Forbidden History - The Curse of the Templars

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

In 1307, the once-mighty Knights Templar were accused of heresy and dismantled by the French crown. Legend says their last Grand Master uttered a chilling curse as he faced the flames - a curse that would echo through the fall of kings and kingdoms. Was it coincidence, or the lingering shadow of the Templars’ wrath? Go to ⁠⁠⁠nakedwines.co.uk/forbidden⁠⁠⁠ to get a £30 voucher and 6 top-rated wines for just £39.99, with delivery included. Go to rula.com/forbidden and take the first step towards better mental health today. Check out our other stories mentioned in this episode below: Freemasons: The Original Secret Society - listen here Oak Island: Beneath the Curse - listen here Cast List: Tony McMahon: Former BBC news producer, author, print journalist and historian Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. We're an independent podcast, and advertisements help keep us going. Ads are automatically placed and not specifically chosen or endorsed by us, unless read by me the host. Thanks for supporting the show. For generations, the Knights Templar have been shrouded in mystery. A brotherhood of warrior monks, whose rise was astonishing, and whose downfall was even more dramatic.

On one October morning in 1307, the entire order was crushed in a single stroke, an event so shocking, it still echoes through history. King Philip has to convince everybody that these knights have never been what they seemed, that they were not warriors for Christ. They were in fact agents of Satan. But why did it happen? And what exactly were they accused of? My argument is that the Knights Templar were essentially the first witches, if you want.

They were the first witchcraft trial of the Middle Ages. We really have to take a deep breath to understand the scope, the scale, of these dawn arrests of the Templars that are conducted right across France. This is something that you can only find a comparison in Stalin's Russia in the 1930s. In this episode, we're joined by Tony McMahon, historian, author, and specialist in Templar history, who offers a very different perspective on their destruction and possible escape. In our previous episode, we explored the origins of the Knights Templar, the accusations of heresy, and the turbulence of medieval Jerusalem.

But history doesn't move in isolation. Every event is part of a much larger story. The destruction of the Templars wasn't simply a burst of royal paranoia or a sudden political gamble. It was the result of pressures that had been building for more than a century. This was a Europe divided between spiritual authority and secular power, between those who claimed to speak for God and those who believed they ruled by God's permission. Into this landscape stepped two towering figures. Pope Clement the 5th, a pontiff weakened by politics, and King Philip the 4th of France,

a ruler determined to dominate his kingdom and anyone who stood in his way. King Philip has to convince Pope Clement the 5th to go along with this brutal suppression of the Knights Templar. He also wants to convince all the monarchs of Christian Europe to do the same thing, to also crush the Knights Templar. and Pope Clement V is a Pope in a weak position whether or not he himself was a weak person is debatable but he's in a weak position he's been hounded out of Rome

he can't rule in Rome he's in the city of Avignon which is today in modern France but in those days was part of the Holy Roman Empire but very close to the King of France so the King of France is able to bear down on Pope Clement and bully him into prosecuting the Templars

but the Pope keeps trying to push back against the king, which is one of the reasons why the trials kind of drag on for so long. Most mainstream historians argue that the reason that King Philip arrested the Templars on mass like this was because he needed money. He badly wanted the wealth of the Templars. His argument was that, well, why have they got all this money? They're not fighting the Crusades anymore.

They've lost the Crusades. They've lost all the land in the Holy Land. They've basically failed in their mission. so we can now take back all the land and money that was given to them. And King Philip is busy fighting England at this time. He's also at war in Flanders. He has form when it comes to shaking people down for money. He shakes down the Jewish communities in France.

He goes after the Lombard merchants and he also goes after the church. The Lombard merchants were Italian bankers and money lenders, mainly from Lombardy in northern Italy, who operated across Mediore. Europe. They filled the financial role the church often discouraged Christians from doing themselves, lending money at interest. Because of this, they became essential to kings and nobles who needed rapid credit, but also easy targets when rulers wanted cash. He demands that revenue from the church comes to him and not to Rome. So he has form, so there's

definitely a credible argument that he is going after the Templars because of the money. But I believe that Philip isn't just going after the Templars because of money. I think he genuinely believes in the accusations that are made against the Templars because something is happening in Christian Europe at this time. The papacy has become incredibly strong in recent centuries in a period of what is called the Gregorian reforms, where the popes insisted on having more power, the right, for example, to appoint all church appointments, that monarchs had to obey them at risk of excommunication and so on.

