After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Real History of the Knights Templar

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Why are the Knights Templar surrounded by myths and legends? Is there any truth to the tales of the Holy Grail or that the Knights survived? Why does this medieval order, which disappeared in the 14th century, continue to enthral us today?To uncover the real history of the Knights Templar we are joined by Dan Jones - historian, author, podcaster and host of This Is History, whose new series The Iron King is all about man who destroyed the Templars - King Philip the Fair.Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/ 

Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddy. And I'm Anthony. And today we have got the legend of the Knights Templars. We're talking warrior monks. We're potentially talking Western invaders. Are we talking secret societies that rule the world? Anthony, set the scene. In March 1314, on a scaffold outside Notre-Dame in Paris,

an old man is listening as a cardinal condemns him to lifelong imprisonment for heresy. The old man's name is Jacques de Molay, and he was, until recently, leader of an order of warrior monks who had battled in the Holy Land for centuries, the Knights Templar. But now his order has been torn apart by the King of France, jealous of their wealth. Under threat of torture, our old man, Jacques de Molay, confessed to every heresy the King desired. Now it is too late to save the Sacred Order. Now the hour for resistance has passed. But to everybody's surprise, suddenly, Jack stands up. He interrupts the cardinals and announces to the gathered crowd

that he is guilty of nothing except betraying the honor of his beloved Knights Templar. That he gave false confessions to save his own skin. Now at this point, the crowd is aghast. They know what will happen when the king hears of this. And, true enough, before the day is done, a pyre is built, and Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is set to end his days in a burst of flames and a stench of burning flesh. A stench of burning flesh. Hello. After dark, guys.

Yes, that's the tone we're going in with. Hello and welcome to After Dark. Joining us today to wade through some of this mythology, this history, where the two things overlap, is Dan Jones. He's a TV presenter, author of best-selling books, including The Templars, The Rise and Fall of God's Holy Warriors, and he's also the host of This Is History. Dan, This Is History is so fantastic. For anyone who hasn't heard it, give us a little bit of insight into what they can expect if they head over there. Yeah, well, This Is History is a podcast in which I tell great stories from the Middle Ages. We've got a strand called A Dynasty to Die For, which is all about the Plantagenets,

and a new strand, which is This Is History Presents the Iron King. It's all about Philip IV, King of France, who happened to be the king who brought down the Knights Templar. We're going to hear all about him in just a little bit. And so just so we know going into this, Dan is going to help us with the history side of things, because this is not Maddy and I's area of comfortability. I've made up a word, it's fine, let's go with it. But we're also going to hear an awful lot of myth and legend and myth-busting in this. And this is

why it's such a good after-dark topic, because it melds those two worlds together. So this is why it's great to have Dan here, and it's a fascinating topic. What's the origin of the Knight's Temple? Where do we begin with this story? How do we get straight to the truth of what this organization is? It's very specifically in Jerusalem in the aftermath of the First Crusade. So we are at the beginning of the 12th century. First Crusade preached 1095, Jerusalem falls 1099. And from that point onwards, Jerusalem is in the hands of Christian expats, if you like, mostly from France and Western Europe. The area surrounding Jerusalem and the area of the Crusader states that are set up, Kingdom of Jerusalem, County of Edessa, Principality of Antioch, County of Tripoli, is dangerous. It's dangerous, particularly for pilgrims who travel from western europe to pray at the the

holy sepulcher at christ's tomb and there is a need for defense of the roads initially so in the year 1120 so we're 21 years after the fall of jerusalem a very small group of french knights in jerusalem decide they're going to set up an organization that's going to provide protection for pilgrims. And that organization is what will become the Knights Templar. So they're a police force. They're a sort of police force, roadside rescue. They have a spiritual dimension. So what's odd, unusual, novel, unique about the Templars is that they combine the roles of monks, is that they combine the roles of monks, professed religious people living by an order, a rule,

