Forbidden History - The Mysterious Origins of the Templars

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Born in the shadows of the Crusades, the Knights Templar began as humble protectors of pilgrims but soon rose to unimaginable power. Who was this mysterious group? And how did they rise from guardians to legendary figures shrouded in mystery? Go to ⁠⁠nakedwines.co.uk/forbidden⁠⁠ to get a £30 voucher and 6 top-rated wines for just £39.99, with delivery included. 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 centuries, they've stood at the crossroads of history and legend. Warriors of God, bankers of kings, and the subjects of one of the most enduring conspiracies in Western history. So what happens is that a group of nine knights, most of them from the county of Champagne, which is now part of modern France, they resolve to create a new kind of knighthood.

They will live like monks, they will pray like monks, they will drill tough military drills and they will be there in the Holy Land all year round. Even while the Templars existed, there were people whispering, there's something weird. about this organization. How are they so rich? How are they so rich so quickly? Why are they so powerful? There are thousands of people today around the world

who claim that they are the descendants of the Knights Templar. They even claim that they are part of an unbroken line that goes back to the original Templars, that the Templars were never really crushed, that they continued. In this episode of Forbidden History, we explore the fascinating mysteries of the Order of the Templars. To guide us through this tangled history, we're joined by historian and author Tony McMahon,

whose expertise sheds light on the facts behind the fiction and the enduring mystery of who the Templars really were. This story begins in the year 1095 when Christian Europe launches a new kind of war, what's going to become known as a crusade against the Muslim-controlled kingdoms of the Middle East. Why? Because there has been a simmering war between Christian Europe and the Islamic Caliphate for 200 years, 300 years already. Right across Europe from what's now Portugal and Spain through to Sicily and Italy and into the Middle East. But something new happens at this time. A letter has arrived from the Christian Byzantine Emperor Alexios I'mnenos. He writes to the Count of Flanders, but this letter is.

is circulated all over Christian Europe. Now, he is the ruler of a Christian empire in the east, what's now modern day Turkey, the Balkans and part of Syria. And what's happened is that his empire is being invaded by people from the Central Asian steppe, what are going to become known as the Seljuk Turks. They have converted to Islam. They actually invade the Islamic caliphate first, so they invade their fellow Muslims first. The Seljuk dynasty were a branch of the Oghuz Turkic tribes, a nomadic people who emerged

during the 10th and 11th centuries. Originally pagan, they gradually converted to Islam after coming into contact with Muslim traders and missionaries along the Silk Road. Taking their name from a tribal leader, Seljuk ibn Dugak, they evolved from mercenary bands into a formidable military and political force. force. Their disciplined cavalry, mobile warfare tactics, and ability to adapt to settled administration allowed them to dominate vast territories, stretching from the Aral Sea to Persia. By the mid-11th century, the Seljuks had established themselves as protectors of Sunni orthodoxy, supporting the Abbasid Caliphate, while effectively controlling it.

The Seljuks rise to power began with their victory. began with their victories over rivaled Turkic and Persian factions in the Eastern Islamic world, culminating in the defeat of the Ghaznavids in the Battle of Dandanakan in 1040. This victory opened the way to Khorasan and Persia, where they soon extended their authority westward. Ironically, their conquest of the Caliphate unified much of the Islamic world politically, but also sowed the seeds of future fragmentation, as regional Seljuk rulers, carved out semi-independent sultanates. After consolidating their hold over the Islamic Caliphate,

the Seljuk Turks turned their ambitions outward. Having secured legitimacy as defenders of Sunni Islam and masters of the once powerful Abbasid realm, they sought new frontiers for expansion. But then they make a beeline for the Byzantine Empire, which is a rich Eastern Christian Empire. and he is basically crying out for help. He is saying these people are taking my empire over

and I need you Christians in the West to come east and help me. Many historians have wondered whether or not this letter was faked because the Byzantine emperor Alexios promises anybody who comes from the West, any soldiers, mercenaries who come. He says you can have loads of my wealth, you can have all the holy relics that I have and he has a lot relics. He has the table from the Last Supper, he has loaves and fishes from the miracle that Christ performs, but he has a lot of very expensive silver and gold relics.

