When the Knights Templar were crushed in 1307 – what happened to their treasure? That’s the question Templar enthusiasts often ask. However, that supposes the Templars owned treasure of incalculable value and that they were able to hide it before being arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and – in some cases executed. Let’s investigate.
The first question we need to ask is: what treasure did the Templars own? Was this treasure in the form of coins and jewels or….as many believe….sacred relics. More specifically, those relics relating to the Passion of Christ. The most famous treasure linked to the knights is the Holy Grail.
FIND OUT MORE: How did the Templars get so rich, so quick?
TEMPLAR TREASURE: The Holy Grail
There are different theories about the nature of the Grail. It’s usually described as a cup or chalice into which blood from the dying Jesus poured as he hung, dying on the cross, at the crucifixion. The man holding the chalice was his uncle (or great uncle), Joseph of Arimathea. We know about this grisly incident from so-called ‘apocryphal’ gospels that were not accepted by the church for inclusion into the New Testament.
What happened to the Grail? One theory has Joseph coming to England with this sacred chalice and burying it at Glastonbury – where he founds a Christian church that later became a mighty abbey (though later shut down under King Henry VIII in the Protestant Reformation). One alleged site where he concealed the grail is still called the Chalice Well today and I visited recently – pictured below. The waters literally run red: is it the blood of Christ bubbling up or the naturally occurring iron oxide?
This was not Joseph’s first visit to England – if you believe the medieval legends. In fact, he had come to this fair island with Jesus when the Messiah was a teenager. Joseph was a trader in metals and the south-west of England was rich in tin and lead. Uncle and nephew got involved in extraction of these precious commodities, mining in the area around a village called Priddy. I discuss these stories about Jesus coming to England in the video below – and how it relates to the Holy Grail.
The connection between the Holy Grail and the Knights Templar is established in the Arthurian legends – written at the time of the Templars. Writers like Chrétien de Troyes (c.1160-1191), Robert de Boron (active in the thirteenth century), and Wolfram von Eschenbach (c.1160/80-c.1220) linked the Grail to a mythical British king called Arthur. These tales were propaganda glorifying the crusades being waged in the Holy Land but many of the themes have come to be regarded as close to factual.
King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table are on a quest to find the Holy Grail, which has appeared to them. However, the stories are not very specific about the exact nature of the Grail. Chrétien is very vague while De Boron does link the Grail to the cup used during Christ’s passion. While Von Eschenbach says this sacred item is protected by the ‘Templeise’ – which many have assumed to be the Knights Templar, with fairly good cause.
And so, with little more evidence than that, the Templars have been permanently associated with the Grail. Sometimes the assumption is that they unearthed it while in Jerusalem and then spirited it back to the west when they lost the Holy Land. After that, it was buried in any number of places from Scotland to Portugal and Poland. But was it a cup or maybe even a gemstone that popped out of the devil’s crown when Lucifer was cast out of heaven by God for rebelling.
Or of course, you might subscribe to the view that the Grail is the bloodline of Jesus Christ – his descendants, born of Mary Magdalene, his wife. That is a theory popularised most recently by Dan Brown in his novel – and the subsequent movie – The Da Vinci Code. In which case, the Grail – the “sang real” (royal blood) – are a group of people sharing the divine DNA of Jesus and who need to be protected by the Templars from the Roman Catholic church, which is seeking to annihilate them.
FIND OUT MORE: Joseph of Arimathea and the Templars
TEMPLAR TREASURE: The Shroud of Jesus
Incredible though it may seem, the Turin Shroud has been linked to the Knights Templar. How? Well, the story begins with an Arab king of Edessa at the time of Jesus, called Abgar V Ukkama (dies 50 CE). According to the Roman Christian historian Eusebius (c.260-339), the king pleaded with Jesus to be cured of his leprosy and gout. After the crucifixion and resurrection, Judas Thaddeus – a disciple of Jesus – came to Edessa and presented a cloth that had touched the Messiah. This healed the king instantly.
Most historians believe this item was the Veil of Veronica. Essentially, a handkerchief that was used to wipe the face of Jesus as he carried the cross and miraculously left an imprint of his features. But others have argued that the king of Edessa was given the full burial shroud of Jesus.
In the tenth century CE, this holy relic was transferred to the capital of the Byzantine empire: Constantinople. It was housed in an imperial chapel along with a whole host of other relics. But during the Fourth Crusade, in 1204, it was stolen by marauding crusaders when a Christian army, financed by Venice, sacked Constantinople.
The argument runs that it then ended up in Templar hands in France via the De Charney family. Evidence cited for this view is a curious painting discovered in 1945 in the English village of Templecombe. This had once been a Templar preceptory. The image showed a disembodied head of Jesus with a rather ghostly expression that some believe was a Templar representation of the shroud in their possession.
As we know, it eventually ended up in other hands and found its way to the Italian city of Turin – which is why we refer to this relic as The Turin Shroud.
Enough of holy relics – what about money?
TEMPLAR TREASURE: Lots of money
The Knights Templar got very rich, very quickly. From their earliest years, donors showered the order with bequests of land. King Alfonso I of Aragon even left the Templars a third of his kingdom in his last will and testament though his barons made sure that inheritance was scuppered. Despite that setback, the Knights Templar had a network of “preceptories” across Europe – estates generating considerable wealth through agricultural and small scale manufacture that funded their military activities in the Holy Land.
But they were not just landowners and farmers. The Templars were also bankers. They managed deposits for wealthy clients, developed an early form of bank cheque, and got involved in tax collecting and money lending. So accomplished were the knights at high finance that on occasions they managed the state finances in France and England.
However, when King Philip IV of France crushed them in 1307, did he get his hands on their treasure to fund his costly wars with England? Some believe that when Philip turned up at the Paris Temple, the cupboard was bare. But others think there is evidence that Templar wealth was grabbed and temporarily improved the royal balance sheet. It’s certain that the king ordered commissioners to fan out across France to make inventories of Templar goods and land.
If you want to know more about the treasure and wealth of the Templars – get hold of my book: The Knights Templar – History & Mystery – published by Pen & Sword – available on Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith, and Barnes & Noble.
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