Near Contemporary Templar Iconography - How the Order Was Actually Pictured

Centuries of romantic engravings and nineteenth century imagination have shaped the popular image of the Knights Templar, yet only a handful of illustrations survive from the Order's own lifetime, made by or for the milites Templi themselves. Which of these can we actually trust as a genuine likeness?

Tempel in the Low Countries - Water Control, Power, and Place

In medieval Holland and Zeeland, controlling water meant controlling people. The word tempel named not only sacred spaces but sluice mechanisms, bounded terrain, and were often combined with seats of exceptional jurisdiction. Were the most politically significant tempel locations chosen precisely because they mastered the water?

Inventing Ancestors - Why Esotericists Gave Neo-Templars a Secret Past

Across two centuries of popular and initiatic literature, the Knights Templar, medieval and modern alike, have been assigned a remarkable succession of secret predecessors: Essenes, Gnostics, Druids, Egyptian priests. Where did this habit come from, and what need did it serve? The answer reveals as much about modern anxieties as about medieval history.

Jihad and Peace - Muslim Rulers and the Dilemma of Alliance with the Franks

The Crusades are commonly presented as a clash of civilisations driven by the ideology of jihad on one side and holy war on the other. Yet Muslim rulers in the Latin East concluded pragmatic alliances with their Christian enemies just as readily as the Franks did. When did such arrangements serve the faith and when did they betray it?