Knights Templar were founded by the Priory of Sion

The Knights Templar were founded by the Priory of Sion as a military arm to retrieve secret documents from beneath the ruins of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, a mission that made them wealthy and powerful.

Origins and Founding

The Priory of Sion was founded in Jerusalem in 1099 by the French king Godefroi de Bouillon, who possessed a powerful secret that had been in his family since the time of Christ. Fearing the secret would be lost upon his death, he created the Priory to protect it. The Priory learned of hidden documents buried beneath the ruins of Herod's temple, which had been built atop the earlier ruins of Solomon's Temple. These documents, they believed, corroborated Godefroi's secret and were so explosive that the Church would stop at nothing to obtain them. To retrieve these documents, the Priory created a military arm: a group of nine knights called the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, more commonly known as the Knights Templar.

The Templars' True Mission

Although the Templars publicly claimed to protect Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land, their true goal was to retrieve the documents from beneath the temple ruins. They told King Baldwin II they needed basic shelter and requested permission to take up residence in the stables under the ruins of the temple. The king granted their request, and the knights lived there for almost a decade, excavating in total secrecy through solid rock. The odd choice of lodging was anything but random; the knights believed the documents were buried deep under the ruins, beneath the Holy of Holies, a sacred chamber where God Himself was believed to reside.

Discovery and Rise to Power

After nine years, the knights found what they had been searching for. They took the treasure from the temple and traveled to Europe, where their influence solidified overnight. The discovery made them wealthy and powerful beyond anyone's wildest imagination. Pope Innocent II issued an unprecedented papal bull that afforded the Knights Templar limitless power and declared them "a law unto themselves"—an autonomous army independent of all interference from kings and prelates. With this carte blanche, the Templars expanded at a staggering rate, amassing vast estates in over a dozen countries and establishing modern banking by extending credit to bankrupt royals.

The Vatican's Betrayal

By the 1300s, the Vatican sanction had helped the knights amass so much power that Pope Clement V decided something had to be done. Working with France's King Philippe IV, the Pope devised a sting operation to quash the Templars and seize their treasure. On Friday, October 13, 1307, sealed orders were opened simultaneously across Europe, claiming the Templars were heretics guilty of devil worship, homosexuality, defiling the cross, and sodomy. Countless knights were captured, tortured mercilessly, and burned at the stake. The Templars' treasure trove of documents, which had been their source of power, slipped through the Pope's fingers; the documents had long since been entrusted to the Priory of Sion, whose veil of secrecy kept them safe. The Priory smuggled their documents from a Paris preceptory by night onto Templar ships in La Rochelle.

Legacy and Significance

The documents the Templars recovered, known as the Sangreal, remain the source of constant investigation and speculation. The entire collection of documents, its power, and the secret it reveals have become known by a single name—Sangreal. The Templars' history is a precarious world where fact, lore, and misinformation have become intertwined. The Priory of Sion's creation of the Knights Templar established a pattern of using a military arm to protect and retrieve sacred knowledge, a pattern that echoes through the centuries in the brotherhood's ongoing guardianship of the Holy Grail.