The Knights Templar

6 Oct, 2022 940 History of Europe

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.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

  • Helen Nicholson 2 episodes
    Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University
  • Mike Carr No other episodes
    Lecturer in Late Medieval History at the University of Edinburgh
  • Jonathan Phillips No other episodes
    Professor of Crusading History at Royal Holloway, University of London

Reading list

  • The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple
    Malcolm Barber (Cambridge University Press, 1994) Google Books →
  • The Trial of the Templars
    Malcolm Barber (Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, 2006) Google Books →
  • The Templars: Selected Sources
    Malcolm Barber & Keith Bate (Manchester University Press, 2002) Google Books →
  • The Persecution of the Templars: Scandal, Torture, Trial
    Alain Demurger (Profile Books, 2018) Google Books →
  • The Templars: The Rise and Fall of God's Holy Warriors
    Dan Jones (Head of Zeus, 2017) Google Books →
  • The Medieval Military Orders: 1120-1313
    Nicholas Morton (Pearson, 2013) Google Books →
  • The Real History behind the Templars
    Sharan Newman (Berkeley, 2007) Google Books →
  • The Knights Templar: A New History
    Helen Nicholson (Sutton Publishing Ltd, 2001) Google Books →
  • The Knights Templar on Trial: The Trial of the Templars in the British Isles, 1308-1311
    Helen Nicholson (History Press, 2009) Google Books →
  • The Everyday Life of the Templars: The Knights Templar at Home
    Helen Nicholson (Fonthill, 2017) Google Books →
  • The Knights Templar: Past Imperfect series
    Helen Nicholson (Arc Humanities Press, 2021) Google Books →
  • The Murdered Magicians: The Templars and their Myth
    Peter Partner (Aquarian Press, 1982) Google Books →
  • The Crusader Armies
    Steve Tibble (Yale University Press, 2018) Google Books →
  • The Rule of the Templars: The French Text of the Rule of the Order of the Knights Templar
    J. M. Upton-Ward (Boydell, 1997)

Related episodes

Programme ID: m001cpwt

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001cpwt

Auto-category: 940.1 (Medieval history and the Crusades)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello. For 200 years, the Knights Templar were a major fighting and financial power in the Crusader States and in Western Europe.