The Knights Templar

There are wiser experts than me on the subject of the Knights Templar, but I know enough to write this page.

They are a fascinating bunch, begun after Saladin chased the Crusaders out of Jerusalem. They were ostensibly put there to guard pilgrims on their way to the Temple in the city, but many believe that was not their only purpose, or indeed their real one.

The Templars set up shop in the Temple ruins and their organisation grew. It was based of celibacy (they were, after all warrior monks) as well as poverty. That last always makes me giggle. They were anything but poor and as their organisation grew, each new recruit would hand over all their property and their wealth to the Templars.

After a time they expanded, spread all over Europe and invented the first banking system. A pilgrim could hand his money to a branch in one country, receive in return a receipt, and when he got to the Holy Land or anywhere along the way, he could hand in his receipt in exchange for money, less a bit of interest, of course. Thus, the first cheques.

It is likely that the Templars spent years excavating beneath the Temple Mount, looking for religious relics, such as the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant. While there is no real evidence that the first ever existed, at least not as a cup or goblet, the second disappeared from the Bible story without explanation. People have been looking for it ever since.

The Babylonians returned everything they stole from the Israelites, and everything was listed in the Bible, except the Ark. It is doubtful they ever had the Ark, that the Israelites either hid it beneath the Temple or that it vanished before the invasion by the Babylonians.

There is a story that it resides, to this day, in Ethiopia. The tale is that the Queen of Sheba, who was Ethiopian, visited Solomon to learn about his innovations in order to implement them in her own country. The two had an affair, supposedly, although there is no mention of any intimacy in the Bible story. A son was the result, a son who returned as an adult to meet his father, King Solomon, who gave him the Ark to take back with him to Ethiopia.

Just why Solomon would have given away the most sacred artefact in Jewish history is a mystery, but the Ethiopians claim it is locked away and guarded by a monk who spends his entire life in that temple. Yet he never sees the Ark with his own eyes.

It is odd, though, that every year the Ethiopians hold a festival where replicas of the Ark are paraded through the streets.

Whether the tale is true or fiction, the Ark was certainly not still in the Temple when the Romans destroyed it in 70 AD, so I think we can put more store in the Ethiopian story than in the Indiana Jones one!

The Knights Templars and the Shroud of Turn

To return to the Templars, for many years they were the favourites of the Pope, but they fell out of favour with King Philip IV of France. It is likely that, being moneylenders, the Templars had lent Philip vast amounts of money that the King did not want to repay.

Charges against the Templars for witchcraft and heresy included the worship of a disembodied head.

Many believers of the authenticity of the Holy Shroud of Turin (right) believe that it was the Shroud, folded so that only the head showed and kept in a frame, was the very head they worshipped.

For more detailed evidence, see Ian Wilson's Book.

There is pollen evidence that the Shroud had spent time in the right areas and there are marks where the cloth has been folded for many years.

The Templars confessed to many other crimes, but who wouldn't under the sort of torture to which they were subjected? 

In 1307 hundreds of Templars were rounded up and tried for heresy and witchcraft. It was not a fair trial by our standards, as the guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion, and they were all burnt at the stake (tied to a stake and burned alive) except the leader who was roasted alive over a slow fire.

There is little doubt that many of the order escaped. Evidence has been left all over Europe and possibly even in North America, and the round churches dotted about England were mostly built by the Knights Templar.

The Church in the Temple in London, named for the Templars, holds the tombs of some of the Templars and is well worth a visit.


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Copyright 2022 by Margaret Brazear