and the roles of warriors. So those two things don't fit together very neatly. You know, they're like oil and water. You've got to really shake them to emulsify them. But the Templars and subsequently the Hospitallers, that's the Knights of the Hospital in Jerusalem and the Teutonic Knights and other orders beside. Less catchy names. Less catchy names with a less storied history in some regards

but certainly less legend built around them, although in the case of the Hospitallers, far more enduring because they still exist in some form today. Yeah, they all combine the roles of professed religious and warriors and that is an unusual thing to do. And part of that apparent paradox is one of the things that makes the Knights Templar interesting, cool, and sexy to people in the Middle Ages and to us today. I mean, one of the things that you're describing, first of all, is kind of surprising even to

me, and I think possibly to the listeners, even to me, but someone with a relatively decent historical knowledge. even to me, but, you know, someone with a relatively decent historical knowledge. You were starting from a point of non-violence, almost, that there is a spiritual thing happening here, there is an aid thing happening here, I'm using that word loosely, but then it has this violent output as well. There is violence in this history. How does that sit together? You mentioned that it's not necessarily always a very comfortable pairing. So how does it sit together and why are they fulfilling both of those purposes? Well, we're in the era of the Crusades. Anyone who thinks about the ministry and passion of our Saviour Jesus Christ might well be surprised to know that he would have wanted people to be

violent in his name. Certainly within the sort of basic tenets of the New Testament, it would seem odd that you could go and kill other human beings in the name of Christ. But performing that act of theological gymnastics is really what underpins the crusading movement in general. The preaching of the first crusade, and this rolls out of events in the generation or two beforehand, state explicitly that if you travel far from your home to Constantinople, Jerusalem, wherever it might be, and kill the enemies of Christ, you will gain remission from sins. You will enter heaven. So that's the central promise of the Crusades. So in that sense, it's not totally surprising that out of the crusading

world should spring an institutionalized sort of permanent body of crusader professed religious. I mean, it's taking it up one notch. When you're signing up or swearing an oath to join the order, this is one stage beyond, I think, taking a vow to go on crusade. This is the elite crusader organization, but that's the world from which the temple is spring and it's the world that exists throughout their history which runs from as i say the beginning of the 12th century through to as you've evocatively described the beginning of the 14th century so how does one join this organization because you've exactly the same yeah you say it's an elite group do you have to is there an application system is there a training program can we expect like a training montage you sound like you're up to join are you like yeah no it's very much

not my vibe but sure yeah how does one join well once the templars have been established and what i mean by that is hugh de pound the first master of the templars and his mates there was this is a very informal organization to begin with, but there's a process by which it's formalized and the Pope grants a rule to the Templars, which states how they should live, what they should do, what they should not do, and so on. Once the order is institutionalized, if you want to apply to join, there are sort of different levels at which you can become a Templar in the Middle Ages. And the image of the Templar, I suppose, that most people will probably have in their heads is of the knight on the front line in

the Crusades, swords swinging in hand, white robes, red cross, the whole nine yards. The Hollywood version. That's the tip of the iceberg. That's a very small number of warriors in their prime who are fighting on the front line of Crusades. Besides that small number of Templar knights, and as the order goes on, you really do have to be a knight. It's selected by birth. Not anyone can sign up to be a knight. You can turn up to your local Templar house, which might not be, in fact, probably isn't on the front line of the Crusades. There are Templar commanderies, preceptories, houses all over Western Europe, particularly in France and England. You can turn up and ask to join. And there is a ceremony by

which you're inducted into the order. That will become a very important point of controversy during the order's downfall. You have to make various promises and vows and agree to all sorts of conditions, which might include keeping the business of the order secret. Again, that's something that becomes very important during the downfall of the Templars. And then lo and behold, you're a Templar. Now, what kind of Templar you are can vary. So most Templars would be brothers who worked in houses far from the front line, doing boring jobs like accountancy and agriculture. I did not know this. Okay. The majority of the order is not there to fight.

