Knights of the Cross

The story of the Templars is one of the most desolate and obscure in the history of the medieval West: created as a military-religious order to defend the Holy Land. After becoming one of the most powerful and influential institutions of all Christianity, the Temple was put under procedure at the beginning of the 14th Century and then suspended in 1312, because of the serious charges weighed against its members. The last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, chose to die as a testimony of his innocence, contrasting the guilt of brothers who had been imputed to them, heresy, adherence to an anti-Christian beliefs, corruption of morals, and idolatry. The Templars have been linked with the shroud of Turin, the Holy Grail, and the Ark of the Covenant. None of these can be substantiated. What can be substantiated is that, though arrested, tortured, and burned at the stake, Pope Clement V absolved them from heresy in 1308, as discovered in a secret Vatican parchment in 2001, and released to the public in 2007.