The Gregorian reforms were a series of sweeping changes to the medieval church in the 11th century, led by Pope Gregory the 7th. Their goal was to free the church from secular interference. These reforms massively increased papal authority across Europe, setting the stage for later power struggles between kings and popes. And as the popes became more powerful, so did resistance to the church. And there are very big heretical movements, heresies, Christians who reject the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Those Christians who became heretics, they looked at the Roman Catholic

Church and they just thought, what is all this wealth and these bishops and popes covered in jewels, living in palaces, what's this got to do with the teachings of Christ? And so there are these very big heretical movements, including, for example, the Cathars in southern France and northern Italy, who become so powerful and so influential that the popes actually launch a crusade against them. They actually divert crusaders from the Holy Land to fight in southern France against their fellow Christians who have become heretics. And there is a bloody, suppression of the Cathars. So paranoid do the Pope's become that they begin to mix witchcraft and sorcery with charges of heresy. It's not enough to say, oh well, people are not obeying the

teachings of the Church. No, now they say, oh, and by the way, these people who are not obeying the church and its sacraments and its teachings and the power of the Pope and respecting that, no, they're more than that. They're in league with the devil. They are in engaging in black magic. They are engaging in sorcery. The inclusion of witchcraft and the accusations marked a significant shift. Before this, witchcraft was largely folk magic, practiced in rural communities. It typically involved villagers accusing a healer or wise woman, who often used herbs and charms for protection or healing, of practicing sorcery. But even then, it was often dismissed as superstition,

rather than heresy. And elite opinion just looked down on this kind of thing and thought, witchcraft, you know, what a lot of nonsense. But from the 1300s onwards, we see witchcraft becoming something that concerns the elite. It's something that they're talking about, they're writing about, it's something that they're acting on. So I think that King Philip actually genuinely believes

in the sorcery-related stuff that's levelled against the Templars. By the early 14th century, the tension had been building for years. Rivalries between kings and popes, the collapse of the Crusades, and growing suspicion toward powerful religious orders, all created an atmosphere of distrust across Europe. In France, King Philip IV faced mounting financial pressure, political challenges, and a need to reassert his authority. And as his problems deepened, his attention began to began to fall on one organization in particular. An order whose wealth, independence and influence made them increasingly inconvenient. Eventually, Philip decides he must act.

One of the most shocking events of the medieval period happens on Friday the 13th, appropriately enough, Friday the 13th October 1307, when every Knight Templar in France, is arrested and imprisoned by order of King Philip of France. They're thrown into dungeons. It's an event that shocked people at the time. It's an event that shocked people ever since. But why did this happen? And on what grounds did the king arrest them?

In September 1307, King Philip of France orders his ministers to draft in-secret arrest warrants for the night's state. Templar. And these arrest warrants, they're really steamy stuff. They say that the Templars have crucified Christ a second time, that they have been spitting on crucifixes in their initiation rituals, that they have been kissing each other inappropriately on the base of the spine, it says. And also that they are worshipping heads or demons. And all of this will come out in the trials of the Templars from confessions extorted through torture. We really have to take a deep breath to understand the scope, the scale of these dawn arrests of the Templars that are conducted

right across France. This is something that you can only find a comparison in Stalin's Russia in the 1930s. It is a purge of an organization that up until now have been regarded as warriors of Christ as the vanguard of the Crusades and the Holy Land. How did an organization that once held such extraordinary power and resources become a target for destruction? In order to destroy the Knights Templar, King Philip has to convince everybody that these knights have never been what they seemed, that they were not warriors for Christ, they were in fact agents of Satan. They were acting for the evil one all along and pretending and fooling everybody into thinking that they were acting for Christ.

