Useful Notes / The Knights Templar

Templar on Horseback, carrying the standard

Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.
(Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to thy name give the glory).

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon a.k.a. The Order of the Temple a.k.a. The Knights Templar were a Christian religious order founded during The Crusades. Despite the title of poor fellow soldiers, the Order eventually became renowned for being the wealthiest Church Militant, especially for its banking prowess. However, they were never quite as rich as they were believed to be.

The Order began in the wake of the First Crusade. The Outremer (Across-the-Sea) conquests gave rise to Crusader Kingdoms in Jerusalem and Acre. The order was founded by its first Grand Master, Hugues de Payens in 1119. Its original membership numbered just nine, Hugues himself and eight of his fellow noble relations. Their stated aim was to protect pilgrims travelling from Europe to the Holy Land and back. Over the course of centuries, this service extended to hospitality and banking; pilgrims could store their wealth with the Templars at one location and withdraw it from Templar coffers at another location later on.

From its very beginning, the Order was controversial. The notion of Christians carrying swords to defend pilgrims for holy purpose raised more than a few eyebrows. It took Bernard de Clairvaux, one of the greatest orators of the age - later the driving force behind the Second Crusade, and believed to be the nephew of one of the original nine - to come to their defence. In his pamphlet, In Defense of the New Knighthood, he argued that Templars could serve the Church and carry swords under the prerogative of Saint Augustine's Just-War theory. Clairvaux noted that, a Templar Knight, "is truly a fearless knight, and secure on every side, for his soul is protected by the armour of faith, just as his body is protected by the armour of steel. He is thus doubly-armed, and need fear neither demons nor men." Thus legitimized, the Templars were able to claim donations from several noblemen and neighbouring Kings across Europe. Each Templar was required to take a vow of chastity and poverty, to forsake all other titles, and to devote himself to the Holy Life and become a Warrior Monk. The Order itself was granted several tracts of land across England, France (the true heart of Templardom), Spain, Portugal, modern day Croatia and Poland, among other places. On the advice of Bernard, Pope Innocent II exempted them from taxes, and conferred upon them full independence from any authority except that of the Pope.

The Templars in Jerusalem claimed the Al-Aqsa mosque as their base of operations, believing that the lost Temple of Solomon was buried beneath it. This association with Solomon and their habit of occupying religious buildings during the Crusades would go on to form the seed of their later legend, as well as provide the Temple of their title. But for the most part, the Templars served as a military order of exceptional versatility. Templars had proper ranks between Knights, Chaplains and Sergeants. The Knights were the elite fighting force, while the Sergeants, also known as brothers, were the poorer recruits. Only Knights, recruited from the noble aristocracy (though in the early days, noble ancestry wasn't necessarily required), wore the iconic Templar regalia of White Surcoat over Chain Mail emblazoned with a Red Cross on its chest. The sergeants, drawn from the lower classes and so the majority, wore black habits and served as infantrymen or servants. Chaplains wore green and were responsible for religious services.

They were famous during the Crusades for their discipline, their refusal to retreat from battle, and their religious devotion. The Templars played a key role in the Third Crusade, thwarting a few victories by Saladin and fighting alongside King Richard I, but were also considered to be the Spanner in the Works on later crusades, especially the Sixth Crusade. This was because they argued against grand reconquests in the Middle East, as the reconquered land couldn't be held in the long term. They also served with the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs during the Reconquista, though in Iberia, the various monarchs made it very clear who was in charge and preferred to use homegrown Orders such as the Orders of Santiago and Calatrava. The Templars gradually constituted a sort of kingdom unto themselves. They built castles, fortresses, and garrisoned towns. They had a proper organization with a Grand Master, elected for life and based in Jerusalem. Templar territories in various regions were organized into provinces with commanders and preceptors manning these posts, most of whom were appointed by vote. By the mid-1200s, the Templars possessed property across Western Europe, the Mediterranean and the Holy Land. For a time, the Templars "owned" the island of Cyprus, having bought it off Richard the Lionheart after he captured it, but sold it back to him when they realised that it was too much for them to hold. Their military strength, noble vows, and renunciation of titles gave them credibility to collect, store, and transport bullion and other valuables across a wide region. Storehouses holding reserve currency, their general bureaucratic efficiency, and their command of land and sea trade routes made them attractive to bankers and kings, in addition to pilgrims. From this skill with banking and finance arose the association of Templars with treasure, and led to them ultimately entering conspiracy-theory territory.

