Love The Persecution of the Knights Templar? Readers share 100 books like The Persecution 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.

I first read this book while at university. I re-read it after touring the Langue d’Òc region of France focusing on the folklore surrounding Mary Magdalene. This book advances the hypothesis that the historical Jesus married Mary Magdalene and travelled to the south of France, where their children married into nobility and established what became known as the Merovingian dynasty. This book provided a source of information as well as support, given my subject matter and the two entwining histories: the biblical era of Jesus and the 13th C siege of Montsegur. Its extensive bibliography provided a rich source of research, including academic articles, essays, and books.

Arguably the most famous event in the Templars’ history was their trial in the early fourteenth century, when King Philip IV of France levelled an array of charges against the order—most notably the accusation of heresy. Malcolm Barber’s The Trial of the Templars works through the events of the Templar Trial in granular detail, offering a deep and thought-provoking history of the event itself and the wider developments and powerful agendas which shaped its course. 

The Templars are generally remembered as fighters and castle builders, yet their activities along the frontier depended heavily on the order’s huge support infrastructure across Western Christendom. Networks consisting of hundreds of estates spanning many countries dispatched vast quantities of cash and resources—as well as recruits and other supporters—to the Templars’ outposts in the Holy Land on an annual basis. In Templar Families, Jochen Schenk investigates these networks focusing especially on the relationships that developed between the order’s officers governing their landholdings in France and the many local families whose support enabled the order to function.  

Overstuffed and labyrinthine, Eco’s novel dives into a highly academic rabbit hole of conspiracy theories that toss me head over heels like a strong wave in the ocean. It reads a bit like The DaVinci Code written by Thomas Pynchon (who we’ll get to in a minute), the paranoias stemming from historical entities like the Knights Templar and the Rosicrucians.

I’d be hard-pressed to provide an accurate summary of events, but it all makes for a pleasantly bewildering reading experience.

Although this book is quite old now–I think it was published in 2006/2007, it helped ignite my interest in the Crusades in the Holy Land and the Knights Templer in particular. The novel begins in 1260, and Robyn Young does a good job of setting the scene through the dual narrative with Will Campbell, a young, troubled sergeant in the Knights Templer on one side–and the Mamluk Amir Baybars in Outremer on the other. 

Set after the actual Crusades, the setting moves between England, France, and the Holy Land and is packed with action and subterfuge. The series continues with Crusade and Requiem. I enjoyed the accounts of daily life and the attention to historical detail, as well as the fast-paced action. It is a must-read for anyone interested in medieval life and the Knights Templer.      

Sarwat is another brilliant British writer, whose debut novel Devil’s Kiss remains my favourite of his. Its teen heroine, Billi Sangreal is the last of the knight’s templar and lives her life kicking ass and killing monsters, Buffy style. There is a great level of complexity in this novel, with a bad guy that has really remained with me over the years.