After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Truth About the Knights Templar

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

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 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.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hi, we're your hosts, Anthony Delaney and Maddie Pelling. And if you would like After Dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, and welcome to After Dark. I'm historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to After Dark, I'm Maddie. 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 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 knight's 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 knight's templar, is set to end his days in a burst of flames and a stench of burning flesh. Hello. After dark guys. 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 bestselling 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, 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 Maddie 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 Knights 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 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, and they have a spiritual dimension.

So what's odd, unusual, novel, unique about the Templars 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. Lescatchi names. Lescatchi 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 profess 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 list even to to me, but you know someone with a relatively decent historical knowledge. You are 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 Savior 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, states 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. You know, 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? I'm thinking 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, you doubt? No, 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, 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. 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 frontline of the Crusades. There are Templar commandries, 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 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 bit that 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, commandries, 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, you know, 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 that 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? 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 develops 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. That then means that there is, by definition, an element of military secrecy to what they do. They are the special ops 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. 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, who 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. Yeah, yeah. 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 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, 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. 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 witnesses. 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, and 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. 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 this 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 Noguere, had gone down to Agignani 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 was also had a number of deep rooted financial issues. And given that the Templars were very

wealthy, 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 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 his 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 in 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. 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 being his bonnet about, blasphemy, you know, all the most horrible, salacious, scandalous stuff. 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 right 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 temple is in France, ought to be arrested en masse at a time where the master of the order globally across Europe and 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 the fourth. 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 commandries and preceptories, several hundred that are dotted around France are not full of like warriors armed to the teeth. They're full of generally retired pig farmers and accountants, maybe two or three brothers in each house, some servants, lay brothers helping them out. They're not really that dangerous. And so, 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. 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. Rumors 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? With string connecting everything. This is Dan Brown territory. I'm thinking the Roslin Chapel. I'm thinking the Holy Grail is going to come into this. Obviously love and 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 organizations and individuals, one way

or another, have since about the 18th century claimed dissent from the Knights Templar. And without wishing to generalize 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. The last mast 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. 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 temples, if not an institutional, 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? The names are not cool. We've established this. Well, the names are not cool.

Some of those names are cool. It's not the Templar. 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 hospitalers. 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. Or you can just join the St. John's ambulance, which are descendants. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. That's interesting. Okay. 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 it like, there's a link.

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 were being written into Arthurian legend in one form or another. But whether it's that, or whether it's Dan Brown, or whether it's the manifestos of far-right terrorists, or whatever it might be, a big part 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 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 de Paen 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. 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 vault 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 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, Cretien 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, Parseval, 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, and 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 sort of 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 with the Da Vinci Code, who kind of take this link between the Templars, the Grail, the Secret Bloodline of Christ, false accusations, survival of the 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 with a syllable surname.

Books by other Dan's are available. Several of us. He did a great job. It was fun. It's a fun book. I don't get too worked up that it's not real and 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 hotel, there was 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 in Texas that if I went, I'd meet more two and three star generals,

state senators and judges than anywhere outside the Capitol. I thought, 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 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.

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. 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 they were kind of word-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 Ommanier, Grand Webmaster, I remember being one. It's a fully fledged organization 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 the 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, you know, once you've been a Templar for a long time, I suppose you get to thinking that's the 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 a thinker two-star general who was telling me that at that time there was a war in Iraq and Syria but it 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 guys 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 Maddie 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 spin-off 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 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. 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 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. That 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, it doesn't annoy me. The older I get and the more experience 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. But Norm, whichever way you come into it, fantastic, because we like people being interested in history and the more the merrier. Absolutely.

Yeah. 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.