The Templars

The Templars
From the Vikings to the Order of Christ

By Georges McRei

Nearly a millennium of history connects worlds that are often presented separately.

It all begins with Rollo, his settlement in the Seine Valley, and the gradual birth of Normandy. Within a few generations, the descendants of these Scandinavians who settled in the Frankish world became the Normans. In 1066, at Hastings, William the Conqueror seized the crown of England.

But Norman expansion soon extended far beyond the shores of the English Channel. It reached southern Italy and the Mediterranean, before becoming intertwined with the history of the Crusades. Jerusalem was conquered in 1099 and, a few decades later, a small brotherhood of knights appeared in the Holy City: the Order of the Temple.

The Templars: From the Vikings to the Order of Christ follows this history from its roots to its most far-reaching developments. The Holy Land, France, Spain, Portugal: the book traces the rise of the Temple, its power, its fall in 1312, and the fate of its men, its property, and its legacy.

What do we really know about the Templars, their treasure, their symbols, and the mysteries attributed to them? And why does their history ultimately lead to Tomar, the Order of Christ, and the great Portuguese voyages?

Far from secret lineages and certainties constructed after the fact, this book distinguishes established facts from hypotheses, traditions, and legends.

Because the history of the Templars is already extraordinary enough without the need to invent it.

What disappeared in 1312 was an institution.

What history has preserved of it continues to endure through the centuries.