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Peter the Hermit - Preacher of the People's Crusade

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A barefoot preacher from Picardy set half of Europe marching toward Jerusalem months before the regular armies departed. Peter the Hermit le...

Near Contemporary Templar Iconography - How the Order Was Actually Pictured

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Centuries of romantic engravings and nineteenth century imagination have shaped the popular image of the Knights Templar, yet only a handful...

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

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In medieval Holland and Zeeland, controlling water meant controlling people. The word tempel named not only sacred spaces but sluice mechani...

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

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Across two centuries of popular and initiatic literature, the Knights Templar, medieval and modern alike, have been assigned a remarkable su...

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

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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 M...

Black Madonnas and Templars

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Black Madonnas are among the most intriguing and enigmatic images in medieval Christian Europe. Found in hundreds of cathedrals and chapels,...

The Ordre d'Amus - Secret Precursor of the Templars or Modern Myth?

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Among the more persistent legends circulating in popular Templar literature is the claim that a secret society called the Ordre d'Amus w...

Lesser Nobility - The Hidden Backbone of the Temple

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The Knights Templar are remembered as warrior monks guarding the Holy Land, an elite brotherhood of armoured knights answering only to the P...

The Crucifix in Medieval Cistercian and Templar Practice - Popular Image and Fact

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Two powerful medieval institutions, the Cistercian monks and the Knights Templar, are both popularly associated with the crucifix, a cross b...