However, it should also be noted that they were never quite as rich or as powerful as was generally assumed. They frequently occupied key positions in royal courts, effectively running the French treasury (which is part of what led to their fall), but were at the mercy of kings as Philip IV proved during the Trial of the Templars, and as the kings of England proved when they frequently used the Templars as a piggy bank. Further, King Edward I employed them as 'the Hammer of the Scots', as part of his armies during his campaigns in Scotland, forcing the Masters of both the English and Scottish Temples to swear fealty to him. They also had the disadvantage, unlike their colleagues the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights, of not having a defined base to call their own, like the Teutons in Prussia and the Hospitallers in Rhodes.

The rise and fall of the Templars, seen in retrospect, is a case of classic Mission Creep. The Order's original purpose was to protect pilgrims, but it gradually expanded to serving as a voluntary Crusader army and peacekeeping force. From there it expanded into infrastructure and finance. This expansion was inversely proportional to the gradual waning of the Crusader mentality in the 1200s, at which point the presence of an organization subsidized by the nobility and the Church, free of any regulation from secular authority, and possessing considerable prestige, raised serious concerns among both the royalty and the Templars' fellow Christian orders. In the wake of the Fourth Crusade - in which the Crusaders sacked the Byzantine Empire instead of the Outremer - and the fall of Acre in 1291, many argued that the Templars no longer had any purpose. In addition, their rival holy order, the Hospitallers, wanted to merge with the Templars in order to access their infrastructure.

By the dawn of the 1300s, the Templars were without a clear purpose, and their failure to attract royal and church aid for another Crusade signalled that the Order was now nothing more than a financial institute. The Templars did appear to entertain hopes of starting an actual kingdom in Languedoc, in imitation of the Teutonic Knights (who set up shop in Prussia) and the Hospitallers (who'd nicked Rhodes), but this in turn merely aroused the further suspicion of King Philip IV of France.

King Philip "le Bel"^note The Handsome - He was said to be exceptionally good-looking was a monarch who was interested in reforming finances and centralizing his kingdom under one rule. Like most medieval monarchs, his kingdom teetered on bankruptcy and he was perennially strapped for cash. Initially, Philip IV was friendly with the Templars, having taken hospitality at the Temple Fortress fleeing a riot in Paris. Gradually, the Templars' considerable presence as a "state within a state", papal authority to travel across all borders without any dues or regulation to secular authority, and considerable stores of wealth caught his attention. In addition, Philip IV had claims on Templar territory in Champagne, France and was troubled by their petition to form a Kingdom in Languedoc and later in Cyprus. On top of this, Philip IV was conducting his own campaign to expand royal authority and limit papal authority. He succeeded in deposing Pope Boniface VIII and installing a Frenchman as Pope Clement V, and moving the papacy to Avignon from Rome. This coincided with the King's persecution of the Templars, which ultimately resulted in mass arrests on October 1307, Friday the 13th. Following these arrests, the Templars were accused of blasphemy (worship of a crypto-Muslim and neo-pagan Mystery Cult of Baphomet) and sodomy, tortured into confessions, and finally burned at the stake. Overnight, the nearly 200-year-old organization ceased to function, with Templar initiates lapsing from the Order, joining rival orders, and generally heading for the hills. These arrests ended the role of Church military orders in finance; royal authorities once again became the centers of economy. The downfall of the Templars also became an endpoint for The Crusades, whose enthusiasm had already ebbed. The Templars had been merely The Remnant. The dramatic fall from grace, from Poor Brothers venerated for their devotion to Christ to blasphemers and neo-pagans associated with usury, cemented the Templar legend.

The Knights Templar were skilled, pious, and occasionally highly-educated elite fighters, cavalry, and bankers. The order was, all in all, a fairly normal (if vastly successful until its demise) religious warrior class born from the upper crust of medieval society. Ironically enough, they only embodied the Knight Templar trope in their early days. Within a few decades of their founding they had transformed, in the eyes of their more zealous contemporaries, into a notoriously tolerant organization that cultivated diplomatic contacts with the Muslim world; worked with Arab architects (which influenced the Gothic architecture seen everywhere in Europe), merchants, and even theologians; and disapproved of slaughtering enemies if they agreed to surrender. Indeed, Muslim sources were often more positive about them than Christian ones were, saluting their military skill, religious dedication, cultured nature and good manners (i.e. they weren't intolerant foaming fanatics, unlike many fellow crusaders). All of these points were used against them during the trials staged by Philip IV. The persistence of rumours that the Templars were somehow corrupt despite most evidence to the contrary means the Order is, to this day, an example of heroes with really bad publicity.

