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The most mysterious chivalric order
Paris has ever known,
the Knights Templar.
Theirs is a story of secrets and intrigue.
The Order of the Knights Templar
was the largest chivalric order of the Middle Ages.
And when you speak of knights,
the Templars are never far away.
Legends abound about these knights.
Some people claim they possessed a mysterious treasure.
While others believe they survived their persecution
and found refuge in freemasonry.
If we want to discover the truth,
we must investigate here in Paris.
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I'm Jean-Marc Leri.
I've devoted my life to understanding Paris' history,
studying its secrets,
and wandering its maze of streets.
The city holds many centuries-old mysteries.
Often these cases are dismissed as occult phenomena,
myths, legends, or popular beliefs.
Things have happened here though.
There are facts,
consistencies, and bonafide witnesses.
Historians, scientists, and investigators of all sorts
have been unable to solve them.
It is time to reveal the most plausible theories,
and to get as close as possible to the truth.
Here's Paris as you've never seen it before.
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From the top of Notre Dame, the city is ours.
The Ile de la Cite stretches out before us.
It is thought Paris, formerly Lutetia,
began here on this island in 250 B.C.
The Pont Neuf was opened by Henry IV in 1606.
It's construction bridged three islands
near the Ile de la Cite.
Today, they form the Square du Vert-Galant.
This is where, in the 14th century,
one of the most fascinating and mysterious chapters
in French history came to a close,
that of the Templars.
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On this spot, Jacques de Molay,
the last grandmaster of the Knights Templar
was burned at the stake on March the 18th, 1314.
To explore the Templars
is to attempt to answer many questions.
Who were these mysterious knights?
What secrets did they hold?
What is the truth about the Templars' famous treasure?
Was the curse uttered by their grandmaster
on the King of France and his family
for 13 generations fulfilled?
To answer these questions,
we must investigate in the very heart of Paris.
The Templars' fascinating story
has thrown up an incredible number
of testimonies and narratives.
The legendary treasure
is just one of the affair's many secrets.
To make sense of them all,
you need to examine all manner of old books,
reports, and court records.
Researching the Templars involves real detective work.
There are still signs of their presence in Paris.
One of the most tangible traces
is to be found at the Marche des Enfants Rouges
in the Rue de Bretagne in Paris's third arrondissement.
Founded in 1615,
the the Marche des Enfants Rouges
is one of the city's oldest covered markets.
It takes its name from the red uniform
worn by the orphans of the Hospice des Enfants Rouges,
built nearby in the 16th century.
It's said that in 1846, when new sewers were being dug
in the Rue des Enfants Rouges,
a coffin was found containing a man clad in Templar's robes.
Who are the Templars?
To find out, we have to go back to their beginnings.
Around 1118 in Jerusalem,
Hugues de Payens, a minor noble and knight,
founded the military religious order
the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ.
The order's mission was to guard the roads
leading to the Holy City,
and to protect pilgrims visiting Christ's tomb.
These religious men were allowed to take up arms
against the enemies of Christendom.
King Baldwin II of Jerusalem gave them a building
close to the ruins of Solomon's temple.
This is how they got their name the Templars.
In 1146, the Templars arrived in Paris
and founded a first establishment
referred to in some documents
as the Vieux Temple, or Old Temple.
It was located near the Place de Greve,
which is now the Place de L'Hotel de Ville.
When he went on Crusade,
Louis VII entrusted the royal treasure
to the Templars for safe keeping.
From then on,
they would be the guardians of the nation's wealth.
In the second half of the 12th century,
the Templars acquired marshland to the north.
Here they founded the new temple.
The area is known as the Marais, or the Marsh, to this day.
The Templars went to great lengths
to clear the land and plant oaks, elms, and poplars.
Buildings were erected protected by towers,
crenelated walls, and drawbridges.
The Templars' compound took shape.
A city within the city was built.
An area spanning the third, fourth,
and 11th arrondissements, now the Temple Quarter.
By the end of the 12th century,
the Templars owned a huge block of land
bordered by the Rue Beranger to the north,
the Rue du Temple to the west,
the Rue de la Verrerie to the south,
and the Rue Vieille du Temple to the east.
The fortress stood on what is now the Square du Temple
in Paris's third arrondissement.
Here they set about building a church
in the form of a rotunda,
modeled on Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchral,
which is purported to be Christ's burial place.
They then erected a keeper,
later known as the Tour de Cesar, or Caesar's Tower,
and at the end of the 12th century,
the famous Tour du Temple.