It's an astonishing piece of really dark propaganda that the king engages in, and he really has his work cut out convincing the whole of Europe that the Knights Templar have, if you want, perpetrated a contract for 200 years, that they have always been evil. Many of the accusations that are made against the Templars as the trials go on really foreshadow the sort of things that witches will be accused of from the 1400s onwards. The whole idea of worshipping cats, which is mentioned. The idea of the inappropriate kisses, one of the things that witches are accused of is kissing the backside of the devil,

what's called the osculum infamé. So this is something that pops up in the Templar trials. And of course spitting on crucifixes, this whole idea of defiling holy places, of conducting black masses, which we see this with this whole idea, this focus on the initiation rituals of the Templars, that something unchristian and diabolic is going on. The trials of the Templars drag on for years from 1307 when the arrest warrants are served right through to 1312. And all the Templars, including the Grand Master, who's an old man, by this stage, Jacques de Mollay, they are tortured in appalling ways in these French dungeons.

In fact, one Templar has his feet coated in fat in Greece and burned, and when he turns up at his trial, he actually produces his toe bones at the trial to say, look what they've done to me, look what how I've been treated behind closed doors. And this does shock a lot of people. Torture of this kind was not standard for every medieval trial. But in the late 13th, early 14th century, under the pressure of heresy and political prosecutions, severe methods did become more frequent. Church-led inquisitorial procedures allowed for pain-induced confessions, and King Philip IV of France partnered with inquisitors

to apply brutal techniques when the stakes were high. The end of the Knights Templar is pretty ignominious. So after five years of being on trial, of being tortured, have been dragged before legal hearings, the last Grandmaster Jacques de Malé is taken to a spot near Notre Dame Cathedral and he is burned to death with another leading Templar. He has retracted his confession, but throughout the trials, Jacques de Malay has been a broken man.

You know, he had been once a friend of the king, The day before he was arrested, he had actually been a pallbearer at the funeral of the king's sister-in-law. He thought he was protected by the king, and instead the king turned on him and his order. So he died a broken man. But there is a story that as Jacques de Malay was being burned to death, that he cursed the king of France and Pope Clement and said they would soon join him in another place. And sure enough, both King Philip of France and Pope Clement died. not long after. Where they joined Jacques de Malay, whether it was up above in heaven or down below in hell, we don't know, or whether Jacques de Malay went to heaven and the other two went to hell,

of course we'll never know, but they definitely die. In a further post-script, it's claimed that during the French Revolution, in the late 18th century, 450 years after Jacques de Malay was burned, of course King Philip's descendant, the last Bourbon king of France, King Louis XVI, was guillotined during the French Revolution. Somebody in the crowd is said to have shouted, Jacques de Malay, now you are avenged. However, it has to be said this story very likely originated among anti-Masonic Catholics who were not sympathetic to the Knights Templar.

What they were arguing was that Freemasons and modern-day Templars were in league with each other and had perpetrated the French Revolution and brought down the beautiful French monarchy. So as the dust settled on the defeated Templars and Philip emerged victorious, the consequences for Europe were profound. The destruction of such a powerful, long-standing order, proved that no institution, no matter how wealthy or sacred, was beyond the reach of a determined monarch.

It marked a major shift in the balance of power. Kings gained confidence to challenge the church, while the papacy, humiliated and pressured into compliance, entered a period of weakness under French and French. influence. The sudden removal of the Templars also destabilized European finance and disrupted long trusted networks of banking, credit and security that had supported crusading, trade, and diplomacy for nearly two centuries. In the decades and centuries that followed, the Templar trials proved to be a grim blueprint.

My argument is that the Knights Templar were essentially the first witches, if you want, they were the first witchcraft trial of the Middle Ages because what we're going to see from the next century from the 1400s for about 200 years is a witch-hunting mania that's going to grip Europe with hundreds, possibly thousands of mainly women but also men burned to death and hanged as witches, a really unusual period of history where witchfinder generals are going around sniffing out witches and sources. and executing them. So the Templars and their trials really are foreshadowing this witch-hunting mania that's about to grip everybody in society from the richest down to the poorest. So in effect,

