Mystical systems
Knights Templar
Direct answer
Knights Templar: The Knights Templar were a Catholic military order founded in Jerusalem about 1119 to protect pilgrims, arrested in France in 1307 and dissolved by Pope Clement V in 1312.
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At a glance
- Also called
- templars, order of the temple, poor knights of christ, templar order
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Freemasonry, Bavarian Illuminati, Initiation, Western Esotericism
The Knights Templar were a Catholic military order founded in Jerusalem about 1119 to protect pilgrims, arrested in France in 1307 and dissolved by Pope Clement V in 1312.
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Who were the Knights Templar?
The Knights Templar, in full the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, were monks who fought. They took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, wore a white mantle with a red cross, and defended the crusader states. Gifts of land across Europe made the order rich, and its houses moved money for pilgrims and lent to kings.
After the last crusader city fell in 1291 the order had no clear purpose. Philip IV of France had its French members arrested in 1307 on charges of heresy and obscene rites, and confessions were drawn out by torture. The pope closed the order five years later and gave its property to the Knights Hospitaller.
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What sets Knights Templar apart
The Templars joined two callings the Church had kept apart, the monk and the knight. A brother owned nothing, ate in silence and obeyed his master, and also rode to war. The order answered to the pope alone, paid no tithes and crossed borders freely, which made it useful to kings and resented by them. Its end was a legal process: arrests on a single morning, years of hearings, and a papal decree that closed it without ever finding it guilty.
- Founded: Jerusalem, about 1119, by Hugues de Payns
- Rule approved: Council of Troyes, 1129
- Papal privilege: the bull Omne datum optimum, 1139
- Arrests in France: Friday 13 October 1307, on the order of Philip IV
- Dissolved: the bull Vox in excelso, 22 March 1312
- Last Grand Master: Jacques de Molay, burned in Paris in March 1314
Often mistaken for something else: The Knights Hospitaller, founded to nurse pilgrims, survived and received the Templar lands; the Templars alone were suppressed.
The story behind Knights Templar
A French knight, Hugues de Payns, founded the order about 1119, and the king of Jerusalem housed it on the Temple Mount, which gave it its name. The Council of Troyes approved its rule in 1129, with the backing of Bernard of Clairvaux. Clement V dissolved it by the bull Vox in excelso in March 1312, and the last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was burned in Paris in March 1314.
Why Knights Templar matters
The Templars are the root of more later legend than any other order, so knowing the record is the quickest way to weigh those stories.
How to read Knights Templar
Historians treat the order through its charters and trial records; legend writers borrow its name for treasure, the Grail and hidden survival.
Knights Templar in practice: an example
A reader who meets a claim about Templar secrets can ask one thing first: what is its earliest written source, and is it older than 1312?
Where readings of Knights Templar go wrong
The Masonic bodies and modern groups that carry the Templar name were founded centuries later and have no documented descent from the order.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- templars, knights templar history, order of the temple, poor knights of christ, templar order
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
Who were the Knights Templar?
They were a Catholic military order of monks founded in Jerusalem about 1119 to guard pilgrims. They became a rich landowning and banking body across Europe before being dissolved in 1312.
Why were the Templars arrested?
Philip IV of France, who was deeply in debt to them, accused them of heresy in 1307. Confessions were taken under torture. A Vatican parchment of 1308 shows the pope absolved the leaders before closing the order.
Do the Knights Templar still exist?
The medieval order ended in 1312. Later groups that use the name, including Masonic degrees and charities, are separate foundations of the eighteenth century and after.
