Few ancient organisations have inspired so many myths and legends as the military order known as the Knights Templar.
If the stories are to be believed (reinforced by the popular novels by Dan Brown and Umberto Eco among others) these originally medieval warriors are still at large today, weaving webs of power across the world and guarding great secrets and treasures such as the Holy Grail.
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Most of these tales are far-fetched, but if you look carefully in the British countryside today, you can walk in the footsteps of these warrior monks and discover more of the truth about who they really were.
What was the Knights Templar?
The Knights Templar were a military-religious organisation founded in Jerusalem in 1120 by a group of warriors who had come to the holy city on pilgrimage. Their aim was to protect Christian pilgrims, on their way to and from Jerusalem, from bandits and to help defend the territory conquered during the First Crusade of 1096-99 - where the Holy Land was wrested from local Muslim rulers by a Christian army, largely from western Europe.
King Baldwin Il of Jerusalem (1118-31) gave the new order the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem as a headquarters. As the Europeans called the mosque Solo Temple, the organisation became order of the Temple.
With the First Crusade, the Church had accepted that Christians could serve God through fighting for a cause. The Templars became an official Church organisation, the equal of monks, but serving God by fighting rather than through the traditional route of prayer.
The first Templars were knights from landowning families, but they would accept any free person as a member. They took vows of personal poverty, chastity and obedience to their superior, and promised to help defend Christians and Christian territory, and in return they were supported with donations of land and money.
Who were the Knight Templars in Britain?
Families who were involved in crusading, and anyone planning or returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, were particularly eager to help these religious warriors.
Two of the leading donors in England, Matilda of Boulogne and her husband King Stephen (1135-54), were both children of crusading families. Matilda's uncles, Godfrey de Bouillon and Baldwin, had played leading roles in the First Crusade and became the first two rulers of the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem. With all this family interest in the Holy Land, it's no surprise that after her husband became king of England in 1135, Matilda donated land to the Templars.
King David of Scotland (1124-1153) also had a great interest in the crusading movement, and in around 1150 he set up the Templars' commandery, or administrative centre, at what is now Temple in Midlothian.
In Wales in 1116 Countess of Margaret of Warwick gave the Templars the manor and the church of Llanmadoc on the Gower Peninsula. While the earls of Warwick were crusaders, they sought to use the Templars in another role. The Gower Peninsula was a frontier area, troubled by piracy in the Severn Estuary and wars between the Norman settlers and the Welsh.
Margaret hoped that by entrusting this border territory to the Templars, she could still keep some control over it. Similar reasons could have prompted King Henry II of England (1154-89) to give the Templars property at Clontarf near Dublin, and at Crooke and Kilbarry in Co Waterford - both troubled border areas.
In the British Isies. the Templars lived like monks with a hierarchy of knights, priest aand servants running their estates and following a religious rule of life that laid down a daily routine of prayer and physical work. There were no Templar sisters in these islands although there were a few on the European continent. The brothers uniform was a long, dark tunic and a mantle: knight-brothers' mantles were white, while non-knights wore black or brown.
The Templars owned property in the countryside and in towns. Their farms grew wheat, other grains and beans, and raised stock, especially sheep for wool. Typically their farms were in low-lying or gently rolling land, which was ideal for grain or wool production. Income from sales of these products funded their work in the Holy Land. Because they collected money and transported it to the East, they could provide secure storage and money transfer facilities, which merchants and others also found useful - in essence, a banking system.
The Templars were also colonisers, attracting settlers to marshy or barren land at Bristol and at Temple Bruer, Lincolnshire, and developing Baldock in Hertfordshire as a new town. They employed many people, both men and women, and their mills and churches served their local communities.
The Templars' patrons also employed the Templars in various roles. King Henry II used their London house as a safe-deposit for part of his treasury. As the Templars travelled around Europe collecting donations, they could also be used as messengers on the king's business. The Templars became very influential at court, particularly during the troubled reign of King John (1199-1216) and the early years of his son Henry III (1216-72), when they were loyal servants who gave the monarchy much-needed financial support.
What happened to the Knights Templar?
Despite their wealth and military prowess, the Templars in the Holy Land failed to hold off the Muslims, and in 129I the Mamluk sultan of Egypt conquered the last of the 'crusader states. Critics urged that the Templars should be reformed. In 1307, King Philip IV of France accused them of heresy.
Although many contemporaries believed that he only wanted the Templars' wealth, a lengthy trial followed. Members of the order were tortured to make them confess, but elsewhere they insisted on their innocence.
England had the Templars property confiscated, but his officials did not find any idols or other signs of heresy. In fact, it turned out that the Templars' beliefs were the same as other Christians in Europe.
The trial ended in 1312, when Pope Clement V declared that the Templars were not guilty.
But the order's reputation was destroyed. Clement dissolved it and gave its property to the Templars' sister order, the Hospitallers. The Hospitallers acquired most of the Templars' property in the British Isles.
During the Reformation, the Hospitallers divided, and some of their branches are now Protestant, and can be found in Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.
Do the knights templar still exist?
But can we find any truth in the words of Dan Brown - do the Knights Templars still exist and keep a watchful eye under secret guises today?
No is the simple answer, the Knights Templar does not exist today. There are Templar re enactment groups in Europe and North America, and various organisations take the name "Templar' to signal they are continuing the order's dedication to service in other ways, but the rest is pure fiction.
In Britain, however, the 'Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem' traces its history back to the medieval Hospitallers, and now runs St John Ambulance. So next time you receive first aid from a St John Ambulance volunteer, you can say you've been rescued by a modern successor of the Templars and Hospitallers.
Today, many former Templar properties are still in use: you can find working farms and Templar churches that are still places of worship. The order's name also survives in many farm and village names - and, of course, in legends and hugely successful novels.
