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The Knights Templar

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growth and great military and financial strength of the famous order whose knights had a mission to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land.

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.

With

Helen Nicholson
Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University

Mike Carr
Lecturer in Late Medieval History at the University of Edinburgh

And

Jonathan Phillips
Professor of Crusading History at Royal Holloway, University of London

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Available now

50 minutes

Last on

Thu 6 Oct 2022 21:30

LINKS AND FURTHER READING

CONTRIBUTORS








READING LIST

Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, 2006)

Malcolm Barber & Keith Bate, The Templars: Selected Sources (Manchester University Press, 2002)

Alain Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars: Scandal, Torture, Trial (Profile Books, 2018)

Dan Jones, The Templars: The Rise and Fall of God's Holy Warriors (Head of Zeus, 2017)

Nicholas Morton, The Medieval Military Orders: 1120-1313 (Pearson, 2013)

Sharan Newman, The Real History behind the Templars (Berkeley, 2007)

Helen Nicholson, The Knights Templar: A New History (Sutton Publishing Ltd, 2001)

Helen Nicholson, The Knights Templar on Trial: The Trial of the Templars in the British Isles, 1308-1311 (History Press, 2009)

Helen Nicholson, The Everyday Life of the Templars: The Knights Templar at Home (Fonthill, 2017)

Helen Nicholson, The Knights Templar: Past Imperfect series (Arc Humanities Press, 2021)

Peter Partner, The Murdered Magicians: The Templars and their Myth (Aquarian Press, 1982)

Steve Tibble, The Crusader Armies (Yale University Press, 2018)

J. M. Upton-Ward, The Rule of the Templars: The French Text of the Rule of the Order of the Knights Templar (Boydell, 1997)


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Broadcasts

  • Thu 6 Oct 2022 09:00
  • Thu 6 Oct 2022 21:30

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