religious military order of knighthood established at the time of the Crusades. It was founded during the early years of the kingdom of Jerusalem, when the crusaders controlled only a few strongholds in the Holy Land, and pilgrims to the holy places were often endangered by marauding Muslim bands. Pitying the plight of such pilgrims, eight or nine French knights, led by Hugues de Payens, vowed in late 1119 or early 1120 to devote themselves to their protection and to form a religious community for that purpose. Baldwin II, king of Jerusalem, gave them quarters in a wing of the royal palace in the area of the former Jewish Temple, and from this they derived their name.  The Templars were divided into four classes: knights, sergeants, chaplains, and servants. Only the knights wore the Templars' distinctive regalia, a white surcoat marked with a red cross. The Templars' order was headed by a grand master, and each temple, or subsidiary (local) branch, of the order was ruled by a commander who owed obedience to the grand master. Each individual Templar took vows of poverty and chastity.

The Templars performed courageous service in the Holy Land, and their numbers increased
rapidly, partly because of the propaganda writing of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who wrote their rule of life. The Templars had originally vowed obedience to the patriarch of Jerusalem, but Pope Innocent II in 1139 placed the Templars directly under the pope's authority: the Templars thus were exempted from the jurisdiction of any bishop in whose diocese they might hold property. Thenceforth the Templars rapidly diversified their activities. They soon became a vital element in the defence of the Christian crusader states of the Holy Land, and they garrisoned every town of any size there. At their height the Templars numbered about 20,000 knights.

The Templars also came to acquire  considerable wealth. The kings and great nobles of Spain, France, and England gave lordships, castles, seigniories, and estates to the order, so that by the mid-12th century the Templars owned properties scattered throughout western Europe, the
Mediterranean, and the Holy Land. The Templars' military strength enabled them to safely collect, store, and transport bullion to and from Europe and the Holy Land, and their network of treasure storehouses and their efficient transport organisation caused the Templars to be used as bankers both by kings and by pilgrims to the Holy Land. In this way the order, with its vast resources spread throughout every country in Christendom, grew to wield great financial power.

The Templars were not without enemies, however. They had long engaged in a bitter rivalry with the other great military order of Europe, the Hospitalers, and by the late 13th century proposals were being made to merge the two contentious orders into one. The fall to the Muslims in 1291 of Acre, the last remaining crusader stronghold in the Holy Land, removed much of the Templars' reason for being. Moreover, by 1304 rumours (probably false) of irreligious practices and blasphemies committed by the Templars during their secret rites of initiation had begun to circulate through Europe. At this juncture, King Philip IV the Fair of France had every Templar in France arrested on Oct. 13, 1307, and sequestered all the Templars' property in France. The reasons why Philip sought to destroy the Templars are unclear; he may have genuinely feared their power, or he may have simply seen an opportunity to seize their immense wealth, being chronically short of money himself. At any rate, Philip accused the Templars of heresy and immorality and had many of them tortured to secure false confessions to these charges. Pope Clement V, himself a Frenchman, came under strong pressure from Philip at this time, and in response the pope ordered the arrest of the Templars in every country in November 1307. Philip eventually succeeded in having the pope suppress the order (March 22, 1312), and the Templars' property throughout Europe was transferred to the Hospitalers or confiscated by the state. Many Templars were executed or imprisoned, and in 1314 the order's last grand master, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake.

The question of the guilt of the Templars has been a matter of fierce controversy for  centuries, but modern opinion inclines to the idea that the Templars were victims of a highly unjust and opportunistic persecution.