And a lot of historians think that the letter may have been either totally faked or was doctored by Western knights, who basically wanted to get rich on the back of the emperor's misfortune. Pope Urban II delivers a blood-curdling speech at Claremont, a city in France in the year 1095, and he's got this letter, he's seen it. All of Europe is concerned, he is concerned. He basically says we need to get out there, help our fellow Christians liberate the Byzantine Empire, but also take back the holy cities like Jerusalem, which have been taken by the Muslim Caliphs. At the time Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade,

the church wasn't just a spiritual force. It was a powerful political player. In the late 11th century, the papacy was trying to break free from the control of kings and emperors, especially during what's known as the Gregorian reforms. Urban II had been a close ally of Pope Gregory the 7th, who believed the church should stand above all secular rulers. By calling on Europe's knights to take up arms in a holy war, Urban wasn't only trying to protect Christians in the East. He was also trying to unite the often divided kingdoms of the West under Rome's leadership.

In many ways, the Crusade was both a mission of faith and a bold political move, a way for the Pope to prove that ultimate authority and salvation flowed through the church itself. So it's a much bigger agenda he's operating to. And as he says this, the crowd in front of him yells, Daeses Vault, God wills it, and with that, Pope Urban launches the First Crusade. Pope Urban II's call to arms in 1095 unleashed a wave of religious excitement that spread far beyond the knights and nobles he'd hoped to inspire. Ordinary peasants and townspeople, stirred by fiery preachers like Peter the Hermit,

began marching toward the Holy Land long before any official army was raised. This became known as the Peasants' Crusade. This was a raw, chaotic movement, driven by faith and desperation. With little training, poor leadership and almost no supplies, many caused chaos as they traveled and were eventually wiped out by the Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor. But their tragic failure only added to the sense of divine purpose behind Pope Urban's call, setting the stage for the far more organized and deadly campaign that followed, the First Crusade.

The actual First Crusade began in 1096, drawing tens of thousands of knights, soldiers, and common pilgrims from across Western Europe. What started as a religious expedition quickly became a complex military campaign marked by hunger, disease, and brutal sieges. The Crusaders, driven by faith, greed, and promises of absolution, first captured the cities of Nicaea and Antioch after months of fierce fighting. Their forces, though fractured by language and leadership disputes, pressed on through scorching deserts and hostile territory, believing their hardships were divinely ordained. Now the First Crusade is enormously successful.

It captures Jerusalem in 1099 with a great deal of bloodshed, which the Christian chroniclers kind of boast about rather inappropriately. But several Christian kingdoms, crusader kingdoms, are carved out of the Middle East. God seems to be on the side of the Crusaders. But if we go forward 20 years, there are problems. The Crusader kingdoms are under attack, there's a lot of squabbling. And one of the problems as well is that the knights, most of the knights, most of the night, knights keep going home to their estates, to their families. Out of the conquest rose a series of crusader states,

the kingdom of Jerusalem, the county of Edessa, the principality of Antioch, and the county of Tripoli. These were fragile footholds of Latin Christendom in the heart of the Islamic world. So, you know, it's very unreliable, this Western presence. It keeps disappearing. And also many Christian pilgrims who thought that it would now be safe to go to Jerusalem on pilgrimage are being killed by brigands, murderers, rebels on the roads into Jerusalem. They're bleached bones by the roadside.

So what happens is that a group of nine knights, most of them from the county of Champagne, which is now part of modern France, they resolve to create a new kind of knighthood. These knights will live by the monastic rule. They won't be monks themselves, but they will live by the monastic rule. That means poverty, chastity and obedience. They will have a very severe rule book. They will live like monks. They will pray like monks.

