Knights Templar, Guardians of the Holy Grail in The Grail Conspiracies

I stopped back at the Cafe du Commanderie for another espresso, then
slit the package open. It was a small book, barely more than a
pamphlet: La Rochelle and the Mysterious Treasure of the Knights
Templar.

There was no note inside, no hint of who had left it for me.

The port of La Rochelle, I read, had been the main naval base of the
Knights Templar, a mysterious band of medieval warrior-monks,
founded around 1118, ostensibly to protect religious pilgrims during
their travels to the Holy Land.

According to some, that was only a cover story for the Templars’ true
mission. But what that true mission was remains a mystery, nearly a
millennium later.

They were called Templars—officially, the Poor Knights of the Temple
of Solomon—because they were first headquartered at the old Temple
of Solomon, in the heart of Jerusalem.

By some accounts, they had spent the first few years tunneling below
the Temple, looking for objects unknown. For what, no one really knew.

But there were legends and speculations aplenty. In some, they were
looking for the Ark of the Covenant, while others claimed they had
searched for, found, and guarded, the Holy Grail.

Or had they dug up buried treasure that financed their early growth?

What is not in dispute is the speed with which the order grew in
members, wealth, and power.

Within a relatively short time, the Knights Templar became a spiritual
force second only to the Vatican, and an economic force greater than
that of any of the kingdoms of the time. The Templars also evolved into
the strongest and most disciplined fighting force the world had ever
known.

Rumors of the time claimed that the Templar wealth had been procured
by tapping the secret occult wisdom of antiquity—perhaps found under
the Temple, or uncovered during their forays into Egypt or even the Far
East. In some versions, the Templars had discovered the secrets of
creating “unlimited wealth.”

More likely, their wealth and power grew from donations, augmented by
shrewd moves into merchant shipping (protected by the Templars’
military fleet), and then into international banking.

The Templars were the first merchant bankers, and created the basis
for today’s commercial banking system. Templar Commanderies were
spread around the known world of the time. Their high-tech innovation
was a break-through in that era, a system of secret codes that allowed
a merchant in England, for example, to do business in the Middle East,
without fear of losing payments to pirates and shipwrecks.

By some accounts, the Templars financed the wave of construction of
the magnificent Gothic cathedrals at Chartres, Amiens, Reims, and
dozens of other locations across France and the rest of Europe.
According to some of those accounts, the Templars used the stonework
of the cathedrals to preserve encoded occult messages, containing
knowledge possibly going back as far as the builders of the Egyptian
pyramids.

Some claimed that the Templars had been working on bringing about a
reconciliation of what was termed The Three Great Religions of the
Book: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. If true, then that would have
made them the targets of the powers threatened by the prospect of any
reconciliation.

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The Templars had emerged with amazing speed for the time, and their
downfall was brutally abrupt.

On Friday the 13th of October, 1307—the original Friday the 13th, the
basis of the superstition— the combined forces of the Vatican and the
King of France moved suddenly against Templar holdings across
France and other countries.

For a reason not understood to this day, the Templars, the strongest
fighting force of the time, surrendered without resistance.

Yet it seems they had warning of the raids to come, as witnesses
described seeing caravans of heavily-laden wagons racing from Paris
and the other Templar strongholds to their port here at La Rochelle in
the days before the end, and of seeing boats sailing off into the nights.

When the king’s men arrived on that first Friday the 13th, they found
little of the material riches of the Templars, and none of the legendary
occult secrets.

Although the Templars were imprisoned and tortured, none told what
happened to the Templar treasures. Nor did any ever reveal just what
those treasures consisted of. Thus the legends grew.

The legends of the Holy Grail—supposedly the cup from which Jesus
drank at the Last Supper—came to prominence at around that same
point in history. In some versions, the Templars were identified as the
Guardians of the Grail.

Indeed, that version of the Grail legend, with the Knights as its
guardian, found its way into the operas of Richard Wagner, including
Parzival, a particular favorite of Adolph Hitler.

The Knights Templar, the book added, became the prototype for secret
organizations including the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons, the
Illuminati, and the Jesuits.
That knocked me back in the chair. The Jesuits? Was that just a
bizarre coincidence?