The majority of the order is to raise money so that the elite can fight. You've got an enormous, you know, military terms if you think about an army being nose and tail. You've got the nose of the army,

which is a bit the fights, and the tail, which is everyone who supports the people who fight. Within the order of the temple, it's just like that. There's a sort of pyramid structure of regionally organized and locally

organized preceptories, commanderies, houses, full of Templar brothers who are praying and working, but fundamentally are raising money through local donations, through the proceeds of agriculture, through finance. As the order of the temple develops, they become expert international financiers. So it's a money-raising institution in the main, and it funnels that money to the front line. You mentioned there the word secret, and my ears have pricked up. There's a sense that when you join, you have to keep the organization's activities a secret or protect its role in the world in some way. Why was that necessary? its role in the world in some way. Why was that necessary? If they're policing parts of the world where there are routine and regular pilgrimages, people are seeing them in action. What's the

secret element here? So the first function of the Templars, as we've been discussing, is roadside security. But within a few generations, that developed significantly. So the Templars, from being bodyguards, start to become a sort of elite military force and a part of the armies of the crusading kingdom of Jerusalem. So think about them like medieval SAS, Navy SEALs, Delta Force, French Foreign Legion, military elites. And that then means that there is, by definition, an element of military secrecy to what they do. They are the special ops kind of strike force, and so it's a matter of good practice not to let on what they're up to in battlefield terms at any rate. at any rate. And across the course of the 12th century into the 13th century, the Templars, along with the Hospitallers particularly, gain a reputation for being the fiercest fighters of all the Franks, in the words of one Islamic writer of the time. So it's incumbent on them not to spill the beans. You mentioned there Islamic writers. I think what would be useful for us

to get a bit of an idea of, who are the Knights Templars set up to fight specifically? You mentioned enemies of Christianity, but what does that actually encompass? Well, given their entanglement in the Crusades, during the Second Crusade, the Third Crusade, really it's about defending the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other satellite crusader states in what's now Israel, Syria, Lebanon. They are fighting anyone who wants to mess with those states, effectively, and at various times, that means various people. So most famously, I suppose, around the time of the Third Crusade, that might include Saladin,

the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt and Syria, whose stated goal is to wipe the crusader kingdoms off the map and restore these holy places that they encompass to the rule of Islam. So that might, and that indeed was one area where the Templars were very active. The Templars get down to the Iberian Peninsula, and there they're wrapped up in the Reconquista, which is the wars between the Christian kingdoms of northern Spain and Portugal and the Muslim inhabitants and rulers of southern Spain, depending on what period we're talking about. Very often, we find Templars in military action on crusade. And so, on crusade in the East typically means against Islamic armies of some description. Islamic armies of some description. Do you find in your research into the Templars that they get drawn into and embroiled in local or regional politics?

Or are they pretty uniformly administering the aims of the Templar wherever they are in the world? No, the Templars are experts in fostering relations with powerful people. And that's one of the reasons why the order gets very rich. So to give you one example, if you go to London today and you go to the region known as Temple, you can visit the New Temple, which was the second London headquarters of the Templars in England, and the Round Church still stands there, which was part of a much bigger compound at one time. At the time that the New Temple was built, towards the end of the 12th century,

the Templars had extremely good relations with Henry II, the first Plantagenet King of England. During the reign of Henry II's son, King John, who I've been talking about on my podcast, This Is History, you've got the Templars so mobbed up with the king that when John's in serious trouble around the time of the granting of Magna Carta, 1214 through 1215. John's staying with the Templars. I mean, they're offering him protection within London from his irate barons. To their own advantage, presumably. Well, to their own advantage, because the crown supporting the Templars is no bad thing

in terms of their finances, in terms of the protection of the order. If you look at Magna Carta, the master of the temple at the time of Magna Carta is named as one of the order. If you look at Magna Carta, the master of the temple at the time of Magna Carta is named as one of the witnesses. It's exactly halfway through the list of witnesses between the bishops on one hand and the barons on the other. He sits as a sort of linchpin between the spiritual and the secular. So that's the English example. Wherever they go, you can find Templars heavily mobbed up with kings. Louis IX's crusade to Egypt, when Louis IX is captured during his crusade, it's the Templars who manage to stump up the money to pay his ransom to free him.

