18 Best Books About the Knights Templar: History, Trial, and the Conspiracy Myths (2026)

The Knights Templar lasted 192 years, from their founding in Jerusalem around 1119 to the burning of their last grand master Jacques de Molay in 1314. In that time they invented a working medieval banking system, lost the Holy Land, were arrested by a French king in coordinated dawn raids on Friday 13 October 1307, and were then absorbed by every secret-society conspiracy theory the next seven centuries could produce. The best books about the Knights Templar are the ones that walk you carefully through what the surviving documents actually say, while being clear about which of the famous stories are inventions added later. There are roughly three groups of Templar books, and you need at least one from each group to see the whole picture.

The Three Groups of Templar Books

First, the scholarly histories that work from charters, trial records, and chronicles. Second, the accessible single-volume narratives written for general readers. Third, the myth-versus-history books that explain why the Templars attracted so many later legends. Skipping any one of these layers gives you a distorted picture. The shortest reading path is one book from each group, in that order. For the wider medieval setting see the Skriuwer guide to the best books about the Crusades, which covers the broader wars the Templars fought.

Start Here: One Scholarly History and One Narrative Account

If you read only two books, read these:

• The New Knighthood by Malcolm Barber. Cambridge University Press, 1994, and still the academic standard. Barber works directly from the cartularies and trial records and is careful about what the evidence does and does not support. Dense in places but accurate throughout. The reader-review profile is on our New Knighthood page.
• The Templars by Dan Jones. Published 2017, written for general readers, and the best modern narrative history. Jones moves quickly through the founding, the battles, the wealth, and the fall, without sacrificing accuracy. Read it after Barber for the lived rhythm of the order. Nearly five thousand verified reader reviews back it on our Templars page.

The Trial Records: The Documentary Centre of the Story

The Templars were arrested in coordinated dawn raids across France on 13 October 1307, on orders from King Philip IV. The accusations included heresy, sodomy, idolatry, and the worship of a head called Baphomet. The trials ran for years, produced thousands of pages of confession (mostly under torture), and ended with Jacques de Molay burned at the stake on the Île aux Juifs in Paris in 1314. Malcolm Barber's companion volume The Trial of the Templars is the standard reference. The Vatican's Chinon Parchment, rediscovered in the Vatican Secret Archive in 2001 and published as Processus contra Templarios in 2007, confirmed that Pope Clement V had privately absolved the Templars of heresy, a fact the king's prosecutors never let into the public record.

Helen Nicholson and the Women Question

Most popular Templar books leave women out completely. Helen Nicholson's The Knights Templar: A New History is the exception. Nicholson devotes proper attention to the women who supported, lodged with, and in a small number of cases were affiliated members of the order. She also covers the Templars in the Iberian Peninsula, who play a much larger role in the Reconquista than in the popular Holy Land story. This is the best single book if you want a corrective to the all-male, all-Outremer narrative.

The Conspiracy Layer: Why the Myths Keep Coming Back

The Templars are the founding ingredient of the modern secret-society conspiracy genre, from the late-eighteenth-century invention of Templar-Freemason continuity to The Da Vinci Code. Michael Haag's The Templars: History and Myth is the best book on why the myths exist, written by someone who is sympathetic enough to engage seriously but historically rigorous enough to say which ones do not survive contact with the evidence. If you want the deeper conspiracy-genre context, the Skriuwer guides to conspiracy nonfiction and the definition of a conspiracy theory sit naturally beside this one.

Battles, Banking, and the Castles

The Templars were a fighting order, and the battle history is half the story. The Battle of Hattin in 1187 effectively ended the First Kingdom of Jerusalem and saw the mass execution of captured Templars by Saladin. The fall of Acre in 1291 was the order's last stand in the Holy Land. For battle-focused readers, John J. Robinson's Dungeon, Fire and Sword covers the military side accessibly. The financial side is just as interesting. The Templar treasury at the Paris Temple effectively functioned as the French royal bank for over a century. Edwin Burman's The Templars: Knights of God is the older but still useful account of how that banking system worked.

Where the Treasure Really Went

The most persistent Templar legend is that the order's treasure was smuggled out of France before the 1307 arrests, often to Scotland (Rosslyn Chapel) or to a Nova Scotia island. The historical evidence is thin. King Philip IV's accounts from late 1307 show he was angry to find the Paris Temple's vaults much less full than he had hoped, but the most likely explanation is that the Templars had moved their main reserves to Cyprus and to provincial preceptories before the raids, and that those reserves were absorbed by the Hospitallers when Pope Clement V dissolved the order in 1312. Karen Ralls's Knights Templar Encyclopedia is the calmest reference book on the treasure stories and treats each one on its evidence rather than on its appeal.

For Pure Storytelling: Templar Fiction Worth Reading

Two novels stand out. Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum is the literary master class on how Templar conspiracies are constructed, written by a medievalist who knew the actual sources. Bernard Cornwell's 1356, set forty years after the order's dissolution, captures the long shadow the Templars cast over fourteenth-century Europe. Both are far better than the popular thriller versions that hit shelves after The Da Vinci Code.