The Order ceased to exist effectively overnight.^note  Some regional branches, such as the Portuguese one, survived, with the King of Portugal creating the Order of Christ in 1317 for survivors of The Purge. This, and their lingering association with both the Temple of Solomon and a huge treasure trove later gave rise to countless Ancient Conspiracy theories. That many of the Order's members in France were arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake on Friday 13th (October 13, 1307, to be precise) is often erroneously cited as the origin of the belief that 13 Is Unlucky. Pope Clement V only officially disbanded the Order in 1312. The last Grandmaster, Jacques de Molay, was burnt at the stake in the year 1314, seven years after his arrest.

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Works featuring or referencing historical Templars (or their successors):

Anime and Manga

• One of the minor characters in Hetalia: Axis Powers is the Anthropomorphic Personification of the Knights Templar.
• Crowley of Seraph of the End.

Comic Books

• In Neil Gaiman's Marvel 1602, much of the early plot involves various characters chasing after the secret treasure of the Templars, which is being carried by their last survivor across Europe. It turns out to be Thor's hammer.
• The World Bank/International Money Council in the Carl Barks & Don Rosa continuity of Disney Ducks Comic Universe is a modern front of the Templars. A Letter from Home focused on Scrooge's quest for their hidden treasure which was hidden under his family castle. Scrooge himself is a Templar descendant.
• The Sacred Order of Saint Dumas from Batman comics was originally a branch of the Templars but split up with them and thus survived their disbandment.
• Witchblade villains Kenneth Irons, Gerald Irons and Sir Renaud de Gaudin were members of The Knights Templar.
• They are featured in Crimson, having survived into modern times as monster-hunting extremists and serve as an antagonistic faction.

Fan Works

• The Order of Cantonna, modern day successors to the original knights, are the main antagonists of Angel of the Bat III: Da Pacem Domine. In the lead up to the story, the author stated he wanted a group of Catholics to be the main villains after ragging on Evangelical Protestants for the last two stories. He also referred to them as, "The very worst believers (Catholicism) has ever created."
• A.A. Pessimal's Good Omens fic I Shall Endure To the End has a chapter dealing with Jacques de Molay and Baphomet. Baphomet is a colleague of Crowley's.

Film

• The Spanish Tombs of the Blind Dead film series featured undead Templars as the villains/monsters. These built on the sudden disappearance of the Templars, with a premise that the Templars performed a ritual that gave them eternal life. The result is effectively skeleton zombies on horseback. Stay far away.
• The guardians of the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade styled themselves "the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword," but are also mentioned as originally being Templars.
• Brian de Bois-Guilbert (George Sanders) in the 1952 film version of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe.
• Kingdom of Heaven gives the Knights Templar some historical Hospitallier holdings. And they're the closest thing the film has to actual villains...
• In National Treasure the Templars found the treasure in Jerusalem and survived their dissolution in the form of the Freemasons, who smuggled it to America.
• The Maltese Falcon contains an example of the Hollywood History—the Malta-based order was The Knights Hospitallers (a.k.a. the Knights of Malta), and the Knights Templar were disbanded in 1312. The original book got it right, on the other hand. Introductory text appearing after the film's opening credits reads:
  In 1539 the Knight Templars of Malta, paid tribute to Charles V of Spain, by sending him a Golden Falcon encrusted from beak to claw with rarest jewels...
• Ironclad: One of the protagonists is a Templar knight named Thomas Marshall who assists in the castle defense against King John's Danish warriors during the First Barons' War.

