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Friends,
The list reads like a roll call of shadows: Skull and Bones, Illuminati, Priory of Sion, the Bohemian Club, Freemasons—mere whispers compared to the thunderous legacy of one brotherhood that dominated kingdoms, bent popes to their will, and amassed wealth beyond imagination before vanishing into the mists of history. The Knights Templar didn’t just exist—they conquered.
Even now, the Knights Templar haunts the shadows of modern society, their temples lurking in plain sight across the globe as powerful men swear oaths in midnight ceremonies, joining what is essentially a cabal of the elite—an impenetrable brotherhood where ancient secrets and modern influence collide behind locked doors.
But who exactly were the Knights Templar, and why, centuries after their dissolution, does their legacy still loom so large in our collective imagination?
Background
The First Crusade’s Christian victory at Jerusalem opened the floodgates of Western European pilgrimage to the Holy Land. By 1118, these travelers faced such peril that a French knight, Hugues de Payens, established a military brotherhood for their protection. He named his order the Poor Knights of the Temple of King Solomon, though history would come to know them simply as the Knights Templar.
King Baldwin II of Jerusalem (1118-1131) granted the Knights Templar their first headquarters on the Temple Mount—the sacred site where, according to Christian belief, Abraham had prepared the altar for the sacrifice of his son Isaac.
Pope Honorius II formally recognized the Order during the Council of Troyes in 1128CE, establishing the rigorous guidelines prescribed by Bernard of Clairvaux, a Cistercian monk and abbot. The knights adopted their distinctive white mantle, symbolizing their vow of purity, which Pope Eugenius later embellished with a crimson cross in 1146.
Rules of Honor
Bernard of Clairvaux, founder of the Templar’s, authored their governing document—the Rule of Life. Its 72 clauses demanded knights abandon worldly chivalry in favor of a higher calling: championing justice, protecting the vulnerable, and exercising restraint in combat.
The Rule placed extraordinary emphasis on sexual purity. Brotherhood knights lived under strict prohibitions against marriage and female companionship. These poor saps had to sleep with the lights blazing and their scratchy tunics still on—heaven forbid a stray hand wander south during a dream.
Weird eating rules of the knights. Meat? Only three times a week—they thought too much would turn you into some kind of corrupt meat-beast. Sundays were stingy: one measly meal, maybe two if you were lucky.
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, they’d get to eat two or three times, but only with boring veggie mush and bread. Fridays? Forget about it—total fast day. And from November 1st until Easter, they basically nibbled like mice, probably dreaming of giant turkey legs.
Daily Life
The Templar’s were a bunch of holy warriors with a split personality disorder—half bloodthirsty knights, half pious monks—who lived by a schedule that would make even today’s most obsessive Type-A personalities twitch. Their days were divided into “canonical hours”—basically, the medieval version of iPhone calendar alerts, but for prayer.
Picture this: you’re a Templar, snoring away, when—BOOM—4 a.m. Matins! Drag yourself out of bed, mumble some prayers, feed your horse (who’s probably giving you serious side-eye), then crawl back under your scratchy wool blanket until 6 a.m. when the Prime bell yanks you back to consciousness
Between Tierce at 9 a.m. and Sext at noon, the brothers would be out with their horses—brushing, feeding, and training the beasts while secretly naming the most stubborn ones after their least favorite brothers.
After Sext came the most torturous part of the day: lunch. Imagine trying to eat a hunk of mystery meat while Brother Chaplain droned through Leviticus, and you couldn’t even whisper “what IS this?” to your neighbor. The afternoon dragged on with Nones at 3pm, Vespers and another silent meal at 6 p.m., and finally Compline at 9 p.m.
After Compline, the brothers would knock back a bit of watered-down vino before sneaking off to whisper sweet nothings to their horses until the midnight curfew bell, when the head honcho would shush everyone until the ungodly hour of 4 a.m. rolled around again
An Easy Path to Power
The Knights Templar initially claimed their mission was to protect pilgrims traveling to sacred sites, though historical evidence suggests this role diminished as their influence grew. This raises a compelling question: how did these warrior-monks achieve such profound historical significance in just two centuries?
The answer is easy- they knew how to market themselves.
Hugh’s travels across Europe ignited widespread fascination with the Templar’s’ sacred mission. The capture of Jerusalem in 1099 had electrified Christian Europe, and by the late 1120s, this fervor remained undiminished. Aristocratic families, eager to honor relatives who had fought in the First Crusade, pledged resources to safeguard Christianity’s most precious conquest.
At least four European monarchs lent their considerable power to the organization: Baldwin II of Jerusalem, with his dwindling treasury and desperate need for skilled warriors, granted them quarters in his palace; Louis VII of France, fresh from a failed crusade, bestowed upon them extensive properties across his realm; Richard the Lionheart, between his bloody campaigns, entrusted them with royal finances and military support; and later Edward I of England expanded their landholdings throughout his kingdom despite his own ruthless taxation of other orders.
Following The Money
Beyond their martial prowess, the Templar’s wielded influence through a vast web of more than 1,000 strongholds stretching from Jerusalem to Spain to the Scottish highlands—all funded by generous benefactors. This sprawling infrastructure underpinned what amounted to medieval Europe’s first multinational bank, a financial engine that fueled the Crusades.
Through this system, knights received stipends, monarchs secured war chests, and even the Papacy managed its finances. The Order pioneered portable credit notes, established history’s first ATM network, negotiated hostage releases, and extended credit when treasuries ran dry.
The Fall
King Philip IV of France orchestrated the Knights Templar’s downfall to avoid repaying their enormous debts and to seize their vast resources. Desperate to eliminate these powerful creditors, he manufactured accusations of blasphemy and leveraged his control over Pope Clement V to authorize their persecution. Templars throughout France were subsequently imprisoned, brutally interrogated, and put to death, culminating in the Pope’s formal disbandment of the order in 1312—effectively erasing medieval Europe’s most sophisticated financial bankers.
Final Thoughts
Despite whispers of secret survival, no genuine underground order persists. Today’s self-proclaimed Templar groups—whether raising funds for charity or donning period costumes for weekend tournaments—merely borrow the mystique of the name. They stand disconnected from the medieval warriors, their assertions of ancestral ties crumbling under historical scrutiny like ancient parchment exposed to light.
However, the blood-soaked legend of the Knights Templar continues to haunt our collective imagination, spawning countless fevered conspiracy theories, blockbuster films that dramatize their supposed occult knowledge, and an obsessive underground culture desperate to uncover the order’s allegedly hidden treasures and forbidden secrets.
In other words, the Knight Templars have never truly died.
If you are interested in learning more, I invite you to check out some books I found that you might enjoy:
The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God’s Holy Warriors. On October 13, 1307, hundreds of brothers were arrested, imprisoned, and tortured, and the order was disbanded among lurid accusations of sexual misconduct and heresy. But were they heretics or victims of a ruthlessly repressive state? Dan Jones goes back to the sources to bring their dramatic tale, so relevant to our own times, to life in a book that is at once authoritative and compulsively readable.
Templars: History and Myth: From Solomon’s Temple to the Freemasons. Part guide, part history, this book investigates the Templar legends and legacy – from the mysteries of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, via nineteenth century development of the Freemasons, through to Templar appearances in Dan Brown and Indiana Jones.
Until next time, Keep Reading and Stay Caffeinated.
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Sources:
Explore the Medieval Era with Knights Templar
Timeline of the Crusades – Historic UK
The Succession to Baldwin II of Jerusalem: English Impact on the East on JSTOR
What are your thoughts?