The Knights Templar and the Church of St. Bevignate

Our last planned stop before leaving Perugia on Saturday was the Church of St. Bevignate which is one of very few Churches used by the Knights Templar left in Europe. The only other one mentioned by our guide was a very small church in the mountains in France.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="453" caption="Church of St. Bevignate"][/caption]

The Knights Templar were a new kind of knight, a reformed knight if you will, that voluntarily separated himself from the selfish and lustful ways of his contemporaries and dedicated himself to monastic life. These warrior monks served mainly to protect pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land during the time of the Crusades. Although they were strong in their day, they were completely wiped out, more or less, in one day almost 700 years ago this month.

Forget what you learning in the Da Vinci Code. This is the story of the end of the Knights Templar. The French King accused the Knights Templar of heresy because the Crusades had ended and he felt that the vast amount wealth concentrated in the Templars would be better spent spread around through the other monasteries and through the royal treasury. But the monks were also fighters and the King knew he would have to take them by surprise, so he began history’s first modern police operation. He sent two letters to the police station in every city where there was a Templar monastery. The first letter said “Open the second letter on October 13^th.” On October 13^th, 1307 the second letter was opened in every town and they were instructed to go immediately to the Templar monastery and arrest the monks for heresy. This way every monastery was invaded at the exact same time, making it impossible for the monks to unite in defense. In fact, this is where the legend of Friday the 13^th being unlucky comes from: October 13, 1307.

Some of the art inside was original from the Templar period, but parts had also been painted over with later styles. There were paintings of Jesus coming down from the cross, the four evangelists, and Saints Mary Magdelene, Steven, and Lawrence all preserved from the original. The church itself is something of a buried treasure because it was used by the city of Perugia for many things such as a fire truck garage and excess library book storage before its true importance was discovered.

When an earthquake forced the town to commit to the preservation of the building or to let it fall down, they decided to convert it into a meeting center. Because it gets quite cold in the winter they decided to pull up the floor and put in a heater, but when they started to dig they found something unexpected: the ruins of a Roman cloth dyeing facility. Underground there are remnants of the pipes, pathways, even part of a floor that might have been under the owner’s house that are all over 2000 years old. Scholars now think that the church was built on top of this site because it kept them from having to dig a foundation.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="604" caption="Roman ruins under the floor"][/caption]

This site was one of my favorites of the weekend because it was such a hidden treasure. Unlikely to be splashed across a tourist guide or praised in an online forum, the Church of St. Bevignate spoke to me about how the world changes and how it stays the same. We still use pipes shaped just like the Romans. We go to mass just like the warrior monks of the 12^th Century.

And also, the story makes the experience. I’m all about the story.