The best books on the real history of the Knights Templar

This is a detailed, reliable account of the Templars’ history from their beginning to their end.

There’s no imaginative speculation or flights of fancy: it’s all based on written and archaeological evidence from the time of the events described. Barber drew on a vast range of primary sources from across medieval Christendom and the Middle East, his own lifetime’s research into the Templars, and the work of other expert historians to produce this comprehensive history.

When it was first published, back in 1994, this was the first comprehensive, authoritative, up-to-date history of the Templars available in English. Many researchers have since written good shorter studies of various aspects of Templar history, but this remains the best all-encompassing scholarly study.

It’s a must-read for all serious scholars of the Templars. 

The obvious best guide to the historical Templars is the regulations that they produced for their own use. This book is a reliable English translation of those regulations.

Of course these regulations only tell us what the leaders of the Order of the Temple believed that the brothers should be doing, not necessarily what they actually did do, day by day – but they give us an insight into the brothers’ ideals and what their purpose.

The regulations also include many examples of when things didn’t go as planned and what the brothers did about it, allowing us a glimpse of the problems and challenges the brothers encountered defending the crusader states.

This is a detailed study of what life would have been like at the Templars’ commandery at Temple Balsall in Warwickshire.

Its author, Eileen Gooder, was a leading scholar in local history and an expert on the Templars in England. The book is based on her unparalleled knowledge of the inventories that King Edward II of England ordered to be made of the Templars’ estates when the Templars were arrested in England in 1308 and the accounts kept by the royal officials who ran those estates until 1313.

Gooder also reconstructed the trial proceedings against the Balsall Templars and what became of them, and their English brethren, after the trial. This is an excellent, short, readable, and reliable introduction to the Templars’ lives in Europe.

Where did the Templars get the resources to build and maintain castles in the Holy Land and carry on their warfare against the enemies of Christendom? This book focuses on the Templars’ extensive properties in Lincolnshire, England, to show how the Templars generated wealth from their vast estates across Europe.

Using the Templars’ own record of their English holdings in 1185 and the English government records from the Templar trial period, 1308–13, Jefferson produces a fascinating study of Templar land- and people-management, showing that the Templars were at least as effective as farmers and managers as they were as warriors. He then takes the story on through the Hospitallers’ administration of the estates until the sixteenth century.

If you want to get to grips with real Templar life, read this book.

Alain Demurger is the world’s leading expert on the French Templars during the trial of the Order.

This book, originally published as La Persécution des Templiers Journal (1307–1314), narrates the events of the Templars’ trial as they unfolded day by day, allowing readers to follow the twists and turns in proceedings. I confess that I read the French edition of this book, but I’m sure that the English version is just as compelling!

Alain Demurger has also written an excellent history of the Templars and assembled a reference guide to all the Templars in France during the trial – but these are not available in English.