Literature

• The Accursed Kings begins with the historical disbanding of the Knights Templar and execution of their Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, by the King of France.
• The Baphomet by French avant-gardist Pierre Klossowski is a visionary recreation of The Purge of the Templars and their afterlife in the European occult.
• In The Da Vinci Code, after Jerusalem was conquered, the Templars discovered documents proving that not only has Jesus really existed, but also married Mary Magdalene and had a child with her. After the crucifixion, Mary fled with their child to France, starting the Merovingian royal line (a.k.a. the Holy Grail), which exists to this day despite Vatican's efforts. Using this knowledge, the Templars have pressured the Church into giving them unprecedented power, which backfired on them, eventually, but the survivors reformed as "the Priory of Sion".
• The "The Metaphysics of War" and "The Mystery of the Grail" by Italian philosopher Julius Evola deal largely with the Knights Templar and come to more or less the same conclusions as Dan Brown. The reason for this is that Pierre Plantard, the originator of the "Priory of Sion" conspiracy theory, actually copied aspects from Evolas books.
• In some books by French author Jean Parvulesco (who was friends with both Evola and Plantard), some real (at the time) contemporary French politicians are depicted as being involved in conspiracies involving remnants of the Knights Templar.
• In the conspiracy theory invented by the main characters of Foucault's Pendulum, Templars have discovered a way to harvest the tremendous energies of the telluric currents but were destroyed before they could actually use their discovery. The rest of the conspiracy theory is their convoluted plan to reform and Take Over the World six centuries later.
• Brian de Bois-Guilbert, Albert de Malvoisin, Grand Master Lucas de Beaumanoir, et al. in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe; and Grand Master Giles Amaury in his The Talisman.
• Jan Guillou's The Templar Knight (book two of his Crusades trilogy) follows the adventures of a Swedish nobleman as a Knight Templar in the Holy Lands.
• A group of modern-day Templars feature in Steve Alten's The Loch, having made a (metaphorical, though they apparently believed it to be real) deal with the devil to protect an artifact of symbolic importance to Scotland. And by "devil" I mean "giant deep-sea eels that come into the loch via tunnel from the sea" (otherwise known as the Loch Ness Monster). Played with in that they turn out to be good guys.
• Sir Baldwin Furnshill, one of the detectives in Michael Jecks' "Medieval Murder" mysteries, is an ex-Knight Templar.
• In M. R. James's "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad" the hapless Parkins finds a haunted whistle on the site of a ruined Templar preceptory.
• In Wolfram von Eschenbach's 13th century romance Parzival, the Knights of the Holy Grail are described as "templeisen" or Templars.
• Throughout the Requiem series of books by Robyn Young, which follows the fall of the Templars, we see the fall of Acre and the attempts of the Templar Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, and Pope Clement V to get another crusade going. They never do.
• In the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, Kartik tells Gemma that some of the Knights Templar were members of the Rakshana.
• A Knights Templar soldier appears in Robert Reed's short story, The Hoplite. The man, who was Resurrected for a Job, commands a squad of not very friendly soldiers - a SS officer, an Aztec warrior, a Greek hoplite, etc - who are used to subjugate rebellious territories on Earth and raid the colonies of Alpha Centauri.
• The Children of the Light in The Wheel of Time are a pretty clear Expy of the historical Knights Templar, right down to them getting better later in the series when Galad becomes Lord Captain Commander.
• In The 39 Clues, the Knight Templar was a part of the Thomas branch.
• The Templars are central to the plot of The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury.
• R.S. Belcher's The Brotherhood of the Wheel and King of the Road, the Knights Templar had escaped the purges barring a few sacrificial members. They then reformed as the Brotherhood of the Wheel.
• The Lord of Bembibre: The eponymous character is a knight templar, and the novel is set in the early thirteenth century, when the Order was about to be disbanded after being subject to all sorts of accusations.

