The concept of the warrior monk is very, very durable and very effective on the borders of Christendom for centuries to come. Why were the Templars then picked out for destruction, as it were? It's financial. Philip needs their money. The other thing is that the King of France has got the Pope in his pocket. He's putting the Pope so in a sense that a great protector is not able to do his job. And they are particularly vulnerable because they had been set up to defend the holy places and they had lost acre.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the military order founded around 1119, twenty years after the Crusaders captured Jerusalem. For almost 200 years the Knights Templar were a notable fighting force and financial power in the Crusader States and Western Europe. Their mission was to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land, and they became extremely wealthy yet, as the crusader grip on Jerusalem slipped, their political fortune declined steeply. They were to be persecuted out of existence, with their last grand master burned at the stake in Paris in 1314, and that sudden end has contributed to the strength of the legends that have grown up around them.
With
Helen Nicholson
Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University
Mike Carr
Lecturer in Late Medieval History at the University of Edinburgh
And
Jonathan Phillips
Professor of Crusading History at Royal Holloway, University of London
Producer: Simon Tillotson