one I saw (it’s available on Netflix). So, Sam, this one’s for you.

The film’s story is fairly complex, which is unsurprising for a film that covers three novels’ worth of history. Half the film follows Arn and his adventures in the Holy Land, while the other half follows Cecelia, Arn’s love, and later events in Sweden. Because both halves require some historical background to understand, I’m going to cover the Arn/Holy Land portion of the film in this post, and later this week I’ll cover the Cecilia/Sweden portion of the film.

Arn being all Templary

What Happened in the Holy Land in 1187

In the 1180s, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was a thriving Western European state along the Levant, the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. Since the First Crusade at the very end of the 11^th century, Western Europeans had controlled the narrow coastal strip running from Antioch down to Jerusalem. But the Franks, as Europeans living in the Holy Land were broadly known, never possessed a deep population base, and had to be extremely cautious in the way they confronted Muslims efforts to retake the region, because military losses could take decades to replenish.

The Crusader States in the 1130s

After the death of King Baldwin IV from leprosy in 1185, the crown of Jerusalem ultimately passed to his sister Sybilla, whose husband Guy de Lusignan became king. Guy was deeply unpopular in Jerusalem; he was from the lower nobility, was a comparatively recent arrival to the kingdom, and had quarreled with Baldwin not long before his death. Efforts had been made to exclude him from the throne, but these had failed because of Sybilla’s loyalty to him. As a result, Guy was eager for a major military success to help secure his control over the kingdom.

In May of 1187, Saladin found a justification for breaking his peace with the Kingdom of Jerusalem and invaded, laying siege to Tiberias. Guy’s chief political rival, Count Raymond of Tripoli, advised Guy to just wait things out, recognizing that Saladin was unlikely to be able to hold Tiberias even if he captured it. But Guy was suspicious of Raymond, who had recently signed a treaty with Saladin, and decided to make a risky gamble. Saladin’s forces were around 30,000 men, and the only way Guy could manage to match that was by calling up virtually every soldier in the kingdom, including most of the Templars and Hospitallers, who were the elite troops of the Crusader States, for an army of around 20,000 men.

Guy made the strategic mistake of leading his army across a dry, dusty plain at the height of the Middle Eastern summer; he was encouraged to do this by Gerard de Ridefort, the Grand Master of the Templars. His army was unable to reach water by nightfall, and eventually took up a position on a low mountain known as the Horns of Hattin, where Saladin promptly encircled the Frankish force. Guy’s army spent an uncomfortable night without water, and Saladin made things worse by having fires set around the base of the mountain, so that the smoke would increase the Frankish discomfort.

Early on the morning of July 4^th, Guy made the decision that he had to launch an attack, despite his men being exhausted and parched. The result was predictable; the Franks were badly routed. Guy, Gerard and many other nobles were captured, as well as most of the Templars and Hospitallers. Most of those who were not captured were killed, with only a few thousand Franks escaping, although Raymond of Tripoli was one of these.

The battle of Hattin

Saladin spared the lives of both Guy and Gerard, but joyfully ordered that all the other Templars and Hospitallers be beheaded by elder Sufis; since these old men were not soldiers, most were not particularly skilled with their swords, and the result was a fairly gruesome mass execution.

Having lost most of its manpower, the kingdom of Jerusalem was largely defenseless, and in the next few months, Saladin proceeded to capture most of its territory, including Jerusalem itself. Only the arrival of the forces of the Third Crusade prevented the wholesale destruction of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

What Happens in the Film

Early on in Arn the Knight Templar, Arn de Gothia (Joakim Natterqvist) and his beloved Cecilia (Sofia Hellin) are rightfully accused of fornication and falsely accused of incest by a malicious bishop, who forces Arn to join the Knights Templar for 20 years and Cecelia to enter a Cistercian abbey. There are problems with this, but I’ll save that for the other part of this review. Arn travels to the Holy Land where he becomes a famous knight (the Muslims call him ‘Al Ghouti’, apparently a corruption of ‘de Gothia’) and unintentionally saves the life of Saladin (Milind Soman), who is traveling incognito and is attacked by Muslim bandits. Because of this, Arn and Saladin develop a friendship of a sort despite being on opposite sides.