Live Action TV

• The Accursed Kings saw two prestige miniseries adaptations on French TV, including the 1972 one where Xavier Depraz portrayed Jacques de Molay and a 2005 one where Gérard Depardieu portrayed him.
• Brian de Bois-Guilbert (Sam Neill), Lucas de Beaumanoir (Philip Locke), et al. in the 1982 TV version, and Brian de Bois-Guilbert (Ciarán Hinds), Malvoisin (Jack Klaff), Lucas de Beaumanoir (Christopher Lee), et al. in the the 1997 TV version of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe; and Grand Master Giles Amaury (Donald Burton) in the 1980 TV version of his The Talisman.
• Relic Hunter had a Templar knights episode, of course.
• In the episode "Seven Poor Knights from Acre" of Robin of Sherwood a band of Templars pursue Robin and the outlaws in the mistaken belief that they have stolen the Templars' gold emblem. They are treated as The Dreaded by every one of the regular characters, both good and bad. When Friar Tuck refers to them as "Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon" Will Scarlet replies, "Poor? I'd hate to see the good ones!". However, they are eventually humilated when they treacherously attack the outlaws despite having had the emblem recovered for them, and fall straight into a trap. Robin melts the emblem (which shows two knights sharing a horse) down to pay the villagers taxes, and the Templars are sent on their way, two to a horse.
• The Brotherhood of the Black Diamond in Warehouse 13 is a secretive sect descended from the Knights Templar.
• America Unearthed: Invokes the Knights Templar frequently based on the conspiracy theories of Scott Wolter, who ironically arguably fits the trope of Knight Templar.
• The Danish children's TV series Tempelriddernes Skat sets a group of children hunting for the Templar's treasure, starting in the round churches of Borhnholm, which some conspiracy theorists claim were built by Templars.
• The History Channel show Knightfall features the final days of the Knight's Templar in Paris, after an Action Prologue set during the Siege of Acre. It makes a few dramatic changes to the tale, most notably that what spurred Phillip IV's enmity with the Knights Templar was a Templar fathering a bastard with his queen.
• Highlander had an insane immortal who was convinced he was the reincarnation of Jacques De Molay, the Knights’ last leader. Duncan battles him in their Paris headquarters and fans still debate whether it was holy ground or not.

Music

• They are one of the subjects of Grave Digger's Knights of the Cross Concept Album.
• "Knight Templar" is the title of a march composed by George Allen and often played as a showpiece by contesting brass bands. Perhaps Allen saw contesting bandsmen as the equivalent of the Templars?

Tabletop Games

• In the GURPS Fantasy setting, the Templars existed as an order on the world of Yrth; a world populated by fantasy creatures and humans accidentally transported from the era of The Crusades on Earth. The Templars were rumored to be the only humans to have deliberately transported themselves there by magic.
• In Corvus Belli's tabletop war-game Infinity, the Pan Oceanian Knightly Orders include a re-founded version of the Templars.
• Along with the Hospitallers, The Knights Templar are one of the knightly orders battling the demonic minions of The Unholy on the living planet of Wormwood in Rifts.
• The Black Templars chapter of Space Marines in Warhammer 40,000 borrow a lot of their imagery and general theme from the Knights Templar, and to a lesser degree so do the other Astartes Chapters (though for the most part they're more modeled on the Roman Legions). The Ultramarines, for example, protect territory on the Eastern Outskirts of the Imperium called Ultramar (sounds a bit like outremar in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, eh?)
  • Possibly an even better stand-in for the Templars are the Crusader Houses, warrior monks who fight for the Ecclesiarchy.

Theatre

• Nathan the Wise, a drama on religious tolerance by enlightenment poet Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, features a young Knight Templar as one of its main characters. In the play's multi-religion ensemble, he is the representative of Christianity.

Video Games

• Assassin's Creed posits that the Templars themselves are part of an ancient society that has existed throughout human history (according to the Templars' old texts, Cain (yes, that Cain) was the founder of their order), and that the Knights Templar themselves were just the open military incarnation of them during the Middle Ages, operating in preparation for a takeover of the Holy Land. The public destruction of the order was actually a cover to let the Templars become secret once more, where they proceeded to gain enormous power in the shadows in Europe and elsewhere. The modern Templars are a collection of extremely powerful and highly advanced corporations. All history is actually fabricated by the Templars, and members of the Templars have included, but were far from limited to, such famous historical figures as Pope Alexander VI, Henry Ford, and Thomas Edison. Players get to experience the Templar side in the first acts of Assassin's Creed III and through the entirety of Assassin's Creed Rogue, although in the 18th century and not in The Middle Ages. The story of Jacques de Molay is touched upon in Assassin's Creed: Unity, that being said.

