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The Knights Templar were a Catholic military religious order founded in 1119 to protect pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem. Their sudden destruction on Friday, October 13, 1307, under King Philip IV of France, created a silence that has been filled with legends for more than seven centuries.

King Philip IV’s men arrested hundreds of Templars across France in a single, coordinated sweep. The charges—heresy, sodomy, and worship of an idol called Baphomet—were extracted under torture. The order never recovered. But the questions it left behind have survived longer than the order itself.

What Was the Knights Templar’s Original Purpose?

What Was the Knights Templar's Original Purpose

The order was born in the aftermath of the First Crusade. In 1119, a French knight named Hugues de Payens approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem with a proposal: a small group of knights would dedicate themselves to protecting Christian pilgrims on the dangerous roads between Jaffa and Jerusalem. The king granted them quarters on the Temple Mount, the site of Solomon’s Temple. That is where their name comes from: the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon.

For nine years the order remained small. Then Bernard of Clairvaux, the most influential churchman of the 12th century, wrote In Praise of the New Knighthood (circa 1129). He argued that killing in the name of Christ was not murder but the eradication of evil. This argument was novel. It gave the Templars a theological justification for what earlier church councils had condemned as sinful.

At the Council of Troyes in 1129, the church formally recognized the order and gave it a rule. The rule was strict: poverty, chastity, obedience, and a monastic life combined with military training. The knights wore white mantles, later marked with the red cross. They were answerable only to the pope, not to any king or bishop.

How Did the Templars Become So Powerful?

How Did the Templars Become So Powerful

The Templars did not start rich. They took vows of poverty, and early members donated their lands to the order. But within a few decades, the order built a financial network that spanned Europe and the Middle East.

Their key innovation was the letter of credit. A pilgrim could deposit money in a Templar house in London, receive a coded document, and withdraw the equivalent in Jerusalem. The Templars did not charge interest (the church forbade usury), but they took fees for the service. This made them the first international bankers.

By 1150, the order owned castles, farms, churches, and entire villages across Europe. Their commanderies functioned as way stations, treasuries, and armories. Kings and nobles deposited their wealth with the Templars for safekeeping. The French crown kept its treasury at the Paris Temple.

The military side was equally formidable. At the Battle of Montgisard in 1177, 80 Templar knights led by Odo de Saint-Amand helped defeat Saladin’s army of 26,000 men. The numbers may be exaggerated by chroniclers, but the effect was real: the Templars were feared. Their discipline and fortress-building skills made them the backbone of Crusader defenses.

What Happened to the Templars After the Fall of Acre?

The loss of Acre in 1291 was the turning point. The last Crusader stronghold in the Holy Land fell to the Mamluks. The Templars retreated to Cyprus, then to their European holdings. The reason for their existence was gone.

King Philip IV of France was deeply in debt to the Templars. He had borrowed heavily for his wars against England. The order held his treasury. In 1307, he moved. With the cooperation of Pope Clement V (a French pope under Philip’s influence), he ordered the mass arrest.

The charges were formulated by Guillaume de Nogaret, Philip’s keeper of the seal. They included:

  • Denial of Christ during initiation
  • Spitting on the crucifix
  • Worshipping an idol called Baphomet
  • Homosexual acts between knights
  • Secret oaths of loyalty that superseded church authority

Under torture, many knights confessed. Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master, confessed and then retracted his confession. He was burned alive on March 18, 1314, on a small island in the Seine. Legend says he called Philip and Clement to appear before God within the year. Both died within the year, though from natural causes.

What Did the Templars Actually Believe?

The historical record is frustratingly thin. The Templar rule survives in several manuscripts. It describes a life of prayer, military training, and communal living. The knights attended eight canonical hours of prayer daily. They ate in silence. They slept in their clothes, ready to arm at a moment’s notice.

But the trial records, extracted under torture, are the only source for the secret initiation rites. The charges describe a ceremony where the new recruit was told to deny Christ and kiss the receiving knight on the mouth, navel, and lower back. Modern historians disagree on whether these rites were real, exaggerated, or fabricated entirely.

