Hugh of Champagne Was an Enigma

Hugh, Count of Troyes and Champagne was even more enigmatic than Hugues de Payens because we know preciously little of what he did in his life – and almost nothing about what he did.

Hugh was born… we do not know exactly when (most likely, sometime around 1070) into a powerful House of Blois. So powerful, in fact, that French King Philip I arranged for his daughter, Constance, to marry Hugh. Philip hoped to influence the House of Blois, and thus counter the opposition of Fulk IV, Count of Anjou.

Hugh was the third son of Count Theobald III of Blois and Countess Adele of Valois bearing the title count of Bar-sur-Aube (city in northeastern France). His older brother Count Odo died in 1093, leaving him master of Troyes, Bar-sur-Aube and Vitry-le-Fran;ois.

Thus, these three contiguous countships that formed the core of an emerging Champagne were united under his rule, and though he preferred “Count of Troyes“, the oldest of his lordships and site of the only bishopric in his domains, many contemporary documents call him the Count of Champagne, the title preferred by his descendants.

His marriage into royalty did not work out – the union between Constance and Hugh was too late to achieve the result desired by French king and it appears that his relationship with his wife was not exactly loving.

After ten years of marriage and without any surviving children (their only known son, Manasses, died young in 1102), Constance demanded an annulment. She obtained a divorce (no small feat those days) on 25 December 1104.

Hugh’s second marriage was far more successful – he married Isabella, daughter of Stephen I, Count of Burgundy and niece of Pope Callixtus II. This marriage turned out to be absolutely vital for Knights Templar – being a close relative of the reigning Pope (1119 – 1124) did help a lot during the first crucial years of the order.

Hugh was the generous patron of the abbeys of Montieramey Abbey and of Molesme. But he did not stop there: in 1115 he granted prime real estate (fields, meadows, vineyards, woods and water in a wild valley of a tributary of the Aube) to his relative – Bernard of the Cistercian order – in order to found Clairvaux Abbey, a Cistercian monastery at Clairvaux (and become its abbot).

Thus, Hugh of Champagne essentially made Bernard of Clairvaux – without this gift there would have been no Clairvaux… and no Bernard of Clairvaux.

The most mysterious part of Hugh’s life are his long (really long) pilgrimages to the Holy Land in 1104–07 and in 1114–16.  No one knows what he did there or what he was looking for.

My (and not only mine) theory is that he was looking for some valuable Christian relics – Holy Grail, Shroud of Christ… and, of course, the Ark of the Covenant. And finally found what he was looking for – in 1116 in Jerusalem he was approached by Hugues de Payens who convinced him that he knew where the Ark was hidden.

Hugh accepted his theory, gave him seed money for Ark excavation project… and sometime in 1118 the ragtag team of treasure hunters assembled by Hugues de Payens found and extracted the Ark.

After it was decided (by Hugh of Champagne and Bernard of Clairvaux – and possibly by King and Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem) to keep this find a secret, another decision was made – to create a military-religious order to keep and protect the Ark – and by extension to protect the whole Outremer.

This order became known The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon and also known as the Order of Solomon’s Temple, and mainly the Knights Templar, or simply the Templars.

And in 1125 Hugh of Champagne and 11 other knights founded Ark Templar – a unitarian religion (essentially, a Christian heresy) built around Ark of the Covenant.