Modern apartment buildings have erased these last vestiges.
The oldest trace apparently attesting
to the Templar's presence concerns
the sites known as Vieux Temple,
of which the City of Paris History Library
probably possesses a picture
depicting a tower known as the Tower of the Devil's Fart.
There's quite a remarkable document
that shows us the state of the Tower of the Devil's Fart.
A Medieval tower that could be an old tower
of the temple's seigneurie in the early 18th century.
This beautiful illustrated album
is kept in the City of Paris History Library.
It wasn't produced to show the tower itself,
but rather a plot of land behind the present city hall
acquired in 1719, by a George Lerat.
As the new owner, he obviously needed detailed drawings
of what he was buying.
He hired a municipal architectural surveyor
to produce detailed plans of the Hotel du Sanem.
That's the name back then of the plot
where this medieval tower stood.
Here we have plans of each floor,
and you can clearly see
the large masonry tower in the center.
It's much sturdier than all the surrounding buildings,
as it was a fortified tower.
It's possible this tower was all that remained
of the original commandry of the temple in Paris,
before the one that was built in the 13th or 14th century,
which survived until the early years of the first empire.
We can't say for sure.
The mystery might be solved one day.
At the beginning of the 14th century,
the Templars were firmly established in Paris.
They owned considerable assets,
and formed a powerful structured state within the state,
which was said to have amassed a colossal fortune
thanks to its real estate,
commandries,
fortresses, and land.
The Templars became money lenders,
and developed the bill of exchange system
enabling people to travel without being robbed
and receive payment in the local currency
of whichever region or country they were in.
But the Templars' independence and power
became a threat for the monarchy.
Did they have secret designs?
It's far from certain,
but King Philip the Fair decided to get rid of the Templars.
A military operation without precedent
in the history of France.
On October the 13th, 1307,
the king's soldiers simultaneously arrested
all the Templars of France.
Some 150 knights and dignitaries
were dragged from their beds
without having the slightest chance to defend themselves.
They were thrown in jail,
their property was confiscated,
and they were accused of everything.
Heresy, blasphemy,
consorting with infidels,
murder, contempt for the sacraments,
authority, ecclesiastical hierarchy,
denying Christ and trampling on the cross.
From then on, Friday the 13th would be considered unlucky.
Years of imprisonment, accusations,
torture, confessions, retraction,
and procrastination would follow.
All amid the total indifference
of the people and chroniclers of the time.
Seven years later, in 1314,
two dignitaries of the Templar Order
were brought to the forecourt of Notre Dame Cathedral.
The fire was lit at the fire end of the Ile de la Cite,
facing the cathedral's towers,
consuming in its flames Jacques de Molay,
grandmaster of the Knights Templar,
and his final companion Geoffrey de Charney,
the order's preceptor of Normandy.
It is said as he burned at the stake,
Jacques de Molay cursed the French kings
and their descendants for 13 generations.
Within a year, I summon you to appear
before the tribunal of God to answer for your crimes,
curse, curse, I curse you
until the 13th generation of your race.
A series of tragic events occurred.
Philip the Fair died after falling from his horse,
then his three sons died young without male heirs,
bringing the Capetian dynasty to an end,
and hastening the Hundred Years' War with England.
Jacques de Molay died, but his curse lived on.
The Templar Order was no more,
but mysteries surrounding the Templars spread.
One of the most well known concerns
their famous treasure.
During his interrogation,
a Templar claimed that on the eve
of the fateful day of October the 13th, 1307,
three carts filled with treasure left Paris for England.
This is the only witness statement
to mention the Templars' treasure trove.
Apart from the money kept at the temple,
what could this treasure have been?
Some people believe it was the Ark of the Covenant,
said to contain the 10 Commandments
which God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai.
When they lived among the ruins
of Solomon's temple in Jerusalem,
the Templars apparently found it
and brought it back to France.
Others claim it was the Holy Grail,
the chalice Christ drank from at the Last Supper,
which was then used to catch his blood at the crucifixion.
To follow the trail of this fabulous treasure,
we must draw a line between Paris and Scotland.
In the DaVinci Code,
Dan Brown looks for the grail in Scotland,
where it is thought the three treasure carts
were taken for safekeeping.
Their descendants are said to have helped
in the construction of Rosslyn Chapel,
founded in the mid 15th century by William Sinclair,
First Earl of Caithness.
Could the Templars' treasure have been buried at this time?
This is not the only mystery surrounding the chapel.
