Neo-Templarism
Latter-day Knights Templar groups
Neo-Templarism comprises groups or people who claim to have revived or to be descendants of the Knights Templar. These orders are very diverse, but typically draw from western esotericism, with some groups incorporating New Age beliefs, or Freemasonry. Many neo-Templar groups are secret initiatory societies. Other groups are only ceremonial, and attempt to replicate what they view as the chivalric ideals of the original Knights Templar without any esoteric elements.
Following the dissolution of the Templars by Pope Clement V at the start of the 14th century, several organizations have claimed to be secret continuations of the original Templars. This idea has been criticized by scholars of Templar history and is widely regarded as dubious. The notion of the Templars secretly surviving within Freemasonry resulted in the creation of several Templar grades in Freemason organizations, which evolved into independent neo-Templarism in the early 19th century. The origins of most neo-Templar groups can be traced to a revivalist Templar order founded by French physician Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat in 1805.
Background
The Knights Templar (also called the Order of the Temple, French: Ordre du Temple) were a military-religious and monastic order, that was created by a few knights, among them Hugh de Payens and Geoffrey de Saint-Omer in 1119 in Jerusalem. At the 1128 Council of Troyes in France, led by Bernard of Clairvaux, it was officially approved.
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This entry incorporates text from “Neo-Templarism” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.