They're there if you need them, and they're into high politics. Unless you're Philip IV, potentially. That's where we started, right, with the kind of downfall. So what precipitates that? Why does Philip IV take such umbrage? Well, Philip IV is a curious character in the long story of French royal history, and French royal medieval history anyway. And in fact, we've got a mini-series about Philip IV presented by Daniel Cebulski on This Is History. So if

anyone wants to know more about Philip IV, I would recommend you go listen to that. Philip IV is a man who has a drive to cleanse France of impurity, challenges to royal authority, and has a sort of singular drive towards extending his own majesty, his own reputation as a powerful Christian king. And he has serious financial problems as well. And those things all sort of roll together from 1305-6 onwards, leading to the arrest of the Templars in France on the 13th of October 1307, the winding up of the order in 1312, the burning of Jacques de Molay, the last master, in 1314. Philip IV of France had previous to going after the Templars, taken aim at all the Jews in France. They'd been expelled and their property had been confiscated.

He'd gone after the church and that had led to such a big contretemps with Pope Boniface VIII that one of Philip's chief ministers, William de Nogaret, had gone down to Agnani, where the Pope's villa was. And so it was said, slapped him in the face. And this isn't just a sort of a tiff. This is the villa surrounded by an army that laid siege to the Pope's villa and assaulted him. Philip was after anybody whom he perceived as a challenge to his authority. He also had a number of deep-rooted financial issues. And given the Templars were very wealthy, I think had an eye on having some of that wealth for himself. I think had an eye on having some of that wealth for himself. The broader background though you have to consider which is by the beginning of the 14th century the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem and the other crusader states had been wiped off the map. It wasn't Saladin who did it, it was the Mamluks, a slave soldier caste in Egypt who'd risen up and with pressure coming

from the east from the Mongols as well. The kingdom of Jerusalem had collapsed in 1291 and all the crusaders who'd been there were now on the island of Cyprus. And this left the Templars in particular in a difficult situation, the Hospitallers too, but they were set up to defend the Kingdom of Jerusalem. They had failed in their mission and everyone was scratching their heads as to what they should do now. So there was a bigger global question about what the point of the Templars was

and it was a specific determination on the part of Philip IV to go after people he sort of didn't like the look of. So that's the kind of the broad strokes background. It feels like a real threat to him, even though they're diminished already, but it also means that he can take them out. But it feels like a risk as well. I mean, you say they're so wealthy, they're so powerful, and they have these literal networks of roads that are under their control and political networks as well across Europe and maybe not in the 14th century but in the Middle East as well. Why would he go after them at this point? Is it purely because they've been diminished and he sees

this opportunity? Would he have seen this as a risk or is this the perfect moment to strike? This is still an area of live debate among people who study the Templars but the order was seriously diminished by the collapse of the Christian kingdom and the Holy Land, rightly or wrongly. And there had been, for some time, people muttering that something ought to be done about the military orders in general, who seemed very rich and powerful, but didn't really have enough to do. And I think there was a growing feeling, not just in France, but maybe across other kingdoms as well, that it would be as well to roll the Templars and Hospitallers into one order. As part of a reform movement for how do we reunite the forces of Christendom to go and win back Jerusalem. So that's one kind of train of thought. Philip IV is also, I suppose the best way to describe it would be,

he's always willing to be convinced of something nefarious. And he's got an open mind for the worst suspicions so i think he allows himself to be manipulated into seeing a whole cocktail of depravity sodomy he's got a particular bee in his bonnet about blasphemy you know all the most horrible salacious scandalous. His ministers kind of spoon-feed him. This has been going on among the Templars, you know, and if you wound them up, you'd also be able to, you know, take some of their dough. Yes, of course, yeah, yeah.