They will drill tough military drills, and they will be there in the Holy Land all year round. Their daily life was a strict blend of prayer, discipline, and combat readiness. Each day began before dawn with communal worship, followed by hours of weapons training, horse drills, and physical conditioning to ensure they could fight as one. Meals were simple and silent, broken only by readings of Scripture, and the knights were bound by vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. When not in battle, they maintained their equipment, guarded pilgrims, or worked with the estates

that funded their order, living every moment as both soldiers and servants of God. Now officially, the mission of this new order is to guard the pilgrims on the roads into Jerusalem, but very soon they really do become part of the defence of the Holy Land, and they really seem to capture the spirit of the age. There are young men all over Europe, it's mainly men, there are some women, but it's mainly men who decide they want to be part of this new order. Though the Templars were a male order, a small number of women were connected to their mission. Figures like Countess Petronia de Chamea, head of the Sisters of the Temple in France,

took similar vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, managing estates, and offering aid to pilgrims. Other noble women, such as Queen Melisande of Jerusalem, supported the order through the order through land grants and protection. While they never fought, these women played vital roles in sustaining the Templar's spiritual and logistical work across Europe and the Holy Land.

The King of Jerusalem, the Crusader King of Jerusalem, allows the new order to be based on the Temple Mount. Now, the Temple Mount, which is still there today, is basically all that's left of King Herod's temple in Jerusalem,

the Jewish temple that was built to house the Ark of the Covenant and other holy relics. It was the Jewish temple that the Romans destroyed in 79C.E. Under the Emperor of Espasian. And the Temple Mount then is this platform, all that's left, and then on top of it in the Crusader period where two Muslim places of worship that had been built while the Muslims controlled Jerusalem before the Crusaders took it back. One is the Dome of the Rock and one is the Alaksa Mosque, very sacred places in Islam.

Today, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aksa Mosque are among Islam's holiest and most sensitive sites. The Dome of the Rock, built in 691 C.E. marks where Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven, making it Islam's third holiest site after Mecca and Medina. Beside it stands the Al-Aksa Mosque, rebuilt several times since the 8th century, and able to hold around 5,000 worshippers. Together, they form the Al-Haram al-Sharif, or noble sanctuary. But while the Crusaders were in control of Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock was renamed the Temple of the Lord, and the Alaksa Mosque was renamed the Temple of Solomon,

because it was believed that that was the location of the Temple of Solomon, where the Ark of the Covenant, which it's still missing today and had been missing for over a thousand years by the time of the Crusades, It was believed that's where it had been. And this new order of knights were based there in the Alaksa Mosque, and they take the name of the Temple Mount. They become the Knights Templar. Now, it's very controversial, but one of the things that happens quite early on with the Templars

is that the popes decide that this new order of knights will only be accountable directly to the Pope. The Pope is their line manager. They don't have to explain themselves to anybody, no local nobles, no local bishops or archbishop. They're only accountable to the Pope. In the 12th century, the Knights Templars' direct accountability to the Pope was revolutionary. In 1139, Pope Innocent II issued the Papal Bull Omnidatum optimum, granting the Templars the right to collect their own taxes, build churches, and cross-border. freely. Unlike other knights or monasteries, they answered to no king or bishop only to Rome. This made them a powerful independent order. This was a state within a state that has

been seen countless times throughout history, rarely ending without disaster. And these preceptories, as they call, commanders, generate wealth which is then funneled to the Holy Land to pay for the Crusade. And this means that the Templars are landlords, their bankers, their royal advisers, and they do become incredibly powerful. And that, of course, again, is something that causes resentment. People say, where's their money coming from? Why are they so powerful? What's going on here? And some of their biggest enemies are within the church. We get chroniclers like William of Tyre, Walter Map, who really are kind of gossiping monks who really detest the Templars because they think money that

that's going to the Templars should really be coming to the mainstream church. They see the Templars as taking some of their money away. Even though the Templars are winning battles against the Saracens, against the Islamic forces, that doesn't impress them. They still whisper that are operating to their own agenda. They're working with the enemy. There's something fishy about this lot. Even in their early years of success, the Templar's immense power and privilege began to breed unease.

