Authors: Sean Martin
ISBN-13: 9781560256458, ISBN-10: 1560256451
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Basic Books
Date Published: November 2004
Edition: First Trade Paper Edition
This book is an essential exploration into the history of a legendary group of Crusaders, which are prominently featured in Dan Brown’s recent best seller, The Da Vinci Code. The Knights Templar rose from humble beginnings to become the most powerful military religious order of the Middle Ages. Formed to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land, they participated in the Crusades and rapidly gained wealth, lands, and influence. Seemingly untouchable for nearly two centuries, they fell from grace spectacularly after the loss of the Holy Land. In the ensuing centuries the Templars have exerted a unique influence over European history; orthodox historians see them as nothing more than soldier-monks whose arrogance was their ultimate undoing, while others see them as occultists of the first order. With clarity and ease, Martin navigates between the orthodox and the speculative, the historical and the myth, to bring alive the story of the Templars. Like those other legends of the Middle Agesthe characters of the Arthurian talesThe Knights Templar holds captive the imagination of all those intrigued by conspiracy and how history and myth intertwine to become the stuff of legend.
Introduction : the temple and the myth | 11 | |
1 | The rise of the Order of the Temple (1119-45) | 15 |
2 | A church within a church, a state within a state (1145-1291) | 42 |
3 | Fall and trial (1291-1314) | 111 |
4 | Templar mysteries | 127 |
App | Grand masters of the temple | 154 |
App | The charges against the Templars | 156 |