A richly detailed, sometimes challenging work, Charles Addison's The History of the Knights Templar traces the rise and fall of this legendary religious-military organization. Addison was an official member of the Templar Inner Table when he composed his definitive study. This newly edited 2018 edition from The Templar Press updates some of Addison's more archaic wording into modern English.

Founded as the main church of the Knights Templar in England, at their New Temple in London, the Temple Church is historically and architecturally one of the most important medieval buildings in England. Its round nave, modelled on the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, is extraordinarily ambitious, combining lavish Romanesque sculpture with some of the earliest Gothic architectural features in any English building of its period. It holds one of the most famous series of medieval effigies in the country. The luminous thirteenth-century choir, intended for the burial of Henry III, is of exceptional beauty. Major developments in the post-medieval period include the reordering of the church in the 1680s by Sir Christopher Wren, and a substantial restoration programme in the early 1840s. Despite its extraordinary importance, however, it has until now attracted little scholarly or critical attention, a gap which is remedied by this volume. It considers the New Temple as a whole in the middle ages, and all aspects of the church itself from its foundation in the twelfth century to its war-time damage in the twentieth. Richly illustrated with numerous black and white and colour plates, it makes full use of the exceptional range and quality of the antiquarian material available for study, including drawings, photographs, and plaster casts. Contributors: Robin Griffith-Jones, Virginia Jansen, Philip Lankester, Helen Nicholson, David Park, Rosemary Sweet, William Whyte, Christopher Wilson.

An instant New York Times bestseller, from the author of Crusaders, that finally tells the real story of the Knights Templar—“Seldom does one find serious scholarship so easy to read.” (The Times, Book of the Year) A faltering war in the middle east. A band of elite warriors determined to fight to the death to protect Christianity's holiest sites. A global financial network unaccountable to any government. A sinister plot founded on a web of lies... In 1119, a small band of knights seeking a purpose in the violent aftermath of the First Crusade set up a new religious order in Jerusalem, which was now in Christian hands. These were the first Knights Templar, elite warriors who swore vows of poverty and chastity and promised to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over the next 200 years, the Templars would become the most powerful network of the medieval world, speerheading the crusades, pionerring new forms of finance and warfare and deciding the fate of kings. Then, on October 13, 1307, hundreds of brothers were arrested, imprisoned and tortured and the order was disbanded among lurid accusations of sexual misconduct and heresy. But were they heretics or victims of a ruthlessly repressive state? Dan Jones goes back to the sources to bring their dramatic tale, so relevant to our own times, to life in a book that is at once authoritative and compulsively readable.

Detailing the entire history of the famous order of the Knights Templar this account goes right from the formation during the first crusades all the way to the apparent dissolution centuries later. Although many believe the order to still exist the history gives a different account although fraternities such as the Freemasons keep the name and traditions alive.