The Templars, more than the Hospitallers, I think, were ripe for this sort of attack because the Hospitallers tended to have more of their wealth held in land whereas the Templars had certainly thought to have much greater cash reserves. So Philip allows himself to be convinced that the Templars in France himself to be convinced that the Templars in France ought to be arrested en masse at a time where the master of the order globally across Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, Jacques de Molay, happens to be in Paris.

Philip IV also has at his beck and command a pliant pope in the form of Clement V, who's French, who's, to all intents and purposes, a French poodle. Clement V would not have liked to be described that way, but that's what he was. Also doesn't help if you slapped previous popes in the face and you don't slap this one. It's a good start. Yes, I mean, Philip has a fearsome reputation,

and Clement allows himself to be pushed around by Philip IV. I don't think that there's a sense that the Templars are much to fear because remember, in France, there are vanishingly few Templars who are fighting men. The commanderies and preceptories, several hundred that are dotted around France, are not full of like warriors armed to the teeth. They're full of generally sort of retired kind of pig farmers and accountants, maybe two or three brothers in each house, some kind of servants, lay brothers helping them out. They're not really that dangerous. And so it's, as it's proven on the 13th of October, 1307, when French Royal agents basically go to every temple house and just round them up with almost no resistance. I mean, I think word had leaked about a month before that this was coming, that the plans were made a month before the arrests

were made. There is some evidence that some Templars heard about it and scuttled away if they could, but really they were in no position to put up a fight, not in France at any rate. Thank you. Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII, who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. As we so often do on After Dark, we now turn to the 18th century. The supposed European Enlightenment is in full swing. Yet away from its brightness, shadows remain. And in them, a secret society is emerging.

The Society of the Freemasons. Inside lodges from Dublin to Berlin, brothers, and sometimes sisters, perform strange rituals, waving skulls and crossbones at one another, for example. Rumours of great secrets begin to spread around the Freemasons, and a strange story begins to be whispered by firesides. The Freemasons, as these stories go, had ancient roots, and that the legendary Knights Templar had been Masons in disguise, that those same Knights had held magical knowledge gained in the Holy Land, and this was why the King of France wanted them destroyed. But they had escaped and fled to the most

far-off wild romantic place imaginable to an 18th century mind, Scotland. I think if you have a mood board of the mythology around the Knights Templar... Big if. You do, don't you? Yeah, you absolutely do. With string connecting everything. This is Dan Brown territory. I'm thinking the Roslyn Chapel.

I'm thinking the Holy Grail's going to come into this. Obviously, love an 18th century secret society. Also thinking today about the co-option by the far right of some of these ideas. Is there any truth in these secret societies, Dan? I mean, in a sense, I'm the amateur among specialists now because we're talking about the 18th century and I'm a medievalist. Lots of organisations and individuals, one way or another, have since about the 18th century claimed dissent from the Knights Templar. And without wishing to generalise over much, but with a degree of

certainty, I say that almost all of them are bogus. The Knights Templar were wiped out at the beginning of the 14th century, between 1307 and 1312. And this whole list of accusations, most of them false, were laid against them. Most of the members were tortured. The order was wound up by the church and definitively ceased to exist in 1311-12. And the last master was burned in 1314. And yes, some members were pensioned off to go and fight in other orders, but the order did not survive the beginning of the 14th century. There can be no two ways about that. that. Nevertheless, organizations like the Freemasons and many others do like the idea that they are connected with the Templars. And is that specific to the Templars? Maybe to a degree. I think it's generally the case that organizations like to have a long history, and the longer a history, you can boast the sort of more cool and authentic and attractive to new members you become. So I can see why people do it. There are lots of Templar revivalists around today. I've met some of them.

