Champagne is the historical landscape Colonel Ardenti treats as the first place to search for the Templars’ supposed underground survival. He links the region to the order’s beginnings and to Saint Bernard’s support, then narrows his search from Champagne as a whole to Provins as the refuge he considers most plausible.

Historical Connections

Ardenti’s argument begins with Hugues de Payns, whom he associates with Champagne, near Troyes. He also points to Hugues de Champagne, who ruled the region when the Templars were founded and later joined them in Jerusalem. On returning home, Hugues supposedly made contact with the abbot of Cîteaux and helped set in motion the study and translation of Hebrew texts at the monastery.

The account further connects Champagne to the land around Clairvaux. Hugues is said to have given Saint Bernard’s monks a forest at Bar-sur-Aube, where Clairvaux was later built. Ardenti presents these details as a chain of patronage and religious scholarship that helps explain Saint Bernard’s championing of the Templars.

Ardenti’s Reconstruction

Ardenti argues that Saint Bernard strengthened the Templars at the expense of the Benedictines, directing land and houses toward the order. He invokes the commanderies in the Forêt d’Orient and claims that Templars in Palestine maintained relations with Muslim mystics rather than simply fighting them. From these alleged connections, he constructs a larger theory: a hidden directorate directed the Crusades to preserve the order and built a network of power beyond royal jurisdiction.

This is Ardenti’s speculative interpretation, not an independently confirmed account. He presents Champagne as the order’s home ground, where its members could blend into a familiar environment, and says that after the supposed flight of the Templars’ secret core, France would be the place to look for its original gathering.

From the Region to Provins

Ardenti considers several possible hiding places in Champagne and rejects each in turn. Payns, associated with Hugues de Payns, was too small to be convincing; Troyes, as a city, would have held too many royal officials; and the forest owned by the Templars was where royal guards would naturally search. He therefore concludes that Provins was the only plausible refuge.

The narrowing of the search gives Champagne a double role in Ardenti’s story: it supplies the historical links from which he builds his theory, but its most obvious locations fail his test of concealment. Provins becomes the answer he derives from that contrast, rather than a place whose role is established as fact.