The whole chronology of the Holy Land part of the film is unclear, perhaps because this film is two films edited down into one. The Holy Land sequences all seem to be happening in 1187, after Arn has apparently been there for 20 years. Saladin sends Arn a message warning that he intends to capture Jerusalem, and offering to let Arn and the Templars leave unharmed. Arn meets Gerard de Ridefort (Nicholas Boulton), who hates him for unspecified reasons, when Saladin’s messenger is captured and refuses to speak to anyone except Arn. The historical Ridefort became Grand Master in 1184, but when Arn meets him, there is another Grand Master, who protects Arn from Ridefort’s hostility.

Nicholas Boulton as Gerard de Ridefort

Arn warns the Grand Master that Saladin is planning to attack, and persuades him to ambush Saladin’s forces at Montgisard, routing Saladin and forcing him to retreat. The major problem here is that the battle of Montgisard happened in 1177, and the commander was not Arn or any other Templar, but King Baldwin IV.

Arn after Montgisard

As a result of this victory, the Grand Master gives Arn “discharge papers”, a problem I’ll come back to. Then somehow Ridefort becomes Grand Master; again, perhaps the problem is in the editing. Ridefort decides to launch an attack on Saladin at Hattin, despite Arn’s warning that there is no water there. Ridefort rips up Arn’s discharge papers, thus forcing Arn to either participate in the battle or be a “deserter”.

The film presents the battle of Hattin as involving only Templars, rather than the combined forces of the kingdom, and makes it appear to be entirely Ridefort’s decision, rather than Guy’s. In fact, the film suggests that the kingdom of Jerusalem is basically just the Knights Templar; there isn’t even a mention of a king, other nobles, or any politics at all. So Hattin becomes entirely Ridefort’s responsibility, not Guy’s.

The Templars camp on a flat plain, rather than a mountain, and apparently set no guards, because Saladin’s men sneak up to the camp, light it on fire, and attack, killing everyone except Arn, who is spared because Saladin happens to notice him just before his head is about to be chopped off. Saladin has him nursed back to health and lets him leave the Holy Land for his eventual reunion with Cecelia. Saladin repeats the canard that the First Crusade butchered everyone in the city of Jerusalem in 1099, even though this accusation was debunked years ago by the scholar Benjamin K. Zedar, but the charge was widespread even in the Middle Ages, so it’s not historically inaccurate for Saladin to make the claim.

So while the film gets the broad outlines of Hattin correct (it was based on a bad decision, the troops had no water, Saladin set fires, and Saladin won), it gets most of the details wrong (King Guy and the Franks aren’t involved at all, Ridefort makes the decisions, the battle happens on a plain, Saladin burns the camp). It ignores the mass execution of the Templars after the battle (although back in Sweden, a character does tell Cecelia that all the Templars died). In general, the film relies on a popular, but in my opinion inaccurate, depiction of Saladin as a remarkably decent man in an age of violent xenophobes. But since Saladin isn’t really a major figure in this film, I’ll save that discussion for another movie.

The Templars meeting in council

 

Back to Those Discharge Papers

The film, and presumably Jan Guillou’s novels on which it is based, seems deeply confused about monasticism; this is a problem in the Cecelia portions of the film as well, but in this post I’ll just focus on his depiction of the Templars. The film seems to imagine the Knights Templar as a sort of modern army, which one enlists in and is eventually discharged from. The Swedish bishop sentences Arn to 20 years in a monastic order, and he winds up joining the Templars and going to the Holy Land. After 20 years, the Grand Master gives him “discharge papers” that will allow him to leave, but Ridefort rips them up and tells Arn that if he wants to leave, he will have to desert. Early in the film, while Arn is growing up at the Cistercian abbey of Varnhem, he meets Brother Guilbert, a former Templar who is now a Cistercian; evidently this man was also discharged from the Templar Order. Guilbert trains him to fight.

