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.

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

Among the more persistent legends circulating in popular Templar literature is the claim that a secret society called the Ordre d'Amus was founded in Toulouse as early as the ninth century, transmitting Egyptian wisdom from ancient Thebes to the heart of medieval Europe. Does any historical evidence actually support this claim?

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

Two powerful medieval institutions, the Cistercian monks and the Knights Templar, are both popularly associated with the crucifix, a cross bearing the body of Christ. But when the sources are examined strictly, the evidence differs from the popular image. What does it actually tell us?

The Hidden Hydraulics of the Knights Templar

When we picture the Knights Templar, we summon white mantles, red crosses, and distant Crusader citadels. Rarely do we imagine them stooped over a sluice gate, calculating the fall of water across a millpond. Yet behind the warrior-monk stood a quieter figure: the hydraulic engineer. What did the Templars actually build with water?

Trade, Marriage, and Military Orders - Medieval Links between Flanders and Scotland

Between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, Flanders and Scotland maintained a relationship built on commercial exchange, dynastic marriage, and shared crusading networks. Flemish settlers transformed Scottish urban and agrarian economies, while elite families consolidated positions through land grants and political alliance. Yet one question has received less attention: to what extent were those who co-founded the Knights Templar, rooted in Flemish aristocracy, also among those who shaped medieval Scotland?

Monks, Farmers and Neighbours - Everyday Life at a Templar House

The Knights Templar have long fascinated popular imagination as secretive warrior monks guarding crusader treasures. Yet when we strip away centuries of myth and examine the records that survived their suppression, we encounter something far more ordinary, and perhaps more revealing. What did daily life look like in a Templar house in rural England or Normandy?

Sword, Cross, and Empty Tomb - How the Knights Templar Observed Easter

Few medieval institutions blend the martial and the sacred as strikingly as the Knights Templar. These warrior monks swore oaths of poverty, chastity, and obedience yet were fierce fighters. And their trial in 1307 brought accusations of heresy and trampling the cross. But what does the historical record actually tell us about if and how these knights observed the holiest day in the Christian calendar: Easter?

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?

Intelligence as Instrument - Cross-Cultural Information Flows During the Crusades

Between the mid-twelfth and late thirteenth centuries, the flow of political and military intelligence between the Latin West and the wider Orient underwent a profound structural transformation, from ad hoc forgeries and isolated embassies to regularised, institutionally embedded diplomatic networks spanning three continents. This intelligence was not neutral: it was systematically shaped by its transmitters to serve strategic ends. Were the Crusades ultimately won or lost on the battlefield, or in the intelligence gap between what the West was told and what was actually true? Some examples.

Frisian Crusaders - Fierce Fighters Without Lords

From the late eleventh century onward, warriors from the Frisian coastal regions, a region stretching along the North Sea coast from the northern Netherlands to the mouth of the Weser, became a recurring presence in crusading expeditions. Contemporary observers repeatedly praised them as effective and reliable fighters, particularly in overseas campaigns. This is striking, since medieval warfare and crusading ideology are usually associated with feudal elites and mounted knights, while Frisia lacked both strong feudal structures and a cavalry tradition. How can the prominent role of a largely infantry-based, non-feudal society in the crusades between roughly 1097 and 1270 be explained?

The early years of Geoffrey de Bouillon - on the job training for the First Crusade

Geoffrey (Godefroi, Godfrey ) de Bouillon, born around 1060, was a member of a prominent noble family in Bouillon, in the Ardennes region (now Belgium, Wallonia, province of Luxembourg), then a part of the Duchy of Lower Lorraine (Lotharingia). What do we know about his origins, childhood and early years?

Did the medival Templars celebrate Pentecost?

The liturgical life of the Knights Templar during the Middle Ages is illuminated by their Rule, statutes, manuscript breviaries/ordinals, and commandery inventories. What is known on theTemplars celebrating Pentecost?

Unmasking the Legal Invalidity of the Knights Templar Dissolution

The dissolution of the Knights Templar in 1312 has long been shrouded in controversy. New research conducted by Sophie Kirchgasser, presented in her dissertation at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, sheds groundbreaking light on the bull Vox in Excelso, issued March 22, 1312 (alternatively sometimes April 3, 1312 is mentioned) and traditionally viewed as the legal instrument behind the Order's disbandment. Meticulous historical and legal analysis reveals that the dissolution was never formally or legally enacted, casting doubt on centuries of ecclesiastical and historical interpretation. What are the facts?

Templars and a New (or Old?) Priory of Sion

TemplarsNow™ normally does not venture in the realm of pseudo-history. But recently, during one of our regular scans of the internet on Knights Templar related news, we hit a well groomed page on the "Templar Knights". Now that is our piece of cake, so we clicked on it. What did we find?

Maritime Templar Activities in Southern France

From the 1110s for the Hospital, two decades later for the Temple, the commanderies invested in the cities and in particular their port, fluvial or maritime, of coastal Provence. The presence of the Orders is best documented in cities such as Marseille, Saint-Gilles, Arles and Avignon.

5 Great Forces Transforming the Medieval Church

"The second half of the eleventh century was a particularly decisive time in the history of the church. To mention only three of the more important developments, the popes emerged as the leaders of an international reform movement in western Europe; they became involved in a dispute with the empire whose effects were to be long-lasting; and they directed the military efforts of Christendom against Islam, most notably in the First Crusade

Philosophy and Christian Context of the Crusades

"The crusades were wars justified by faith conducted against real or imagined enemies defined by religious and political elites as perceived threats to the Christian faithful. The religious beliefs crucial to such warfare placed enormous significance on imagined awesome but reassuring supernatural forces of overwhelming power and proximity that were nevertheless expressed in hard concrete physical acts: prayer, penance, giving alms, attending church, pilgrimage, violence.

Templars as Villains - The Abduction of Rebecca

Few authors have shaped our image of the Knights Templar as powerfully as Walter Scott. Yet his dramatic villains of pride and corruption bear little resemblance to the disciplined, austere warriors who founded the Order in 1119.

The Knights Templar - bleuprint of militarized fraternities

"Formed in the setting of the Chapter of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem from a brotherhood of Champenois and Burgundian knights, the Templars received their rule at the Council of Troyes in 1129. They inspired all the foundations that followed by showing the way to militarization of charitable fraternities. 

The objective of the 1st Crusade - the changing Crusaders point of view

"Crusaders in the East were for the time militia (to the Byzantine Emperor, TN) who were there to serve a purpose. The question of restituting the churches of the East to Rome was not in the crusader’s plans. This position changed drastically when (Emperor TN) Alexius abandoned the Crusaders in view of the impending Muslim backlash.