Templars and Freemasons

During the Middle Ages, the Knights Templar protected Christian pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem. But by 1321, members of the military-religious order, known for their role in the Crusades, were tried for heresy and the group disbanded.
In recent years, the order of monks has become a subject of renewed interest, and have become more popularly known as guardians of spiritual treasures, in particular the mysterious lost Holy Grail, the chalice believed to have been used by Jesus during the Last Supper.
The Templars have been featured as key players in the juicy plot lines of blockbuster motion pictures and best-selling novels — fueling keen interest in what became of the secretive group nearly 700 years ago.
Those depictions, in movies like “National Treasure” and books such as “The Da Vinci Code,” are mostly fiction. But some Vatican documents giving scholars and history buffs deeper insight into the Templars’ real past were on display at the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society. The reproduction set of Vatican Templar Trial Transcripts are owned by the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library of Grand Lodge in Manhattan.
A popular theory holds that to-day’s Masons, who number about 53,000 across New York State evolved out of the Knights Templar. Legend has it that the Templars went underground in the early 14th century to escape persecution by the inquisitors of King Philip IV of France, then emerged two centuries later in Scotland as the Freemasons. One branch of modern day Masons
that was organized sometime around the turn of the 19th century even calls itself the Knights Templar.
But the connection between the Knights Templar of the Crusades and Freemasonry is “highly dubious,” the Chancellor said. “There is no valid historical documentation establishing that link.”
Due to the great deal of interest and inquiry into the possibility of a link, the library’s trustees felt a responsibility to obtain the trial documents as a resource for both Masons and non-Masons. The library is one of just a few groups in the United States, including the Cornell University library in Ithaca, that possesses authentic reproductions of the “Processus Contra Templarios.”
Seven hundred and ninety-nine numbered copies of the trial transcripts became available following the Vatican’s 2007 announcement that the original parchments, misplaced for hundreds of years, had been found. The replicas were sold for 5,000 euros each.
The Masons have long been considered a secret, ritualistic society, although today’s members say those days are long past. In the 21st century, Freemasons consider their group to be a society with certain private aspects, not a “secret society” with its negative connotations. Events like the display of the Templar documents are further proof of that fact.
In the Buffalo News.