However, medieval monastic orders did not function like modern monastic orders or like the modern military. In the later Middle Ages, joining an order was always, at least in theory, a voluntary action. In the early Middle Ages, children were sometimes given to a monastery and required to stay in the order as adults; this had become much less common by the 12^th century, as had the occasional practice of forcing defeated nobles or kings into monastic orders as a way of forcing them out of politics. Bishops could impose crusading as a penance for a sin, but to the best of my knowledge, they could not force a layman to join a monastic order. (I’m willing to be proven wrong on this point, but I don’t know of any example on this from the period in question). And the Templars were a monastic order, not a volunteer army.

The Seal of the Templar Order

But even if a bishop could force a man to join the Knights Templar, there’s a bigger problem. Entry into a monastic order was understood to be a permanent change in a man’s life. Such a ‘conversion’ (as it was often termed) was one-way. Having joined a monastic order, a man was a monk forever. He swore an oath that was considered permanently binding. Monks were sometimes permitted to relocate from one monastery of their order to another, and in some cases they were permitted to move from a more relaxed order to a more strict order. This generally required authorization by a bishop; perhaps Arn’s trainer had political connections that enabled him to get permission to become a Cistercian. Women were sometimes permitted to leave to get married, but this again generally required episcopal permission, and was granted to politically important families.

So when Arn joins the Templars, he’s never going to be discharged; he’s going to die a Templar. Perhaps he could get transferred from the Holy Land to a European house of the order, but he’s not going to be allowed to ‘become a civilian’. Even if such a thing were possible, he would certainly need dispensation from a bishop, which he’s not going to get because literally the only bishop in the whole film is an evil Swede who hates him. So when Arn returns to Sweden, he does so as a deserter. More precisely, he does so as an “apostate”, the technical term for a monk who has broken his oath and fled his monastery. This would have given the evil Swedish bishop exactly the excuse he needed to thwart Arn and Cecelia’s happiness, because he could have ordered Arn back to the Templar Order forever.

Finally, it’s important to remember that in the 12^th century, it was thought that monks and nuns lived lives much more pleasing to God than those of the laity. When they died, they were assumed to have a much better chance of reaching Heaven; many nobles and kings joined monastic orders, particularly the Templars, very late in life, to get an extra boost toward salvation. Arn’s choice to leave the Templars would have seemed very strange to his contemporaries. But the film makes clear that pretty much Arn’s only motive for his actions is to be reunited with Cecelia. It’s really sort of creepy; Arn and Cecilia have a one-night stand and spend the next 20 years obsessively thinking about each other. But I suppose since they’re both in monasteries, they don’t get much chance to date.

While we’re on the subject of the Templars, there’s also a small issue that bugs me. The Templar cross was a red equilateral cross, like this:

The Templar Cross

But for some reason, the film generally depicts the Templars wearing a red cross with a white one superimposed on it , like this:

All the Templars in this film wear this cross

It’s a small point, but it irks me. I can’t see why some costume designer thought that this cross was better than the real thing, especially given how well-known the Templar cross is. (As ‘Miguel’ points out in the comments, the film’s cross is a genuine heraldic cross, but not one that Templars in this period would have used.)

In the next post, I’ll look at the material in Sweden, and come back to some of the same themes I’ve touched on here.

Note: An earlier version of the post misspelled “Cecilia” as “Cecelia”. The mistake has been corrected.

Want to Know More? 

Arn: The Knight Templaris available on Amazon.

As I mentioned, it’s based on Jan Guillou’s Crusades trilogy: The Road to Jerusalem: Book One of the Crusades Trilogy; The Templar Knight: Book Two of the Crusades Trilogy; and Birth of the Kingdom: Book Three of the Crusades Trilogy.

There are lot of really bad books on the Templars. As a general rule, anything that connects the Templars to the Holy Grail is full of shit. As another general rule, books on the Templars that weren’t written by Helen Nicholson, Jonathan Riley-Smith, or Malcolm Barber are probably not worth spending time on. Try Nicholson’s The Knights Templar.