re
Well, they were promised riches and admittance to heaven no matter what sins they committed prior to, during, or after the invasion of the holy land. The promise of riches and the freedom to rape whomever their perverse desires incite them to, to torture for the shear fun of it, and to murder at will are not exactly noble incentives.
My point wasn't that they were ALL evil. My point was that the majority were and it was allowed. Being puritanical was far from the requirement.
Sorry man, this is a false view of the templars. Not even the majority were evil and you need to do some reading before you make such a statement.
The Templars were organized. They had banks and fortresses and land holdings. They followed a code. They may have had their share of evil man, but they certainly were not an evil organization allowed to "rape or kill" who they wanted to. They certainly did not do such things.
There was a Templar justice system. If one of their knights did as you seem to think they did, they would bring it the leaders for justice.
Sorry man, the Knights Templars and various crusaders had respect for the Muslims they fought against and vice versa. If you read the history of the organization, you will understand that you do not get the kind of holdings they had by being a random murdering organization with no sense of justice or code. What you are talking about are barbarians. I don't know if you noticed but the barbarians lost against the organized Knight organizations exactly for the reasons you stated: they didn't care about how they treated the people they fought.
The Knight Templars, Hospitalers, Teutonic Knights, and various other Knightly organizations employed the rule of law and had a specific idea of how to treat people.
I'm not saying there weren't men who profiteered. But I am saying it wasn't the majority. They did very much care how their knights conducted themselves.
Alot of the knights that joined the Templars and various other organizations were men who gave up wealth and prestige in regular society fighton a crusade. They gave the majority of their wealth to Templar organizations.
I can't recite the history all hear. But you picked kind of a poor topic to discuss. I'm a student of Christian knightly organizations, though I'm not a Christian. Speaking as a person not aligned with or interested in aligning with any relgion, purely as a person who studies the subject as a personal interest, the knightly orders were far from the barbarian evil organiztions you claim they were. Far, far, far from the truth.
Do your research. The Knights Templar were organized, ethical, moral, and not all evil as an organization. Nor were the majority the butchers you claim them to be. They were just as men were back then, save that they were successful for quite a while until their own people turned on them because of the power struggle between the knights and the royal power.
It's a great history if you ever want to give it a read. The Spanish organizations, The Teutonic Knights, Knights Templar, Hospitalers, and various other knightly organizations. I wouldn't oversimplify any human organization as you have done.
But as I said, DnD is idealized. So the grayness of human morality doesn't much enter into it.