Rumours in the South - Trigger of the Templar Arrests

The charges of 1307 against the Templars are usually dismissed as standard slander against heretics and political enemies. Yet reports from 1306 and 1307 show that rumours about the Order had circulated for years in south west France, le Midi. What was said, who spread it, and did it trigger the arrests?

Beyond the Templars - Hospitaller Traces in the Low Countries

TemplarsNow normally restricts itself to the Order of the Temple. Yet across the Low Countries the Knights Hospitaller left a far denser and longer footprint, absorbing Templar patrimony after 1312 and outlasting the Templar Order by nearly five centuries. What still survives there roday  of this parallel Order?

Lesser Nobility - The Hidden Backbone of the Temple

The Knights Templar are remembered as warrior monks guarding the Holy Land, an elite brotherhood of armoured knights answering only to the Pope. Yet behind that martial glamour lay a sprawling network of lay supporters: minor lords, tradespeople, widows, and farmers who gave land, labour, and money. How decisive was this broader social base to the Order's actual survival and expansion?

Myth vs Mud - What Archaeology Tells Us About the Knights Templar

For over seven centuries, Templar commanderies have fired the popular imagination as fortified bastions of a warrior brotherhood. Yet systematic archaeological investigation across France tells a strikingly different story: one of farms, chapels, cemeteries, and artisan workshops. Can material evidence alone finally displace the myth with historical reality?

Chartres cathedral and the Templars

Undoubtedly the Templars were awed and inspired by the huge religious building projects of their days, such as Chartres Cathedral. But did they initiate, lead and/or support that build as is suggested in some literature? The facts. 

Relics of the Knights Templar - character and objective

"Singled out by Jacques de Molay as a significant component of his order’s religious heritage, the last grand master of the Templars claimed that he did not know of “any other Order in which the chapels and churches had better or more beautiful ornaments and reliquaries relating to the divine cult and in which the divine service was better performed by its priests and clerics, except for cathedral churches.” (...)

Relics of the Knights Templar - saints and veneration

Saints or angels were an inspiration for Templars and Hospitallers. Particularly popular among the military orders were female martyr saints. Some examples.

The Templar fleet - mistery and fact

In many a conspiracy tale the Templar fleet plays a starring role, spiriting the Order's treasure to safety at the moment of its dramatic collapse in 1307. But how substantial was this fleet in reality, and did it ever amount to a serious naval force? 

The Templars amongst the other people of Outremer

When were the Orders of Hospitallers and Templars born? What was their original purpose and how did this develop. Medievalist Alain Demurger elaborates on the role of the soldiers of the Holy Land and their presence among the Crusaders, the Franks, the Christians of Outre Mer (the Orient) and the Muslims.