• Crusader Kings and its sequel feature them alongside their fellow crusading orders once the Catholics get the Crusades up and running. In CKII it's even possible to take control of the order yourself if you can manage to breed a claim on the grandmaster's title and press it in war. The game also recognizes somewhat that the Templars were bankers by allowing you to borrow money from them (though this feature is also available with non-Templar holy orders).
• Deus Ex features a mission in a cathedral that was owned by the Templars and their descendants. A member of the Illuminati sends you there, in order to gain his favor, with orders to secure the gold inside that was originally seized by the Nazis in World War II and is now being held by members of Majestic 12.
  • Deus Ex: Invisible War features them as bigot extremists, opposing body modification by any means necessary.
• Post Mortem (2002) saw MacPherson tracking down the "Head of Baphomet," which the Templars were accused of worshiping by The Pope (among other things).
• Medieval: Total War and Medieval II: Total War feature the Knights Templar as a special guild that can be established in certain cities, giving you access to the Knights Templar themselves — very, very powerful cavalry units which are almost unparalleled in combat. The only catches on the battlefield are their Leeroy Jenkins tendencies, their tradeoff in armour for defence skill, and the fact that France and Spain can produce heavy knights of the same or better quality. For factions who were lacking in cavalry, though (take England), they form the most powerful units in the cavalry wings.
  • Sadly, in the vanilla game at least there was no reason whatsoever to allow the Templars into your cities besides the Rule of Cool: if you could hire them (as opposed to being stuck with Knights of Santiago or Teutonic Knights), that means you also satisfied the conditions for hiring Hospitallers who have the exact same stats and costs, but also provide a public health bonus via their guild buildings. Most mods corrected that by adding an income bonus to the Templar guilds (to represent the banking and money-lending they did IRL)... which turns Hospitallers into the completely naff choice.
  • In the Crusades expansion campaign, the Kingdom of Jerusalem has a significant number of its troops supplied by the Templars - knights, archers, and spearmen among them.
• The MMORPG The Secret World has the Templars as a playable faction. However, in its universe, the historical Knights Templar were nothing but a temporary front for the real Templars that the player can join.
• Team Plasma of Pokémon Black and White are not explicitly based on Templars, but they are a fanatical extremist group who dress in knight-like outfits and have an emblem that heavily resembles the Chi Rho.
• Knights of Honor features the Templars as one of the best swordsman units, and available only to Catholic nations. Unfortunately, they don't have their own faction.
• Immortal Souls projects the Templars into a present day world as a ridiculously technologically-advanced order (essentially, white and red official-cross-symbol-adorned Power Armor and Energy Weapons, and other advanced gadgetry, in an otherwise normally-teched setting) of borderline-Mad Scientist Church Militants fighting in a Secret War against the "shadow world" of demons and monsters. It's implied even their current leader has no real clue how they got from then to now, since one plotline involves him procuring an artifact that will reveal his ancestor's memories and the history of his order. Doesn't work, unfortunately for him, since the artifact in question turns out to have been booby-trapped.
• In Azrael's Tear, during the Crusades a group of 12 of the Templars was sent to bear the Holy Grail out of Jerusalem to Scotland and protect it there. Some of them survive thanks to the Grail's life-sustaining effects, and the protagonist interacts with them through the course of the story.
• Civilization V does not have Templars. It does, however, feature the "Chivalry" tech which is very easy to associate with them. It ties in with a lot of economic techs, and unlocks Knights.
  • One optional religious tenet, "Holy Warriors", allows you to purchase early units (including Knights) with faith, thus enabling you to create your own version.
• Two obscure hack-and-slash games called Knights of the Temple have the Knight Templar Paul as a Knight in Shining Armor protagonist.
• The Turkish-based fighting game Dual Blades has Duke, a Christian knight that is identified as a member of the Knights Templar, however he doesn't look the part (white robes and red crosses) and dresses like a typical knight with normal armor.
• One of the many secret societies in Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ages that are protecting the eponymous Conspiracy. A drunk Templar guards the Holy Grail which you must obtain by besting him in a Deadly Game.
• In Fate/Grand Order, Jacques de Molay appears as a Servant in two different incarnations:
  • In the Arcade version, he appears as a Saber-class Servant wielding a sword and shield who represents Molay as a holy crusader.
  • In the mobile version, Molay gets a Historical Gender Flip and becomes a Foreigner-class Servant, which represents how Molay's reputation was tarnished into becoming a Priest of Baphomet.

Web Original

• The website Vampiric Studies claims that the Knights Templar were vampire hunters.
• The Templars feature in a number of Cracked lists about conspiracy theories and historical trivia.

Western Animation

• Ivanhoe: The King's Knight features the order twice. The second time they have been renamed "The Brotherhood of the Cross of Ashes" or some such thing.