unease across Christendom. Their wealth, political influence, and exemption from local authority set them apart from other religious and military institutions, creating suspicion among both nobles and clergy. Many saw them as proud, secretive, and dangerously independent, an order that answered to no one but the Pope, yet operated like a vast, untaxed corporation. These early resentments planted the first seeds of disillusionment that over the next two centuries would blossom into open hostility and ultimately their downfall. Despite this growing resentment in Europe, many in the Holy Land continued to hold the Templars in the highest regard. Among local Christians, pilgrims, and even certain nobles, they were seen as steadfast defenders of the faith. Their discipline and unity on the battlefield earned admiration not only from their allies, but also from their Muslim foes, who respected their courage and the ferocity of their charge.

Nobody can doubt that the Templars were incredibly brave when it came to fighting in battle. And they're very different when they're going to battle because they all wear these white mantles with the Red Cross. They charge into battle together and they all look the same. There's something almost robotic about them. You know, most of the normal knights are wearing their family crests and they all charge in at their own pace. But the Templars are like a machine. They're like robots.

And they're the first into battle and the last to leave. Despite their fearsome fighting abilities, after time, the cracks begin to show for the Knights Templar. Now, of course, as we know, eventually after two centuries of crusading, the Crusades go wrong. Essentially, the Crusaders lose the Battle of Hattin. They eventually lose Jerusalem in 1187.

And eventually they are gradually pushed off the mainland of the Middle East. And some of this is due to mistakes made by the Knights Templar themselves. Their refusal to work in a collaborative manner with the rival Knights Hospitler, who emerge around about the same time, who copy many of the Templar ideas and other orders. The Knights Hospitler, or Order of St. John, emerged around the same time as the Templars, but began as a charitable group in Jerusalem caring for sick and wounded pilgrims. Over time, they became a powerful military order, combining medical aid with armed defense of the Holy Land. Unlike the wealthy secret of Templars, the hospitalers focused on service, discipline, and fortifications.

They later established headquarters on roads, on Rhodes and then Malta, where their mission continued long after the Templars had fallen. And it's this lack of unity on the Christian side that the Muslim enemy is able to take advantage of, because during the First Crusade, the Muslim side was actually divided. There were a lot of petty rivalries that allowed the Crusaders to storm in. But 100 years later, Saladin, a great Saracen leader, has united Muslims from Egypt to Syria. He has now got them to get their act together and they're fighting back and they're taking back territory and it's now the Christians who are stabbing each other and engaging in petty rivalries.

Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem in 1187 marked a devastating turning point for the Templars and the entire crusading movement. Following his decisive victory over the crusader forces at the Battle of Hatton, Saladin's armies swept through the Holy Land, reclaiming city after city. that had been under Christian control for nearly a century. When Jerusalem finally fell, it was not taken by siege, but surrendered under negotiated terms, a stark contrast to the bloodshed of 1099.

For the Templars, the loss was catastrophic. Many of their brothers had been killed or captured at Hatton, and their fortresses and commandaries across the region fell one by one. The Order's mission, built around the defense of the Holy City, was suddenly thrown into crisis. In the wake of Jerusalem's fall, the Templars found themselves fighting not for triumph, but for survival. The dream of a permanent Christian kingdom in the Holy Land was slipping away, replaced by a grim struggle to hold on to shrinking coastal strongholds. Yet even in defeat, rumors and legends began to grow around the Order.

Their retreat from Jerusalem and their long residence on the Temple Mount stirred whispers that they had uncovered something extraordinary beneath its ancient stones. We continue with the mystery after the break. Investigative historian, author, and journalist Tony McMahon explains more. Now the fact that the Templars are based on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem has given rise to a lot of conspiracy theories about why, where they base there on the Temple Mount. Where are they looking for treasure underneath the Temple Mount? And this has really been a theory that has kind of accelerated over the last 200 years from the Victorians onwards. This idea that the Templars, once they were based in the Alaksa Mosque, which was renamed the Temple of Solomon, they were digging underneath. What were they