And they would all claim a spiritual affinity, an emotional affinity with the Templars, if not an unbroken institutional link. It's a very attractive order to wish yourself to be part of. We can certainly talk about reasons why that might be. Do you think we owe a lot to Philip IV's campaign against the Templars in terms of their reputation for the mythology that's grown up? Do you think some of those more salacious rumours, those ideas that he was at least buying into, if not actively inventing, in order to justify getting rid of them, do you think those have come down through the centuries?

Yeah, that's a great question. Why do people today typically not fixate on the Teutonic Knights or the Knights Hospitaller or the Order of Caledrava or whatever it might be? Their names are not cool. We've established this. Their names are not cool. Some of those names are cool. It's not the Templars. Okay, wait, give them to us again.

Well, the Hospitallers. I like that one. I think they're going to have a nice outfit. You're right, because they're still going in Rome. You, wait, give them to us again. Well, the Hospitallers. I like that one. I think they're going to have a nice outfit. You're right, because they're still going in Rome. You can go and join them if you want. Oh, no. Or you can just join the St. John's Ambulance, which had descended. Oh, thanks.

Oh, okay. I didn't know that. That's interesting. Well, St. John's Ambulance, a part of the Order of St. John, which was revived in 1888 by Queen Victoria by royal charter, which does have a link going back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is cool. The Templars, yeah. A big part of, i think their sort of appeal whether it's in legend that goes back to the middle ages when the templars were still around when they're being written into arthurian legend in one form or another but whether it's that or whether it's it's dan brown or whether it's the the manifestos of far-right terrorists or whatever it might be a big part of the sort of sexy weird mysterious appeal of the sort of sexy, weird, mysterious appeal of the Templars certainly is to do with the fact that they were wound up

with this list of obviously bogus accusations. There's a sort of dark injustice to what happened to the Templars that is one part of the reason they're still fascinating today. What I would say about the Templars is that throughout their history, they were an organization doing, for the most part, quite boring things, but were overlaid with imaginative romance, I suppose is one way to put it. So even right at the beginning, I was talking about Hugh Dupin in Jerusalem after the First Crusade. He sets up this little ragtag group of roadside rescue guys. A generation later, Bernard of Clairvaux, the great Cistercian monk and friend of popes and kings, has a big part in writing their first rule and getting them papal

approval. He's already imagining things about the Templars which are to do with his scheme of how the world works. And he says, he really romanticizes the idea of the warrior and the monk and the collision of these two medieval ideals coming together. And for him, it's all a big kind of exercise of abstract imagination, overlaid on the reality of what the Templars were. And in a way, we're not really doing anything that different today. If you see an internet meme circulated of, it was a deus volt and the Templar with a sword in the hand, and it's being circulated among some kind of pinhead right-wing numbnuts on the internet like that's sort of doing the same thing that's always been done around the templars it's just and it doesn't even matter that it's

it's not real it's an exercise in expressing an idea that's separate from the real history that's crucial it doesn't matter that it's not real and the real impact of that that we can see in our own time is besides those memes is the dan brown effect and the holy grail links that start coming in there give us an idea as to well first of all if you could tell listeners what the holy grail is supposed to be what the holy grail is and then why that has been part of dan brown's narrative and how that links back to the Knights Templar. Okay, so the Holy Grail, I'm sure... Let's settle it once and for all.

Holy Grail is not a real thing. There was no Holy Grail. You can search the New Testament as long as you like. You're not going to find anything about the Holy Grail. There was no such thing as the Holy Grail. No one thought there was any such thing as like a literal cup until the 12th century. And the emergence of Arthurian romances, Chrétien de Troyes, and then subsequently Wolfram von Eschenbach in Germany at the beginning of

