Mysterious origins of the Knights Templar

How exactly did the Templars rise so quickly and acquire their wealth?

In Episode 3 of Templar Knight TV – I examine competing theories over the origins of the Knights Templar. In particular, was the order of knights set up by a shadowy organisation called the Priory of Sion? Or was it, as medieval chroniclers at the time claimed, a band of knights sworn to protect pilgrims on the roads into Jerusalem?

The Priory of Sion is the conspiracy theory that refuses to die. In the vlog that you can click on below, I race through the main points: That Jesus married Mary Magdalene, they had children, who were whisked off to France. The Priory was set up centuries later to protect the descendants of those children who the Catholic church wanted to kill off. Why? Because the church saw them as a threat to Vatican legitimacy and power.

The Priory created the Knights Templar as its military wing to defend the descendants of Jesus. The origins of the Knights Templar according to this theory was to provide a bodyguard service to the holy bloodline. This was in the hope that one day they would establish a global Christian monarchy. But things went a bit wrong between the Priory and the Knights Templar and they went their separate ways in the year 1188.

None of this explains why successive popes showered privileges on the Knights Templar. Did the church not know the true nature of the Templars? Indeed, Rome gave the Templars almost complete immunity from the laws of the countries they were based in. They only had to answer directly to Rome. That hardly smacks of an organisation set up to crush the church!

I mean at some point, you would assume that the church would have guessed that their darling crusader knights on whom they had bestowed such largesse were in fact their mortal enemy working for a clandestine anti-papal organisation in the wings? Yet for two hundred years, we’re asked to believe that Rome didn’t wise up to this.

OK – they were eventually crushed by Pope Clement. But only after the King of France had metaphorically placed his hand at the pope’s throat. His soldiers had literally done that and more to the previous pope, Boniface, contributing to his early death. So Clement wasn’t about to show bravery in the face of French demands to close down the Templars.

FIND OUT MORE: In-depth investigation of the Priory of Sion

As I’ve blogged before, the Priory of Sion appears to have been a hoax dreamed up in the 1950s by a group of eccentric French chaps. One of them even admitted that the evidence for the Priory’s existence as an ancient fraternity was completely made up. Nevertheless, other authors since have sidestepped this inconvenient truth to state that, regardless, the Priory existed and had a hand in the origins of the Knights Templar.

In the vlog above – episode 3 of Templar Knight TV, I look at two books that have perpetuated interest in the Priory of Sion and they are: The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail by Richard Leigh, Michael Baigent and Henry Lincoln and – more famously these days – The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Dan Brown’s novel came out twenty years after Holy Blood Holy Grail and continues many of themes in the earlier 1980s blockbuster.

So much so that Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent unsuccessfully sued Dan Brown’s publisher alleging breach of copyright. Brown acknowledged his debt to Holy Blood Holy Grail even calling one of the characters Leigh Teabing. Leigh is Richard Leigh’s surname while Teabing is an anagram of Baigent. I remember thinking the name was a bit odd the first time I read Brown’s novel but of course, it all now makes sense.

Indeed in one scene where Teabing is talking to Sophie, he refers directly to Holy Blood Holy Grail saying it was a book that came out when she was very young. And it “finally brought the idea of Christ’s bloodline into the mainstream”.

Anyway, I don’t want to give my whole vlog away!! Click on the link above and enjoy ten minutes of speculation on the origins of the Knights Templar – you will not be disappointed.

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