looking for? Well, the view is that they were looking for things like the Ark of the Covenant, possibly the Holy Grail, the head of John the Baptist, and other treasure that had once been in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, but had long been lost. And so did the Templars find some of this treasure? You know, some theorists have suggested that their enormous wealth, their enormous power, was because they had found some of these holy relics, and the Pope knew it. There is an intriguing theory that the Knights Templar had the shroud of Jesus, what we now call it. call the Shroud of Turin because that's where it ended up. But the view is that the Templars got possession of the Shroud,

the Holy Shroud of Jesus, either finding it in Jerusalem or that they stole it in Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade and that they took it back to France and that what we now call the Shroud of Turin was actually in Templar hands for something like over 100, 200 years, possibly in the hands of the Deshaunay family. The Deshauny family of Burgundy are often cited in the theory linking the Templars to the shroud of Turin. The relic first appeared in the 1350s, when Geoffraud Deshauny, a French knight renowned for his courage and faith,

displayed it at his church in Lioray. Some believe his family inherited the shroud from Templars, who safeguarded it after the orders fall in 1307, possibly tracing back to relics found in Jerusalem. or Constantinople. Though skeptics argue it was simply a later devotional artifact, the Dishani's sudden possession of such a powerful relic, so soon after the Templar's disappearance, continues to stir speculation.

And this is a theory that's out there. It's disputed by a lot of mainstream historians, but the view is that the Templars did have the shroud of Jesus. You know, as we know, nobody likes failure. And of course the Templars are in the eyes of many people, they do fail ultimately in the Holy Land, even though they've succeeded for a long time. In the end, the forces of the Muslim powers do manage to push them out, especially the Mamluk Empire pushes the Crusaders out and eventually they end up on the island of Cyprus.

The Mamluk Empire, a powerful Islamic dynasty that rose in Egypt in 1250, delivered the final blow to the crusader presence in the Holy Land. Formerly slave soldiers of Turkish and Circassian origin, the Mamlux became the dominant military force of the eastern Mediterranean. Under Sultan Bebar and later Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil, they launched a relentless campaign that saw cities like Caesarea, Arsuf and Tripoli fall one by one, culminating in the siege of Akrhe in 1291. The Templars fought fiercely, but the city was overrun after brutal street fighting. With Akre's fall, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem collapsed. And this really begins the decline of the Templars, but it also begins a lot of the theorizing about what were the Templars up to anyway.

Were they really about fighting for Christ or were they in league with the enemy? What we call the Holy Land, centered on the Holy City of Jerusalem, was a turn to. turbulent area, even before the Crusaders arrived. Somebody has likened it to the movie Mad Max, that it was really a crazy, violent part of the world. The Crusades didn't help. The Crusades came in and injected a whole new level of tension with these Christian crusaders imposing themselves onto a population that often resented their presence. So when the Knights Temple were formed, there is, if you want a seething insurgency in this part of the world. there's almost what we could call a terrorism threat from inside the Crusader kingdoms,

as well as the external threat of the Saracens who are trying to conquer them back. It should be remembered that if we go right back to the start of the Templars, some people thought the Templars were a fantastic idea, and some people thought the Templars were almost unchristian. So we get somebody like St. Bernard of Claveau, who was a Cistercian monk, a leading Cistercian. And he argued very vigorously that the Templars really were in line with Christian teaching, that there was nothing wrong with taking up the sword for Christ.

He wrote a book called In Praise of the New Knighthood. He believed that there was nothing wrong with having a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other and going out there and fighting, literally fighting for Christ and killing for Christ. In fact, he said when you kill those who oppose Christianity, you're not killing people, you're killing evil. It's not homicide, it's malicide. The knight of Christ may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently. When he strikes, it is Christ who acts. When he dies, it is Christ who is crowned. He serves Christ when he kills the enemy and serves himself when he is killed.

