TBL Staff

ON FRIDAY, October 13, 1307, hundreds of Knights Templar, the wealthy and secretive order of fighting monks, were rounded up, tortured and massacred for alleged crimes against Christianity “too horrible to contemplate”.

Friday the 13th has been regarded as a day of deep misfortune ever since, but the Templars did not go quietly into history. The order had been in existence less than two centuries when it was brutally suppressed, but its disappearance gave rise to 700 years of mystery, rumour and legend.

The mystery will seize the public’s imagination again with the release next month of the film of The Da Vinci Code. The ancient order is pivotal in the plot of Dan Brown’s bestselling book, which revives the long-running myth that the Templars survived as the guardians of dark and dangerous religious secrets: the Holy Grail, and the supposed bloodline descended from Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.

Brown follows a long tradition of Templar conspiracy theorists, for few institutions have produced such a wealth of intriguing history and pure twaddle. In the 14th century the Templars were accused, among other crimes, of heresy, urinating on the Cross and sodomy. The legends variously claimed that the order survived and discovered America, fought with Robert the Bruce against the English at Bannockburn or fled to Switzerland to form the Swiss Guard.