圣殿骑士团:潮起潮落

The Rise and Decline of the Templars

作为中世纪欧洲一个隶属于罗马教廷的超国家宗教性军事组织,圣殿骑士团有其独特的历史地位。它是十字军运动的产物,通过在中东战争中的掳掠和接受教徒捐赠而集聚起巨量财富,并将之转化为货币资本,投入田产、房屋、各种产业的经营及金融借贷业,迅速膨胀为显赫一时的经济政治影响力量。但骑士团也因此而在复杂的利益网络中难以脱身,于14世纪初陷入了灭顶之灾,这同当时民族国家王权兴起的趋势是不无关联的。

Templars, as a religious military and supranational organization affiliated to the Papacy, had unique historical position and influence in Medieval Europe. It was the product of the Crusade era. Through its the plunder in the war of the Middle East and the acceptance of religious ~ndowment by Christians, Templars accumulated huge amounts of wealth and converted them into currency capital which be invested in estates, houses, various industries and financial loan, who inflated itself into an entity of economy-political power rapidly. However, therefore, Templars was also difficult to get away in the complicated beneficial network and eventually sank into destruction at the beginning of the fourteenth century. This result had some relevance to the trend of the rise of national royalty in Western Europe.