But there were those in the church who always felt uneasy with the whole Templar project. There's another Cistercian monk called Isaac of Stella, and he argues that the Templars are essentially a devilish creation. He says they are the product of a devilish fifth gospel that is only known to evil doers. He says there's nothing in the New Testament that says you should take up a sword for Christ, that violence in the name of Christianity is evil. It is the work of Satan. And the Templars are not. not a product of Christ, they are a product of the devil. We see these kind of ideas about the Templars being product of the devil kind of grow

as a lot of, there's a lot of, there's constant kind of bickering, rumor-mongering, attacks on the Templars throughout the time that they exist, and this accelerates towards the year 1307 when they're arrested. By the early 14th century, those whispers of corruption and heresy had grown into open accusation. On Friday, October 13, 1307, King Philip IV of France ordered the sudden arrest of every member of the order across the realm, charged with blasphemy, idol worship, and secret sins. The knights were imprisoned, tortured, and forced into confessions that shocked Christendom. What began as rumor became a political purge, one that would see the once-revered Templars

brought to ruin, and their grand master Jacques de Mollé burned at the stake. But the truth behind their downfall, and who truly orchestrated it, still remains a mystery. We'll explore this in more detail in the next episode. Out of the ashes of the Templar's destruction, speculation soon turned backward to their beginnings. As the last knights were executed and their order erased from the maps of Christendom, People began to ask who the Templars really were and what their true purpose had been. How had a small band of monks turned soldiers risen to such power, only to be crushed so completely? In the silence that followed their fall, mystery filled the void.

Whispers spread that their origins had never been as simple as the church claimed, that behind their rise might have stood hidden forces, secret patrons, or a purpose the world was never meant to understand. While tradition tells of nine knights from Champagne, forming a humble brotherhood bound by vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, not everyone accepts this story at face value. Some historians have long found the account too neat, too simple for an order that rose to such sudden prominence.

They argue that the origins of the Templars may not have been the born solely from piety or necessity, but from something far more complex, and perhaps far more mysterious than the official record suggests. They think that the Templars were set up by a secret organization called the Priory of Cyan. Now this theory is what inspired the Da Vinci Code, the popular Dan Brown story that then became a very popular movie. And the idea behind this is that there's this secret organization, the Priory of Sion, which predated the Templars,

which has been set up to protect the hidden bloodline of Christ, that Christ and Mary Maglain had children, and that their descendants, sometimes referred to as the Desposini, are in constant mortal danger. The church is always out to kill them, and the Priory of Sion must protect these descendants of Christ. and the Priory of Sion then creates a military wing and that's what the Templars are. There is a similar theory to the Pryor of Sion that the so-called Rex Deus theory which is developed by historian called Tim Wallace Murphy.

He argues along similar lines saying that there's a network of secret families descended from the high priests of Jerusalem and that they set up the Knights Templar as their military wing and their agenda is to establish a Christian name. kingdom of Europe. Needless to say, mainstream historians have got no time for any of these conspiracy theories about the origins of the Knights Templar. They believed that the Templars were set up by these nine knights and that there's no mystery to how they grew and became rich so quickly. But it's worth noting that even while the Templars existed, there were people whispering

there's something weird about this organisation. How are they so rich? How are they so rich so quickly? Why are they so powerful? And I think because of the way in which the Templars suddenly burst onto the scene, and then 200 years later was so dramatically crushed, that has left big questions in our minds about who really were the Knights Templar. For most historians, the answer is straightforward. The Knights Templar were a practical response to the dangers of pilgrimage and the chaos of the Crusades. Their rapid rise was the result of papal support, noble patronage, and a reputation for discipline

and bravery that drew wealth and recruits from across Europe. Yet beyond this accepted narrative lies a far more mysterious interpretation. Some suggest that the Templar's power and secrecy hint at a hidden purpose, that they were founded not merely as soldiers of Christ, but as guardians of ancient knowledge uncovered in Jerusalem. The question who where the Templars fascinates us still because there are thousands of people today around the world who claim that they are the descendants of the Knights Templar. They even claim that they are part of an unbroken line that goes back to the original