Real Life

• In 2008, a Spanish group claiming descent from the historical Templars sued the Vatican, seeking restoration of the order's reputation as well as recognition, but not restitution of the alleged billions of dollars in assets that the Church seized upon the order's dissolution.
• The World War II Adventurer Archaeologist, warrior (he was too independent in his style to be called a "soldier"), spy, nobleman, and general badass László Ede Almásy de Zsadány et Törökszentmiklós apparently was involved in an arcane cult that claimed descent from The Knights Templar. He worked for the Hungarians, which qualifies him as a Worthy Opponent of the Allies.
• In 2008, it was founded, in Brazil, a church named "Igreja Templária" (Templary Church), claiming to be knights.
• Some Freemasons claim descent from the Knights Templar. In the York Rite branch of Freemasonry, the highest-degree members become part of the Knights Templar. Freemasons of the Scottish Rite and other branches may also become Knights Templar by invitation only, but the Knights Templar are the only Freemason group that is Christians-only rather than simply requiring a belief in any concept of God. Whatever direct links might exist between Freemasonry and the original Knights Templar, if they exist, have apparently been lost to history.
• The Norwegian far-right-wing terrorist Anders Breivik claimed to be just one of a new order of Knights Templar planning to wipe out all of Europe's Muslims and left-wingers, although this has been officially dismissed as fantasy.
• In a rather chilling example, the remnants of one of Mexico's most notorious drug cartels, La Familia Michoacana, reformed into...well...Los Caballeros Templarios. Noted for preserving La Familia's Family-Values Villain stance (members aren't supposed to use the drugs they traffic, and they are also supposed to "fight for social justice," etc.) and for the 2013-14 vigilante uprising against them when the government security forces proved ineffective.
• The Temple area in the City of London is indirectly named for the Knights: their "house" and church (Temple Church, still standing) in London were located there beginning in the 12th century.
  • Similarly, the Temple square (Square du Temple) in Paris is also indirectly named for them: the Knights had a castle on the area from the mid-13th century until their dissolution, and centuries later, the castle would be known for being the place where the French royal family was imprisoned during the Revolution. The castle was eventually demolished in 1808 under orders of Napoléon Bonaparte, the patron of the Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem or the "Knights Templar" for short.
• In 1705, the Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem (Latin: Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Heirosolymitani, OSMTH; French: Ordre Souverain et Militaire du Temple de Jérusalem, OSMTJ) became public with Philippe II, Duke of Orleans, as it's Grandmaster. It was officially reconstituted in 1804 and recognized as a legitimate Chivalric order by Napoleon in 1805. Still exists in the 21st century as two different Orders due a schism in 1970.

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Knights Templar found in Constructed Worlds:

• The Dragon Age series features the "Templar Order", an organization of Mage Killers, which, while formally associated with the Chantry, actually predates its establishment. The origin of their name is never revealed, since temples are referred only as "chantries" in the Andrastian religion.
  • One can assume it's the Temple of Sacred Ashes, the resting place of The Urn of Sacred Ashes. This is supported by the presence of one as a ghost at the ruined site.
• Path of Exile has a member of Knights Templar as one of the player characters (dubbed "The Templar"). Again, the origin of their name is not elaborated upon.
• Starcraft: The Protoss warrior caste are called the Templars. The basic warriors are Zealots, while the spellcasters are High Templar. The Dark Templar rejected their teachings and were exiled, becoming invisible space ninja.
• David Eddings had a series (The Elenium and The Tamuli) with an order of knights based loosely on the historical Knights Templar.
• The Discworld fanwork "The Da Quirm Code Revealed" (it was by Trevor Truran, creator of Thud, and delivered as a lecture at a Discworld convention, which arguably gives it a thin veneer of canonicity) features the Knights Tippler, who eventually became the Priority of Shawn. Or possibly it was all made up by the authors of The Unholy Brood and the Holey Gruel.
• In The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss, the Amyr seem clearly set up as a fantasy counterpart to the Knights Templar, complete with conspiracy theories surrounding their dissolution.
• As a wide-reaching knightly order of warrior monks that were brought low by a political leader for sinister reasons, the Jedi are essentially Templars IN SPACE. They even suffer the same rapid loss of prestige as the Templars; once The Empire gets going, they're universally dismissed as a bunch of feeble mystics spouting nonsense.
  • The Sith as well were similar to the Jedi, except they were much darker and crueller in intentions. They were arguably more zealous and fanatical than the Jedi, a lesson perhaps in how religion can go so wrong.
• The world of Sacred 2: Fallen Angel features a human knightly order whose members are called Dark Templars.
• Final Fantasy Tactics has the Knights Templar (Shrine Knights in the original translation) in Ivalice. They're an order of knights who serve the Glabados Church, but their actual motives are another story.

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