the 13th century. The idea of the grail starts to emerge. It's very fuzzy to begin with. Is it a stone? Is it a plate? Is it a lance? Is it an idea? What is it? It's not really that clear at all. It becomes a bit clearer at the beginning of the 13th century. Remember, the Templars are around at this point and just been engaged in the big war with Saladin. Wolfram von Eschenbach writes, Parzival, the grail by this point is a sort of stone type thing. It's being defended by a group of knights who are supposed to resemble the Templars. They have a similar name to the Templars. So there's this link between holy thing and then that emerges in medieval literature to become a cup and the cup that maybe Christ's blood was collected in the crucifixion. So that comes a lot later then really? Well, that's all medieval,

but there's a gap of about 1100 years between Christ dying and that being invented. So it's a medieval fit, it's an imaginary thing. And from the early 13th century, it's linked in legend and fictional stories to the Templars. Much later, you have, you know, I'm talking now in the 20th century, you start to have various different works of pseudo-history in the case of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, adventure fiction in the case of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, who kind of take this link between the Templars, the Grail, Secret Bloodline of Christ, false accusations, survival of rumours, and just package it all together in a cool, fun story. And as often happens in the world,

sometimes people mistake fiction for reality or assume there is much more of a real basis for fiction than there actually is. And because Dan brown is a fantastic writer one of the top writers called dan uh with a one-syllable surname books by other are available several of us uh you know he did a great job it was cool it was fun it's a fun book i didn't get too worked up that it's not real and not not on its own there are things like assassin's creed the computer game as well but it's muddied the water around Templar history. And it means there's a lot more kind of stuff and nonsense to clear away before you even start talking about what the real history is. Let's talk about real Templars though, because there are, like you say,

there are people today who would identify as being part of the Knights Templars or see themselves as part of a sort of similar quest in one way or another? And I believe that you have been and met some of these people. Yeah, there are lots of revivalist organizations. And some years ago, I think it was 2018, six years ago then, when I published my book about the Templars, so that must have been 2017, I ended up being invited by a couple people in America to a party that was happening in Nashville, scheduled for 2018, which was being billed as the 900th birthday of the Templars. They'd chosen the earliest possible date put forward by historians and whatever. They were having this party. And it was in the Hilton downtown in Nashville, big hotels, about 350

American Templars went down there. And I went along as well in the capacity of a journalist, but also quite interested. I'd been promised by a guy down there. And I went along as well in the capacity of a journalist, but also quite interested. I'd been promised by a guy in Texas that if I went, I'd meet more two and three star generals, state senators, and judges than anywhere outside the Capitol. And I thought, yeah, come on. And it was true. It was true. There was a lot of ex-military.

I was told on arrival that there was also NSA, FBI, CIA. There was some Wall Street people. There were, CIA. There were some Wall Street people. There were some judges. There were some political people. They were all members of individual revivalist chapters of the Knights Templar across America. And this was SMOTJ, Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem. I had no reason to doubt them. They said they had five passes to the UN building in New York

and at that time could hobnob with Nikki Haley, who was then high up in the UN. And their stated mission was to do charitable outreach work for Christians in the Holy Land. It was a Christian organization. They all had titles. They all had robes. A lot of them were also members of the Freemasons, although the Templar Revival organization is not Masonic. I found most of them to be charming, pleasant people. They had a long convent and investiture service in a church in Nashville, which I attended, which was about three hours long, which people were dubbed with swords. And there were kind of words spoken, which were lifted, as I recall, from Thomas Costain's popular history of the

Plantagenets, but they were not necessarily authentic. Everyone got a title, whether you were the Grand Master, Grand Secretary, Grand Omanier, Grand Webmaster, I remember being one. It's a fully-fledged organisation of wealthy and, not all wealthy, but they were well-to-do people, having meetings and drinking a lot. And I just hung out with them for three days and wrote a story about them for a Smithsonian magazine, which they were not happy with in the end, but I don't think I did anything particularly wrong. I think it was just a surprise to be presented to the world as unusual. Because once you've been a Templar for a long time, I suppose you get to thinking that that's your way of life. But no, they were not unusual. I was told all sorts of stories which may or may not have been

wholly true, but one of the ones that stuck in my mind was I think a two-star general who was telling me that at that time, the war in Iraq and Syria was still going on with the Americans in Iraq and Syria. And this general told me that the Templars could get Christian hostages taken by ISIS released. Because although the American government wouldn't negotiate for their return with ISIS, the Russians would. And they had a chapter of Russian Templars that they talked to. And because the American Templars could talk to Nikki Haley in the UN, who could talk to the White House, and they could talk to their Templar brothers in Russia, who talked to the Kremlin, the Kremlin could then talk to ISIS.