Templars, that the Templars were never really crushed that they continued. And we can kind of like categorize this with three types basically of modern Templars. First of all, we have the Masonic Templars, Freemasons Templars. And the Freemasons have argued that what happened at the end of the official Templar history is that Knights Templar fled France in particular, went up to Scotland and hung out, if you want, were sheltered by medieval stone masons. And these stone masons kind of gave refuge to these fleeing Templars. And over time, there's a kind of a merger between the stone masons and their organisations, the guilds, and the Knights Templar and their kind of structure,

which ultimately creates Freemasonry. And this is why you have a Templar degree within Freemasonry and why Masons have argued publicly since the 18th century that they are the inheritors of the Templar ideal. So are the Freemasons really the descendants of the Knights Templar? It's one of the oldest and most debated claims that the Templar's secrets survive through the masons who shelter them. But they're not alone. The question is, did the Templars ever truly

die out? Or did they simply change their name? But the Freemasons are not the only people who claim to be Knights Templar. There's a whole what we call neo-Templar movement. This started with a guy called Raymond Palaprat in the early 19th century under the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Palaprat was an ex-Cathalat priest who revealed publicly that he was the grandmaster of the Knights Templar and he was the latest in an unbroken line of grandmasters going back to the last grandmaster of the Templars Jacques de Malle when I say the last grandmaster according to these guys he wasn't because he appointed another grandmaster after his after he knew he was going to be executed that he was going to be burned at the stake and that one of these subsequent grandmasters a guy

called Larménius basically starts this charter of transmission, it's called, where every grandmaster puts their name onto this charter of transmission, the Larménius charter, it's also called. And this charter is then produced by Palaprap in public, and it shows that there's this unbroken line going from Jacques de Malay to him. He is the latest in a secret line of grandmasters. The Larmatius charter, by the way, is held in Mark Mason Hall. in London, in a Masonic Hall in London. It seems to have been lost at some stage, then it was

recovered, and now it's in Masonic hands. But ironically, many Neo-Templars not only say that they are not Freemasons, but they really object to the way in which Freemasons have, if you want, appropriated the Knights Templar. They say they are genuine Templars, and the masons are not. However, the Neo-Templer movement itself is very divided. There are many organisations today. and a lot of them do not get on. So if the Freemasons aren't the true heirs of the Templars, and even the Neo-Templars can't agree among themselves, then who is?

Are there other groups who quietly claim to carry the Templar's legacy, their symbols, and even their secrets? And the third type of Knights Templar out there are Roman Catholic Templars. Even though the Roman Catholic Church crushed the Knights Templar, Many Templars, especially in Italy, many modern day templars, they argue that the Knights Templar were always Catholic. They were always part of the Roman Catholic Church. They've got nothing to do with Freemasonry,

nothing to do with Protestantism. They are part of the Catholic Church. They also argue that the Pope at the time that the Templars were crushed, Pope Clement V, did actually absolve the Templars, that he did not think that the Templars were guilty of heresy and all the things that they were charged of. I have met some of these Roman Catholic Templars in Rome, and very interestingly, they work with the Vatican on security issues. They have a degree of recognition from the Pope.

And during the Jubilee year of 2025, the Roman Catholic Templars in Rome guarded the holy doors to the basilicas at St. John Latrin and Pietro in Vincioli. They also provided security when Vice President J.D. Vance came to visit the late Pope France. So the Knights Templar are still doing their thing in the 21st century. And so the story of the Knights Templar ends much as it began. In mystery, from humble beginnings as nine knights sworn to protect pilgrims, they rose to become one of the most powerful and feared orders in medieval Christendom. Their sudden fall left behind not just ruins and relics, but question that have echoed for centuries.

Were they loyal servants of the Church, or guardians of something far older and more secret? Were they destroyed by greed and politics, or silenced because of what they knew? So, who do you think are the true descendants of the Templars? Let us know in the comments below, and stay tuned for next time, where we investigate the final day of the Order of the Templars.

This has been Forbidden History, the mystery of the Templars. 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.