Nine men lay prostrate on the floor of the holiest place in Christendom on Christmas Day, 1119.

The place was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and it had been twenty years since the knights of the First Crusade had taken the city in blood and war.

The leader of the men was named Hugues de Payens. Among the other eight were Godfrey of Saint-Omer, Geoffrey Bissot, Payen of Montdidier, André of Montbard and Archambaud of Saint-Aignan. Their prostration was the climax of the vows these men were taking, vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

These were the standard monastic vows of the Church, and there would have been little to set their vow taking apart from those professed by thousands of other monks if not for the name by which they proposed to call their confraternity: ‘The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Jesus Christ’. For these nine men were swearing their lives to Christ and their swords to the protection of their fellow Christians in the Holy Land, the newly conquered realm of Outremer.

But, at the time, barely anyone noticed. There was no chronicler writing down an account of what happened. We don’t even have a complete list of the names of all nine men. Indeed, there might have been as many as thirty men lying on the floor of the holiest church in Christendom that Christmas Day – the sources, which were all written considerably later, disagree. This is hardly surprising. The 12^th century was a time of extraordinary monastic renewal, with new orders springing up all over Europe. Of these, some lasted a few years, some a few decades, some continue to the present. But it was hardly unusual that a group of men should be making vows before God, and only the people present in the church at the time would have paid it any heed – then as speedily forgotten all about it when they emerged, blinking, into the cold clear light of a winter’s day in Jerusalem.

Hugues, the leader of these ‘Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Jesus Christ’ was born, probably in Payens, somewhere around 1070. Almost nothing is known of Hugues’ early life. However, he was clearly a member of the knightly caste, for his name appears, appended as a signatory, to a number of charters (documents recording the transfer of land or privileges) pertaining to the estates and properties around Payens. Payens, now known as Payns, lies on the River Seine, downstream from Troyes and 80 miles south west of Paris.

Hugues de Payens was probably one of the retainers of another Hugues, the Count of Champagne (has there ever been a more splendid title), who ruled his principality from his seat at Troyes. Hugues of Champagne was both pious and unhappily married: a situation calculated to make a man take up the cross. Which is exactly what Hugues of Champagne did, twice, first in 1104, spending four years in Outremer, and then again in 1114. While we don’t know if Hugues de Payens accompanied his overlord Hugues on his first journey to the Holy Land, it seems highly likely that he went with him on the second trip.

But when the Count of Champagne returned to France and his loveless marriage, Hugues de Payens remained in Outremer. With his companion, Godfrey of Saint-Omer, Hugues came up with the idea of founding a fraternity of knights that would follow the religious Rule (essentially, a monastic manual, regulating the lives of monks) of Augustine of Hippo while seeking to protect the stream of Christian pilgrims coming to the Holy Land in the wake of its liberation from its Muslim conquerors.

It is not hard to see why Hugues and his companions thought that this was necessary. Although the First Crusade had succeeded, against all odds, in capturing Jerusalem in 1099, and founding the kingdoms of Outremer, the Holy Land was by no means secured. In response to the success of the Crusade, hundreds if not thousands of Christian pilgrims started to make their way to the Holy Land, but the journey there, whether overland or by ship, was perilous, and never more perilous than when they actually arrived in Palestine. The most usual pilgrim route was to take ship to Caesarea or Jaffa on the coast before trekking to Jerusalem.

But the tracks through the Judaean Hills were rife with Saracen marauders and brigands. Pilgrims who went unarmed, seeking to follow in the footsteps of Christ, were all too likely to be killed or taken as slaves. Indeed, events earlier in 1119 may well have served to convince Hugues of the necessity for this military monastic order.

On Easter Saturday, 1119, which in that year took place on 29 March, pilgrims had gathered in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the solemn vigil that accompanied Christ’s journey into Hell following his Crucifixion, in order to free the souls of those held there. Pilgrims still gather in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Holy Saturday and, like those waiting on 29 March 1119, they are waiting for the miracle of the Holy Fire. This is when an unlit lamp placed upon the rock where Christ’s body was laid bursts spontaneously into flame: the patriarch of Jerusalem then emerges from the tomb, bearing a taper lit from the new fire, and lights the candles of the pilgrims waiting in the dark, in the church. There are, of course, both sceptical denunciations and pious defences, but its importance in history is its continuation.

On 29 March 1119, only twenty years after the recapture of Jerusalem, the assembled pilgrims in the church, having witnessed the event and seeing the new flame burning, burst from the church, intent on seeking a new baptism in the River Jordan. The river lies 20 miles east of the city, so it required a real outpouring of religious fervour to think to make it that far. But none of them made it. Many hundreds were killed by Muslim raiders; those few who survived were taken as slaves.

The Crusade had been launched in part because of the increasing dangers of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land when it had been under Muslim rule. Now, even though Jerusalem was in Christian hands, it must have seemed that pilgrimage was no safer than it had been before. Outremer trembled on the brink of perpetual war, its rulers always hampered by a chronic lack of manpower. Most of the men who had conquered in 1099 had returned home: Godfrey of Bouillon, the man entrusted with safeguarding the Kingdom of Jerusalem, was left with 300 knights and a thousand foot soldiers. Twenty years later, under the new king of Jerusalem, Baldwin II, the manpower situation remained desperate. Many hundreds of trained knights had come as pilgrims to the Holy Land in the two decades since the capture of Jerusalem, but once their pilgrimage was completed, there was no obvious avenue by which they could use their skills in the way that would best serve the kingdom: through their martial training.

Hugues of Payens, though, did not return home once his pilgrimage was done. In company with other knights, he took to hanging around at the place that was the obvious centre of their world: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There Hugues met other knights, who had looked round at the perilous situation in Outremer, and were similarly looking for a way to make a difference. Given the primacy always placed upon Hugues in the later accounts, we must assume that it was he who first came up with the idea of a military confraternity to protect pilgrims and the holy places. The need for such an order was all too obvious. So, with his eight companions, Hugues received permission from Gerard, the prior of the Holy Sepulchre, that they might make their vows in the most sacred church in Christendom. The order of The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Jesus Christ had begun.