Five More Templar and Crusades Books Worth Your Shelf

The thirteen titles above cover the core. These five widen the picture, and each earns its place for a specific reason.

• The Templars by Piers Paul Read. A novelist's clean narrative of the full 192-year arc, ranked here because it is the easiest complete history to hand to someone who has never read medieval history before.
• The Templars: The Secret History Revealed by Barbara Frale. Frale is the Vatican archivist who rediscovered the Chinon Parchment in 2001, so this is the trial story told by the person who found the document that changed it.
• The Knights Templar by Sean Martin. A 150-page pocket history, ranked here because it is the fastest reliable overview in print and a fair test of whether the subject grips you before you commit to Barber.
• Crusaders by Dan Jones. Jones's follow-up covers the whole crusading movement the Templars served, ranked here because it extends The Templars into the wider war without changing authorial voice.
• The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople by Jonathan Phillips. The crusade that turned on fellow Christians explains the moral collapse of the movement better than any Templar-focused book, and it sits in our catalogue with a full review profile.

For the military backdrop to all five, Thomas Asbridge's history of the Crusades has its own reader-review page, and Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England rebuilds the daily world the order operated in.

What Is New in the Field as of 2026

The most interesting recent work on the Templars sits at the intersection of archaeology and ground-penetrating radar. Excavations at the chapel of Saint Stanislaus in Chwarszczany, Poland, used GPR through 2025 to identify a network of crypts and what appears to be an underground passageway extending from the Templar church. The lead archaeologist Przemysław Kołosowski has been clear that the site does not point to the Hollywood-style treasure tunnel, but it does map the practical infrastructure of an outlying Templar commandery in a way the surviving documents cannot. A separate February 2026 report on Templar-linked underground anomalies in central Europe pushed similar GPR work into popular news cycles. None of this overturns the historical picture in Barber or Nicholson, but it does fill in the physical world the Templars actually lived in. Read the conspiracy press on this material with care, then check the working archaeology against the scholarly histories on this list.

The Reading Order That Works

The shortest path from zero to confident understanding is: read Dan Jones first for the narrative, read Helen Nicholson for the women and Iberian corrective, read Malcolm Barber's New Knighthood for the scholarly depth, then read Michael Haag for the myth layer. That four-book stack gives you roughly 1,500 pages and covers everything from the 1119 founding to the modern conspiracy circuit. After that, the trial records and the Crusades histories complete the picture.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best book about the Knights Templar for beginners?

Dan Jones's The Templars (2017) is the best modern narrative history for general readers. After that, Helen Nicholson's The Knights Templar: A New History is the best one-volume corrective on women, Iberia, and the broader story most books leave out.

What really happened to the Templars on Friday 13, 1307?

King Philip IV of France ordered coordinated dawn raids on Templar properties across France on 13 October 1307. About fifteen thousand members were arrested in a single day. The accusations included heresy, sodomy, and the worship of an idol called Baphomet. Most confessions were extracted under torture and many were later retracted.

Did the Knights Templar invent banking?

They did not invent banking from nothing, but their network of preceptories across western Europe and the Holy Land let them operate a working international transfer system. A pilgrim could deposit funds in London or Paris and withdraw the equivalent in Jerusalem, using letters of credit. By the late thirteenth century the Paris Temple served as the de facto French royal bank.

Were the Knights Templar actually guilty of heresy?

The Vatican's Chinon Parchment, rediscovered in 2001 and published as Processus contra Templarios in 2007, shows that Pope Clement V privately absolved the Templars of the heresy charges in 1308. The pope dissolved the order on financial and political grounds in 1312, but the formal verdict on the heresy charge was acquittal, not conviction.

Where did the Templar treasure go?

Most historians think the bulk of the order's reserves had been moved to Cyprus and to provincial preceptories before the 1307 raids. After Pope Clement V dissolved the order in 1312, those reserves were transferred to the Hospitallers. The popular legends about Scotland, Nova Scotia, and Rennes-le-Château are entertaining but lack contemporary documentary support.

Are the Templars connected to the Freemasons?

No documented continuity exists. The claimed connection was invented in the 1730s, four centuries after the order's dissolution, when Freemason lodges adopted Templar imagery and invented descent stories. Michael Haag's The Templars: History and Myth traces exactly how and when each link in that chain was fabricated.

Browse the full curated reading list at the Skriuwer history book collection, with honest reviews and direct Amazon links. For the closely linked sleep-story format, see the Knights Templar sleep story on the same topic. The trials that destroyed the order from 1307 ran on the same inquisitorial methods detailed in our best books about the Spanish Inquisition. The legend most often attached to the order, that they hid the Grail in Scotland or Languedoc, is examined in our ranked guide to the best books about the Holy Grail. For the wider conspiracy-theory afterlife the Templars share with the Freemasons, the Illuminati and Skull and Bones, see the best books about secret societies reading order.