the Knights Templar are the first witches to be put on trial. If you look at it in the context of what happens next, because in the following century, we get the witchcraft trials taking off in earnest. There's a book published called the Malius Maleficarum, which is a guide to witch hunting, and then there's other witch-hunting guides that are produced. And the Inquisition, which plays a leading role in the trial of the Templars, also plays a leading role in the trial of the Begienes and the Bishop of Troy, and will also play a leading role in the next century in the witchcraft trials. We continue with the curse of the Templars after the break. In the official record, the story of the Knights Templar ends with fire, ashes,

and the last grandmaster Jacques de Mollé, dying at the stake. But did every Templar truly share his fate? Were they all tortured and executed, as the Chronicles claim? Or in the chaos of the dawn raids and the years of trials that followed, did some members of the order managed to slip away into the night? It's a question that has feared. fueled legends for centuries and one that opens the door to some intriguing possibilities. Investigative historian, author and journalist Tony McMahon explains more.

Now there are some claims that the Templars, some Templars managed to get away before they were arrested. The story runs that they put all their treasure into carts, got down to the port of La Rochelle on the western coast of France, and they boarded Templar Shia. bound for Scotland. The reason they went to Scotland was the king there, Robert the Bruce, had been excommunicated by the Pope. The reason Robert the Bruce was excommunicated was that he lured a political rival to a church and then killed him in front of the altar. One of the things you're not supposed to do in a church is kill somebody. A church is somewhere where you have sanctuary.

Robert the Bruce didn't respect that. In February 1306, Robert Bruce made a lot of the church. met his rival John Common inside Greyfriars Church in Dumfries. The meeting was meant to resolve their competing claims to the Scottish throne, but the discussion turned violent. Contemporary accounts differ on who struck first, but Bruce stabbed Common before the high altar, violating the sacred protection of the church afforded by its buildings. Common collapsed inside the chapel, and Bruce's supporters finished him off. And the story goes on that the Knights Templar actually helped Robert the Bruce to win the Battle of Bannockburn against the English.

Then in Masonic folklore we have the knights sheltering with medieval stone masons at a place called Kill Winning in Western Scotland where the first Freemason Lodge, lodge number zero, is formed. If you want the Templar Knights and the Stone Masons merge in effect to form modern Freemasonry. And if we take that Scottish theory a step further, we also have a very popular theory that the Knights Templar were sheltered by a Scottish noble family called the Sinclair's, who had both Scottish and Viking roots, and that the Sinclair's, using old Viking maps, helped the Knights Templar to escape to the new world. And this, of course, is why we have a theory very popular these days that the Knights Templar took their treasure. to Newfoundland and buried it at a place called Oak Island. If you want to hear the full story behind the Freemasons or the Oak Island mystery and why so many believe the Templars crossed the Atlantic, you can dive into our dedicated episodes on these topics. We explore the legends, the theories and the evidence in far more detail

there with historian and author Guy Walters. You'll find links in the show notes. Is there any evidence to suggest the Knights Templar got to the new world? Well, many people point to Roslyn Chapel, which was built by the Sinclair family, 100 years after the Templars were officially crushed. And some of the motifs at Roslyn Chapel, some of the stonework, seems to suggest maize and Aloi Vera, which are crops native to the new world. So it's argued that in the stonework of Roslyn Chapel, you can see evidence that the Knights Templar,

accompanied by Lord Sinclair, got to the new world, and that the Templars hid their treasure in the new world. And to take the theory even one step further, the argument then goes that the Templars transmitted their wisdom, their knowledge and their wealth to Freemasons in the New World, who then founded the United States. That if you want, the United States was created by wealth and wisdom left by fleeing Knights Templar, who made their way to the new world. But it can be said, it should be said, that mainstream historians do not accept this theory, but it is a very popular theory these days and is something believed in by many, especially American Templar enthusiasts.

So what if the Templars didn't cross an ocean at all? What if their escape took them somewhere far closer to home? Somewhere they already had allies, influence, and a long history of military service. There is also another theory much less dramatic but far more grounded that offers a very different explanation about where the surviving Templars may have gone next. There is another escape route story which has the Knights Templar making their way down to Portugal. Now Portugal had always, as a kingdom, relied on the Knights Templar to fight the Islamic threat from the South. For much of the Middle Ages, large parts of southern Portugal, particularly the Algarve,

were controlled by the Almoravid and later the Almohad caliphates, powerful Muslim states, based in North Africa. The Portuguese crown relied heavily on the Knights Templar to push its borders southward. The Templars helped secure key fortresses, such as Tomar in 1160, which became their headquarters, fought in major battles like the reconquest of Santa Réme and the siege of Lisbon. What happens in Portugal, there's also a king there. His predecessors have been excommunicated by the popes. He has an uneasy relationship with the papacy.

