A legend that grew after the order
Most of what people now think of as Templar lore was not medieval. In the centuries after 1312, when the order was dissolved, writers, poets, and later novelists and filmmakers took a real institution, famous for its wealth and dramatic end, and attached stories to it, much as medieval legends gathered around other famous figures. This article looks at where the best-known legends came from and how they compare with the documented record. For the facts of the arrest and trials, see the separate overview of the Templar trial.
The Grail
Perhaps the most persistent link is between the Templars and the Holy Grail legend. The Grail stories developed in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries in French and German romances, when the Templars were at their height, and some of these poems did mention knights of a Temple. A well-known German work from around that time describes guardians of the Grail who are sometimes called templars, but they live in a fictional castle and are not the historical order. Nothing in Templar records, as far as scholars know, says they sought or held a sacred cup. The Grail quest as a theme belongs to literature, and modern writers have joined the two.
The treasure
Another idea is that the Templars possessed a vast hidden treasure that vanished when the order fell. The real facts are more modest. The order was wealthy in land and property, and its houses held deposits and valuables. When the French crown seized Templar properties in 1307, it inventoried what it found, and the sources describe the seizures as less rich than rumor suggested. Much of the order’s property was later transferred to the Hospitallers, and some stayed with kings and local lords. The notion of a secret hoard buried in a vault or sailed away on a fleet has no support in contemporary documents.
Treasure legends often attach themselves to specific places, including castles, churches and islands, each of which has its own story. These local tales are usually traced to the eighteenth century or later, and none has produced verified evidence.
Baphomet
The name Baphomet appears in a few testimonies from the trials, where it is described in some accounts as an idol or head. Later occult writers in the nineteenth century gave the name a life of its own and tied it to an image of a goat-headed figure that has no basis in medieval Templar sources. The origin of the word in the trial records is uncertain. Some scholars have suggested it may be a medieval French form of the name Muhammad, but this is only one proposal, and what the witnesses meant, if anything, is not known.
The curse of Molay
According to a popular story, Jacques de Molay, as he was burned in 1314, called down a curse on King Philip IV, known as Philip the Fair, and Pope Clement V, who both died within about a year. The coincidence of their deaths gave the story staying power. Medieval chroniclers did not record the curse in the form told today; it appears in later retellings, which grew more elaborate as time passed. Both men were in their forties or older and are known to have been unwell, so their deaths do not require any supernatural explanation.
Friday the 13th
The dawn arrests of 1307 took place on Friday, October 13. Some writers have claimed that this is the origin of the superstition about the date. The link is an attractive story, but historians who study the superstition generally find that it developed through other routes and gained popularity much later. At best, the connection is unproven.
Freemasons, Scotland and the modern myth
From the eighteenth century onward, some authors began claiming that the Templars survived in secret and passed on their traditions to fraternal groups. Others said that Templars fled to Scotland and fought at the Battle of Bannockburn, or that they sailed across the Atlantic before Columbus. These tales shift over time and rely on speculation rather than documents. Nineteenth-century romantic novelists, including Sir Walter Scott, whose Ivanhoe features a Templar villain, helped to make the order a stock figure of fiction. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, thrillers, games and films have used the same ingredients over and over.
What the documents show
There is good evidence that the Templars existed as a rich, powerful and well-organized religious order, that they were arrested and tried in 1307, and that the order was dissolved in 1312. There is also a lot that is simply not known, including exactly how many members were tried, and what happened to some of the individuals. Where evidence is missing, stories rush in. Honest history can say that a tale is attractive and also that no reliable source supports it.
One useful rule of thumb is to ask when a claim first appears. If the earliest known source is written centuries after the Templars, with no earlier trail, it should be read as folklore.