The order’s catechism forbade spitting on the cross. The charge of spitting on the crucifix seems to come from a misunderstanding of the Templar practice of wearing a cross that was sometimes touched by the lips during the kiss of peace. The Baphomet idol is almost certainly a corruption of the name “Muhammad” or a general term for a pagan idol. No historical Templar seal or document shows the goat-headed figure that later occultists would claim. For a deeper look at this symbol, see our glossary entry on Baphomet.

How Did the Legends Begin?

The seed of the Templar myth was the silence after the fire. The order was destroyed so completely that no one could answer the accusations. The few surviving knights were absorbed into other orders or lived out their lives in obscurity. The treasure of the Templars was never found.

In the 18th century, a series of texts began to connect the Templars with the Holy Grail. The connection was largely invented by writers who saw the Grail romances as a coded Templar document. The Templars had been associated with the Temple of Solomon, and the Grail was a vessel of hidden knowledge. The two ideas merged. For more on this legend, see our guide on the Holy Grail in esoteric tradition.

The 19th century added more layers. Sir Walter Scott used the Templars in Ivanhoe (1819). The French occultist Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Constant) drew the first modern image of Baphomet in 1856, a winged hermaphroditic figure with a torch between its horns. He claimed it was a Templar symbol. It was not. No medieval Templar image resembles it.

The 20th century brought the most influential source: the Priory of Sion hoax. In 1960s France, a man named Pierre Plantard created a fictional secret society that supposedly protected the Merovingian bloodline. The Templars were woven into this narrative. The books Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982) and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003) popularized the idea that the Templars guarded the secret of Jesus’s marriage to Mary Magdalene. None of this is supported by historical evidence.

What Do Practitioners and Researchers Actually Use Today?

In modern esoteric practice, the Templars function as a symbol of hidden knowledge and spiritual knighthood. Several contemporary orders claim descent from the original Templars, though no historical chain of succession exists. The Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), founded in the early 20th century, was influenced by Templar themes through the work of Theodor Reuss and Aleister Crowley. The O.T.O. uses the name and the cross but does not claim unbroken succession.

Some practitioners work with the Templar cross as a talisman of protection and spiritual authority. The red cross on white is a common symbol in ceremonial magic. The historical rule of the Templars is sometimes studied as a model for monastic discipline within a magical framework. For a broader overview of how dead orders shape modern occultism, visit the occult history hub.

The Templar treasure is another focus. Several searches for the lost Templar fleet and treasure have been conducted at the supposed site of the Templar base on the island of Oak Island, Nova Scotia. Nothing has been found.

Common Misconceptions

The Templars discovered the Holy Grail. There is no medieval text that connects the Templars to the Grail. The Grail romances of Chretien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach mention the Templars, but the connection is literary, not historical.

The Templars survived in secret. The order was dissolved by papal decree in 1312. Some members joined other orders. No evidence of a continuous secret Templar organization exists.

Baphomet was a Templar idol. The trial records mention an idol, but the descriptions are vague. The goat-headed Baphomet is a 19th-century invention.

The Templars were Freemasons. Modern Freemasonry adopted Templar imagery in the 18th century, but there is no historical link between the original order and the Masonic lodges.

FAQ

Did the Knights Templar really worship Baphomet?
No. The charge was extracted under torture and is not supported by any Templar documents or artifacts from before the trial. The familiar goat-headed image dates from 1856.

What happened to the Templar treasure?
It was likely confiscated by the French crown, the papacy, and other rulers. No treasure has been found that can be definitively linked to the order, despite centuries of searching.

Are there any Knights Templar today?
Several organizations claim Templar lineage, but none can prove unbroken succession from the original order. The historical order was formally dissolved in 1312.

The Thread That Remains

The Knights Templar are not a living tradition. They are a dead order that left a deeper mark in death than in life. The fire of 1314 burned a question into the European imagination: what did they know that needed to be silenced? The question has no answer, but it has kept the Templars alive longer than any army could have. For those who study the history of occult orders, the Templars are the original warning: power that answers to no king can be destroyed by any king. The seal of the two knights on one horse still rides between fact and fable, and we are still trying to read the inscription.

Next: Explore the occult history hub for more on medieval secret societies, or read about related symbols such as the Holy Grail and Baphomet.