The Knights Templar: powerful, dedicated, richer than kings, they were legendary even during their own existence. And many myths about them have flourished in the seven centuries since they were suppressed. Boyd and Beth Morrison, this month’s guest contributors, are the authors of The Last Templar. They share some of the fascinating facts they learned while writing their novel.
When we decided to feature the legendary Knights Templar in our newest medieval adventure, The Last True Templar, we knew the order had a rich and fascinating history. But in researching the book, we discovered just how much we had to learn about them to write our novel.
Here are 10 facts about the Templars that were important for the plot of our novel.
1. The Templars were incredibly wealthy
Over nearly two centuries beginning in 1119, the Knights Templar, formally known as the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, became one of the richest organisations in Europe. Their mission was to protect pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land, who were often beset by thieves and marauders intent on robbing them of the large amounts of money they needed for the journey.
The Templars invented a system by which the pilgrims could deposit funds at a location in their city of origin in exchange for a letter of credit that could be redeemed once they reached their destination in Jerusalem. In this way, the Templars became the first international bankers.
Pilgrims would often donate money and land to the Templars to reward the order for this protection and help them continue this mission, resulting in the Templars becoming richer than even some of the continent’s royalty.
2. The Templars likely used encrypted communications
To prevent the letters of credit from being counterfeited or to keep them from being redeemed after they were stolen, the Templars almost certainly used some kind of cipher system to encode them. None of these letters of credit have survived over the centuries, but cryptography predates the Templars by centuries, and substitution ciphers were in wide use by their time period.
3. The Templars were destroyed because the French king borrowed too much from them
King Philip IV of France was deeply in debt to the Templars by the beginning of the 14th century, thanks to his costly war against England. Instead of paying them back, which might have been impossible for him to do, the king devised a plan to cancel his debt by eliminating the order. He concocted false charges against them, particularly accusations of heresy in their secret initiation rites, such as denying Christ, spitting on the cross, and worshipping idols.
4. Templars took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience
The Templars did have initiations, but they were primarily about oaths of loyalty to the order. They became known as ‘warrior monks’ because, although they were knights, they also had to take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, which demonstrated that they would be faithful to the organisation and would not marry, build wealth of their own, or show allegiance to any other group.
In addition, they likely agreed to keep their operations secret, which allowed the French king to convince his subjects that the Templars had nefarious clandestine rituals.
5. The Templars were arrested on Friday the 13th
To prevent the Templars, an organisation based in France, from learning of King Philip’s plans to arrest them and fleeing his territory with their wealth, the King secretly ordered his soldiers to simultaneously capture Templars across the country on the morning of Friday, 13 October, 1307. Although this event isn’t thought to be the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition as an unlucky day, it might have contributed to popularising that notion.
6. Leaders of the Templars were tortured and burned at the stake
The captured Templars were tortured into false confessions that were used against their brethren, and many of them were burned at the stake, the horrific punishment for heresy, which was the gravest crime that could be committed at that time.
Jacques de Molay, the grand master of the Templars, was spared this sentence until he recanted his confession and was burned as a relapsed heretic along with three others in the centre of Paris in March, 1314, two years after Pope Clement V officially dissolved the order under threat of military action by King Philip.
7. Molay cursed his accusers during his execution, and it came true
While the flames were growing around him, Molay supposedly cried out a curse on those who had falsely condemned him, specifically the king and the pope. He called for them to meet him before God within a year of his execution.
Pope Clement V died just a month later, and, according to one account, while his body was on display in a cathedral, lightning from a thunderstorm set the church on fire and burned it to the ground. King Philip IV died from a stroke during a hunt later that same year. His sons died without male heirs, thereby ending Philip’s patriarchal dynasty, and leading to the Hundred Years’ War.
8. The Templar riches went to the Knights Hospitaller
Pope Clement had advocated for the Templars to merge with their rivals, the Knights Hospitaller, perhaps better known by some as the Knights of Rhodes or the Knights of Malta. The Hospitallers’ mission had been to care for the sick and injured pilgrims who travelled to the Holy Land; they became nearly as wealthy as the Templars. When the Templars were disbanded by the Pope, their remaining riches were transferred to the Hospitallers.
9. The Templars weren’t completely wiped out
Although a vast majority of the Templars were killed or imprisoned by the French king, the order had outposts across Europe, so many of them survived the initial arrest.
Of the ones that weren’t eventually captured or killed, some retired or renounced their allegiance to the order, while others retreated to the safe haven of Portugal, where the king was sympathetic to their plight. They were able to continue their existence under his protection using a new name, the Order of Christ.
10. The bulk of the Templar wealth might still exist in a hidden treasure chamber
Because of the secrecy and legends surrounding the Knights Templar, many believe that King Philip’s plot to arrest them and seize their wealth might not have been completely successful. It’s possible that the Templars held stashes of gold, gems, and other valuables in hidden caches around France.
If members of the order who escaped arrest were able to spirit this treasure out of the reach of King Philip to a concealed chamber somewhere in Europe, its location could have been lost in time if the knights who buried it died without revealing where it was.
In The Last True Templar, we based our story on this possibility, resulting in a race between good and evil across medieval Italy in the quest to find the fabled Templar treasure.
The Last True Templar by Boyd and Beth Morrison was published on 14 September, 2023.
It’s the second book in their Tales of the Lawless Land series.
Boyd is a New York Times bestselling author. His first novel, The Noah’s Ark Quest (The Ark in the USA), was published in 2010. He has worked with Clive Cussler on six of the Oregon Files series.
Beth is Senior Curator of Manuscripts at the J Paul Getty Museum and has has curated major exhibitions exploring the medieval world. She has a PhD in History of Art from Cornell University. She and Boyd are sister and brother.
If you’d like to know more about the Templars, Historia has some features you may be interested in. Simon Turney‘s The Women of the Knights Templar is our fifth most popular feature of all time. You might also enjoy his The Templars and the reconquest of Spain.
The historian and novelist Dan Jones, author of The Templars, has spoken to Historia about his latest book, Essex Dogs, which is set during the Hundred Years’ War – the conflict which arose from Philip IV’s territorial struggle with Edward I of England and the end of his male line of inheritance in 1328. We’ll be returning to Dan in October, when his second novel, Wolves of Winter, is published.
Images:
- Templars being burned at the stake, detail from f 44v of Chroniques de France ou de St Denis, after 1380: Royal 20 C VII, British Library via Picryl (public domain)
- Two Knights Templar on one horse (a symbol of poverty) from the Chronica Majora by Matthew Paris, MS 26, f 220, 13th century: Parker Library MS 26 110v, Corpus Christi College via Wikimedia (public domain)
- Philip IV of France from an illustration by Raymond de Béziers, c1313: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat 8504 via Wikimedia (public domain)
- Templars being burned at the stake: see 1
- Clement V in an illustration of Hayton remitting his report to the Pope in 1307 from Hayton , Fleur des estoires de la terre d’Orient by Héthoum l’Historien, 1400–1410: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits (public domain)