But what happens there is he convinces the Pope in Rome to let him create a new order, which is called the Order of Christ. And he basically rolls the Knights Templar into this new order. the ordained to Christu in Portuguese, the Order of Christ, based in the same place in Tomar, the city of Tomar, and they basically continue to operate under a slightly different cross. They design a new cross for the order, but they continue under this new order. What's really fascinating about the Order of Christ is that leading members of the Portuguese royal family,

like Henry the Navigator, become leaders of the Order of Christ, and it's the Order of Christ which spearheads the Portuguese discoveries, in the New World. The sails on the ships, the caravals as they're called, that go to the New World have the cross of the Order of Christ on the sails. And many of the famous explorers, people like Vasco da Gama, who go round Africa, who discover Brazil, who get to India and even Japan are members of the Order of Christ. And some have said, was this a continuation of the Templar Mission, the Templar Mission for Christ, taken to the four corners of the earth? very literally.

Whether or not the Templar spirit lived on through the Portuguese voyages, one thing is certain. The idea of the Templars surviving their destruction refused to die. As the centuries passed, the order faded from the political stage but grew stronger in the imagination. From whispered rumors of hidden knowledge to claims of a brotherhood moving in the shadows, the Templars slowly transformed from a medieval fighting force. into a symbol, one that would take on a life of its own in the modern world. It's something that fascinates me is the way that the Templars have been portrayed ever since.

The Templars are sometimes seen as the good guys or the bad guys, and that's really something that goes right back to the very start of the Templars. Some people thought the Templars were a force for good, others even while the Templars existed, thought they were a force for evil. But in popular culture we get, for example, Assassin's Creed, where they are a millennia old evil brotherhood, thoroughly evil, who are out to control humanity and the assassins are trying to stop them. In contrast, George Lucas, the brilliant director who created Star Wars, he originally modeled the Jedi

on the Templars. He even called them in early notes the Jedi Templar. It's sad to say he didn't keep that title, he just called them the Jedi in the end. But if you look at the Jedi, there are kind of an idealized version of the Knights Templar. But if we look at Walter Scott, the Victorian historical novelist, in his brilliant novel, Ivanhoe, the Templars are foreign, they're French, and they are evil. And we even get in the 1970s several Spanish horror movies where the Templars come back. They are the undead, and they are frightening figures out to avenge anybody because of what's happened to them. So they kill completely innocent people.

The story of the Knights Templar is one of the most dramatic arcs in medieval history. A meteoric rise, a brutal fall, and a legacy that has lasted far longer than the order itself. Whether we look at them as warriors of Christ, brutal zealots, or the first targets of a new age of fear, their disappearance left behind questions that still captivate us. Did any of them escape? Did their mission continue under new names, in new lands, or in new forms? So we're still wrestling with the legacy of the Knights Templar, this bright, shining brotherhood that fought for Christ in the Holy Land,

but then were spectacularly destroyed by King Philip of France till every single Knights Templar was annihilated, their property taken, their memory they hoped erased, only their memory was. not erased. We still know the Templars today, whether it's Indiana Jones or Star Wars or Assassin's Creed. They are still inspiring us from the grave. Their memory survived the flames of 1307, resurfacing in revolutions, in secret society lore, in historical debate, and in the stories we tell today. Scotland to Portugal, from Roslyn Chapel to Oak Island, and from medieval chronicles to modern

pop culture, their shadow still stretches across the centuries. Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you like this episode, please be sure to follow for more. We post new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Don't forget to leave a comment below, and feel free to leave us a rating or review. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners like you. And for more from the Like a Shot Network, check out Where Did Everyone Go,

Histories of the Abandoned, a deep dive into the incredible stories behind Forgotten Places, available now on your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for listening.