The Templar's first task: highway police in peace time

After the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 the Kingdom of the Franks did not endure a perpetual state of emergency, as the chroniclers and many historians wanted us to believe. Rather, the roughly ninety years leading to Saladin’s decisive victory over the Frankish army at Hattin in 1187, which put an end to the first Frankish kingdom, can be divided into a period of frequent military engagement between Franks and Muslims, a period of relative security, and a period of sustained Muslim offensive, which resulted in the creation of the Frankish frontier. 

Evrard des Barres - Templar Grand Master and Cistercian monk

Evrard des Barres (ca 1113 - November 1174) was the third Grand Master of Knights Templar, serving from 1147 until 1151. After his career at the Temple he retired to Clairvaux near the end of the life of  abbot Bernard (died 1153). This again is an illustration of the close relationships that existed between the Knights Templar and the Cistercian Order. What are the details of Evrard's life?

Templars in Sweden?

People who read Jan Guillou's books on Arn Magnusson, the imaginary Swedish Knight Templar, often ask if there really have been Knights Templar as far up north as Sweden. It has of course been speculated that the noble man who appears in the relief on Forshems church, and who inspired Guillou, must have been a Knight Templar. Is there reason to believe this?

The Templars and Nostradamus - myth or truth?

In his book  Nostradamus and the Lost Templar Legacy (2003) Rudy Cambier presents the results of his decade long research and analysis of the verses of Nostradamus' 'prophecies'. He argues that the language of those verses does not belong in the 16th Century, nor in Nostradamus' region of Provence, France. An intriguing alternative vision unfolds.