Historians have discovered carvings there
dated from the mid 15th century,
supposedly representing ears of maize,
a plant unknown in Europe at the time,
and which only grew in America.
Some people think the Templars
may have discovered the New World
a century before Christopher Columbus.
Yet again, this is a flimsy theory,
and there is nothing to support it.
Rosslyn Chapel, which was built in 1440,
contains many signs, many symbols,
because it's an ancient monument
dating from the late Middle Ages,
a time when emblematic monuments,
religious monuments, were covered with symbols,
and symbols can be interpreted
in a number of different ways.
So, on the face of it,
there is not link between Rosslyn Chapel and the Templars.
According to other rumors,
the Templars hid the treasure in a secret chapel
beneath Gisors Castle in Normandy,
which had been governed by the soldier monks
over a century before.
In 1962, Andre Malraux, then the French culture minister,
who was intrigued by this affair,
ordered from his office on the Rue de Valois in Paris
a full scale excavation of the site in Gisors.
Digging went on for months,
the castle almost collapsed,
but no treasure was found.
Not the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail,
or even a chest full of gold coins.
The Ark of the Covenant has remained
an object of fascination and fantasy
for treasure hunters and history investigators alike.
All sorts of hypothesis about its location
have been put forward,
giving rise to numerous expeditions and countless tales.
The Templars represent a lead for some,
but so far, without any solid evidence or clues.
As for the Holy Grail, its legend grew in the 13th century
as a mythical object of the quest
of the Knights of the Round Table in Arthurian legend.
This legend stems from one of the most important works
of medieval German literature,
in which the grail, portrayed as a magic stone,
is guarded by the Templars.
The legend of the Holy Grail is therefore
a 13th century literary invention
with no foundation in history.
One question remains: do the Templars still exist?
Some people believe the order survived in freemasonry.
Again, the answer lies in Paris
at the Museum of Freemasonry in the Rue Cadet
in the capital's ninth arrondissement.
A unique and remarkable document is housed here.
It comes from a movement that decided
to restore the Order of the Knights Templar.
The museum contains rare and unique documents
that seem to suggest a continuation of the Templars
in some masonic orders.
In the 1740s, a masonic branch known as
the Order of the Chosen Knight
explained that although they appeared to be masons,
their branch was actually a remnant
and a resurgence of the orders of the Knights Templar.
They went on to say that at the time
of Philip the Fair's persecution
of the Knights Templar in the early 14th century,
a group of wiser or warier Templars
escaped and fled to Scotland,
where they were welcomed by the king of Scotland.
Based on the conventional examination
of historical documents,
we now know this was probably untrue, it was a myth.
But early freemasonry did have very real links
with other medieval chivalric orders
which survived until the 18th century,
such as the Order of Saint Lazarus.
Why do we associate freemasonry and chivalry?
Because in the 18th century, in freemasonry in particular,
which would be a sort of birthplace of pre Romantic ideas,
the Order of the Knights Templar
was the largest chivalric order of the Middle Ages,
and when you speak of knights,
the Templars are never far away.
The Templars continue to fuel
astonishing and fascinating mysteries.
Some arouse passions, here's one.
On the flyleaf of a manuscript describing the Templar Order
kept in the National Library of France,
there appears to be rather strange paraliturgical formulas
written by the Templars in the northern
long dialed dialect they used.
For some, it is a secret alphabet.
For others, mysterious practices combining
magic and religion, formulas used to treat horses.
As for the famous curse
Jacques de Molay uttered at the stake,
it was actually made up later to explain the tragic events
befalling the French monarchy, and the country's fate.
Embellished over time, the curse as we know it today
was in fact invented in the mid 20th century
by writer Maurice Druon in his celebrated historical saga,
The Accursed Kings.
This curse is therefore a myth.
For years, the legend of the Templars
was a web of myths and mysteries,
but also of controversies and theories.
The Templars' supposed treasure
continues to be a source of fantasy
for a great many historians
and authors of bestsellers today.
It symbolizes the fascination an age of secrets
and mysteries to be unraveled can hold for us.
But beyond the case of the Templars,
other historical questions remained unanswered.
There are many more investigations to come,
equally strange and mysterious, unresolved,
and sometimes simply unbelievable.
The clues and keys to these enigmas
are to be found in old books,
lost in the capital's libraries,
in the city's streets, or beneath its buildings,
by the light of a candle,
or in the dead of night,
by cross checking documents, archives, and records.
Paris has not yet revealed all of its secrets.
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