The Knights Templar

Fiction

In Brown’s rewrite of history, the Templars were supposedly suppressed by Pope Clement V because they were blackmailing him with the secret of the Holy Grail (which has been anything from the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper to the Shroud of Turin). Borrowing from Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Brown divides the term Sangreal (Medieval French for Holy Grail) into Sang (blood) and Real (royal). That royal blood, in Brown’s story, is the bloodline stemming from Jesus and Mary Magdalene through the Merovingian dynasty. Mary herself was the actual Holy Grail, “the chalice that bore the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ” (249). The Templars knew that this formidable secret, if revealed, could undermine both papacy and church, so they used their knowledge for political gain. Rather than submit to blackmail, Pope Clement V devised his “ingeniously planned sting operation” (159), arrested all the Templars, and burned them as heretics.

Fact

The fact was that King Philip IV (“the Fair”) of France who, desperate for the Templars’ wealth, forced the pope to suppress their order, whereupon the French king – not the pope – arrested them and burned some, including Grand Master Jacques de Molay, at the stake in 1314. So, now with the Templars gone, who would guard the secret? The Priory of Sion…of course we know enough about that society already.