The Trial of the Templars

Malcolm Barber

Excellent history, detailing the treatment of the Knights Templar by their Co-religionists in the early fourteenth century.

The Knights Templar and Their Myth

Peter Partner

The first part of this book deals with Templar history. The second half deals with the myths that developed around these facts. Good solid history - so not recommended for committed fantasists.

Partner also does a good job of documenting how nineteenth century Masonic Lodges appropriated the Templar story in order to provide an ancient pedigree for themselves.

Paperback: 232 pages
Publisher: Destiny Books; Revised ed. edition (May 1, 1990)
ISBN-10: 0892812737
ISBN-13: 978-0892812738

The Templars: Knights of God (The Rise and Fall of the Knights Templars)

Edward Burman

For nearly 200 years, until their suppression in 1312 on charges of heresy and magical practices, the Templars were the most formidable and feared fighting machine in Christendom.

Besides their military prowess they also possessed immense wealth and political power, becoming bankers and credit brokers to medieval Europe and the allies of kings and popes.

Drawing on contemporary chronicles and original texts, as well as the immense secondary literature, Edward Burman paints a vivid picture of this extraordinary organization of warrior monks and its passage into myth and legend.

Paperback: 212 pages
Publisher: Inner Traditions (December 1, 1988)
ISBN-10: 0892812214
ISBN-13: 978-0892812219

The Templars and the Grail

Karen Ralls

Despite its title, this book offers something for anyone who wants to learn more about the history of the medieval Templars and prefers it to be supported by solid sources. Balanced, interesting and fun to read.

The author takes care to distinguish the facts from the many theories and speculations. She presents a range of information for us to make our own judgments. This is one of the best history books on the Knights Templar. It is also balanced with solid academic sources, yet still succeeds in being readable. Part One deals with academic sources and Part Two with popular sources, myths, and legends.

Material covered includes: the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the trial of the Templars, Templar naval warfare (and the origins of the Jolly Roger) Templar international banking, the Rosslyn Chapel, the Black Madonna, alchemy, the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, The Da Vinci Code, and even the Green Man.

Easy to read, and reprinted six times in its first year. Footnotes are solid and well researched. Good photos too. Similarly bibliography and appendices. Well worth reading.

Karen Ralls is a noted academic medieval historian.

The Templars and the Ark of the Covenant

Graham Phillips

According to legend the Ark of the Covenant was an ornate golden chest. It was also a means of communicating with God, and also a weapon designed for use against the enemies of the Israel.

The Bible claims that the Ark had the power to destroy armies and to bring down the walls of cities. Graham Phillips purports to provide evidence that these claims may be true.

In order to use the Ark, the Jewish high priest had to wear a breastplate containing twelve sacred gemstones called the Stones of Fire. These objects were kept in the Great Temple of Jerusalem until they vanished following the Babylonian invasion in 597 BC.

Graham Phillips claims to have uncovered evidence that the 13th Century Templars found both the Ark and the Stones of Fire. The detective trail led from the ancient ruins of Petra in southern Jordan to the English countryside, not far from Stratford-upon-Avon. The author apparently followed ciphered messages left by the Templars in church paintings, inscriptions and stained glass windows.

When examined by Oxford university scientists, these stones were allegedly found to possess odd physical properties that interfered with electronic equipment and produced a sphere of floating light similar to ball lightning.

Good fun. Not very serious.

The Templar Revelation

Lynn Picknett, Clive Prince

It's all here: The Priory of Sion, Rennes-le-Chateau, Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Cathars, Isis, Black Madonnas, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, Hermes Trismegistus and so on

Picknett and Prince They also probe the nature of the secret knowledge said to have been possessed by the Templars and their various offspring.

Picknett and Prince are reasonably thoughrough in researching the material, and documenting their travels to relevant sites in the south of France, and are willing to voice skepical judgments where merited.

The book presents the case is tthat there has been throughout Western history an secret network of individuals and organizations dedicated to preserving an equally secret tradition challenging what we generally regard as mainstream Christianity.

Like many other authors who deal with this web of subjects, they do not reveal how easy the job of writing such a book really is. The fact is that almost all of the substantial material is perfectly well known to theologians and Church scholars. All the writers needed to do was translate well known information from theology-speak into ordinary English.

Thus for example, the fact that the roots of Christianity stretch back to Egyptian religion, especially the cult of Isis and Osiris, is well known to academics. (Osiris was killed on Friday and resurrected three days later. Devotees of Isis emphasized repentance and confession. Egyptians and Gnostics introduced such ideas to the Jews. The role of John the Baptist. as a rival of Jesus - or more correctly Jesus as a rival to John the Baptist - is also well known).

To take just one example: how many conventional Christians are aware that the bible mentions a group of followers of John the Baptist - and there is still a sect today (with a history stretching back to biblical times) which regards John as an important prophet and Jesus as a usurping imposter.

Still, if you're not conversant with modern developments in Church scholarship, this is a useful introduction to just how strange early Christianity was - and how different it was from what modern Churches have developed from it.

The Templars' Secret Island: The Knights, the Priest and the Treasure

Erling Haagensen, Henry Lincoln

The Templars

Piers Paul Read

If you are devoted follower of the Roman Catholic faith, and if you believe everything you have ever been told, and think that the Roman Church is incapable of any sort of error, then this is just the book for you!

If on the other hand you have any interest in truth or history, then you might be disappointed. You will find that this book is absurdly partisan and selective in its sources. If you do read it, compare it to any other work by an objective academic historian to appreciate fully how the art of religious propaganda is alive and flourishing.

A sad waste of talent.

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