Is there a link between the Freemasons and the Knights Templar? Since the eighteenth century, it has been claimed that there is a historic link, a thread, that connects the Templars to the Masons. So, what is the basis of this?
Sceptics will immediately point out that there is no historical evidence for any association between the Knights Templar, crushed in the early fourteenth century, and the Freemasons, who emerged at the end of the seventeenth century. Masonic sources also reject the notion of a direct link though they have ‘Knight Templar’ degrees that honour the knights.
The Templars existed between 1118 and their winding up at the Council of Vienne in 1312. So, how has a medieval order of knights come to be linked to the Masonic movement, that has only existed in the form we recognise for just under three hundred years? The reason was that back in the eighteenth century, Freemasons were keen to develop a creation myth that would increase its appeal to potential members. Having a knightly heritage fitted the bill.
Chevalier Ramsay – the Freemasons and Knights Templar
Sir Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686-1743) – better known as the Chevalier Ramsay – was an early champion of the Masonic cause. In 1736, he made a speech linking the Freemasons to the crusaders. He did not mention the Templars by name but it has been assumed that he had them top of mind.
It had an enormous influence on French Freemasonry but got a very negative reaction from the Vatican, which banned Roman Catholics from becoming Freemasons. The pope’s logic was simple: if the Freemasons were the inheritors of the Templar mantle, then no Catholic could join an organisation descended from knights who had been condemned as heretics and sodomites. In 2023, Pope Francis reaffirmed the ban on Catholics being Masons.
Did medieval stone masons help the Templars?
In Masonic lore, it’s stated that stone masons helped the Knights Templar flee from the authorities after the warrants went out for their arrest in 1307. The historical evidence for this is non-existent. But the story runs that a group of Templars fled to the Scottish town of Kilwinning, where there was an abbey, and they were sheltered by local stone masons.
Over time, there was a kind of synthesis of the Templars and stone masons giving rise to Freemasonry. Kilwinning boasts lodge number zero, which is the oldest Masonic lodge in the world. It’s referred to as the ‘mother’ lodge. Put another way, there was a move from being a literal stone mason to a philosophical mason – a transformation described as the move from Operative Freemasonry to Speculative Freemasonry.
If you would like to know more about the Knights Templar, buy this book: The Knights Templar – History & Mystery – by Tony McMahon – published by Pen & Sword – available on Amazon, Waterstones, Barnes & Noble, and WHSmith.
This theory has been debunked years ago. Under pressure from King Philip, Pope Clement V disbanded the Order in 1312. That’s 405 years before the appearance of Freemasonry in London as we know it today.
Even if you ascribe it to operative Freemasonry, that’s still bunk. Because the stone Masons or Freemason were like a plumbers union today. They were not aristocratic not royal. So the knights of the Temple would never have sought refuge in this society. A guild of laborers, closely monitored by the King.
Although the common theory States that the majority of Templars escaped to Scotland after the imprisonment order by King Phillip in 1307, it is just as likely that they escaped to what is now Switzerland.
Look into events that happened in this area around this same time as the Templar disbandment. The area was populated by farmers and sheep herders. Then just 10 years later a Prussian monarch tried to march through the area with an army and is almost crushed by the inhabitants of the area by an militia less then 1/3 it’s size.
Good article and well written.
It’s about time the masonic and Templar link was severed for ever.
A lapse of 700 years between the two organisations, and the so called link was just to boost masonic numbers.