They could get hostages released. Did you buy it? Now, I mean, tell that story as we're standing on the roof deck of the Hilton in Nashville and the guy's chomping a cigar and everyone's drinking whiskey could be bravado, but it certainly fitted the profile of everything that I saw before me. Before we say goodbye, I have one more question for Dan,

but I want to direct people because Dan has written, as he mentioned, and as Maddy mentioned at the top, The Templars, The Rise and Fall of God's Holy Warriors. You can find out so much more there, but also on his podcast, This Is History.

And a new spinoff podcast, am I right, Dan? This Is History presents The Iron King. I will say one thing, your naming is spectacular. Those are good names, like the the Iron King. I will say one thing. Your naming is spectacular. Those are good names. Like the books, actually. Really, really good names.

My final question, though, would be this. Does it annoy you, as a specialist in this area, somebody who knows extensively about the Knights Templar, to then find yourself as a journalist, say, in that capacity amongst these people in America? Maybe annoy is the wrong word. Does it entertain you? What is your feeling when you find yourself in those spaces in Nashville going, this is

claiming to be a legacy, but it doesn't feel right? Or does it feel right? Does it feel like it's a present legacy of something that's altogether medieval? Well, I wouldn't say I find myself in that situation very often. This was very much a one-off. It doesn't annoy me. It was often overwhelming in that particular situation. Having written a book and really just had my head in the historical space, it was wild to see people living out a form of that story in their own lives in the modern world. In some ways, Templar revivalism obviously appeals to people with a military background and a Christian faith. Yeah.

And stands to reason, particularly if you like being knighted and having a title and medals, and lots of people do, you know, sort of Napoleonic kind of instinct, I guess. It doesn't annoy me. It kind of interests me. I'm fascinated as, you know, I've worked for all my career as a journalist as well as a historian. And so I'm always intrigued by people doing unusual things. To address your point more broadly, does it annoy me? The older I get and the more experienced I get, the less it bugs me at all, and quite the opposite.

We're all historians sitting around this table, and I would imagine your experience like mine is that part of the challenge often as a historian is to get people interested in the story you want to tell, because history doesn't always have a reputation as being the most exciting subject, particularly if you had a boring teacher at school. So if the challenge is, hey, people out there who have busy lives and lots of things to think about, could you please be interested in history? Anything that will hook people on a subject is good. So if people are interested in the Templars

because they've read the Da Vinci Code or seen a movie or played Assassin's Creed or whatever it might be, and they're interested enough to listen to a podcast or read a book or watch a documentary, fantastic. That's great because we want people being interested in history and whichever way you come to it. And I will just sort of maybe box off as an exception, you know, being an insane terrorist. we'll just sort of maybe box off as an exception, you know, being an insane terrorist. But Norm, for the most part, whichever way you come into it, fantastic because we like people being interested in history and the more the merrier.

Absolutely. Well, that concludes this episode of After Dark. Thank you for joining us and thank you to Dan for joining us and having such a fruitful and interesting conversation. It's great to get to grips with some of these histories that we are less familiar with. So it's always amazing

when we have guests in to help us navigate those histories. Until next time, if you have enjoyed this episode, we have many more that you can listen to. Leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts.

It helps other people find us. And until next time, sleep tight. Well, thank you for listening to this episode of After Dark. Until next time, sleep tight. documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. And as a special gift, now don't say we never give you anything, you can also get your first three months for one pound a month when you use the code AFTERDARK at checkout.