Knights Templar and popular culture
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Knights Templar
Modern associations
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The Knights Templar have many references in popular culture, yet most of them quite inaccurate. The truth is that they were a Catholic military order that existed from the 1100s to the 1300s, to provide warriors in the Crusades. They were quite famous in medieval times, and stories and legends have grown about them over the centuries.
In modern works, the Templars are generally portrayed in one of two ways;
- as villains, misguided zealots, or representatives of an evil secret society[1] (e.g. Mumbo Jumbo, by Ishmael Reed)
- as the keepers of a long-lost treasure (e.g. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Da Vinci Code and National Treasure, Power Rangers Operation Overdrive)
[edit] Novels & comics
A brief list of some major works which have featured the Knights Templar:
- Ivanhoe, an 1820 novel by Sir Walter Scott, has as its villain Sir Brian de Bois-Gilbert, a "Templar Knight."
- The Da Vinci Code, bestselling 2003 novel by Dan Brown. This was also adapted into a film version in 2006.
- The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids, an 1855 short story] by Herman Melville treats the Templars with great irony.
- Mumbo-Jumbo (1972) has a Templar Knight Hinkle Von Vampton who serves as the main villain in Ishmael Reed's postmodernist satire
- Foucault's Pendulum, a 1988 novel by Umberto Eco, which features the mythos of the Knights Templar as keepers and defenders of the Holy Grail.
- The Revenge of the Shadow King, by Derek Benz and J.S. Lewis, relates an alternate history of the Knights Templar, aligning them with an age-old order whose primary role is to defend the world from the powers of darkness. In this book, the Templars still exist and operate today from the shadows of an underground organization.
- The Last Templar, by Raymond Khoury is a Da Vinci Code-style thriller.
- Les Rois Maudits by Maurice Druon depicts the death of the last Grand Master of the Order, and plays with the legend of the curse he laid on the pope, Philip the Fair, and Guillaume de Nogaret.
- Katherine Kurtz has written many books with Templar characters and themes, and edited the Crusade of Fire anthology
- Swedish author Jan Guillou has written a trilogy about Arn Magnusson, a fictional Swedish character from the Middle Ages who was forced to become a Knight Templar, went to Jerusalem and after returning to Sweden, was a leading military figure shortly before the time of Birger Jarl.
[edit] Films, video games & music
- There have been quite a few alliances in the free online video game, CyberNations, based off of the Knights Templar. One prominent example being The Templar Knights Alliance.
- The Crossing, a video game currently in development by Arcane Studios, traces back to the Knights Templar and creates a fictonal world where the Templar have not been successfuly disbanded by imperial decree. Now in the 20th century, the player goes through the game in conjoined single player/multiplayer fashion, fighting against the neo-Templars who have taken over parts of Europe.
- The film Revelation (2001) in which the order tries to clone Jesus Christ for evil purposes.
- The best-selling video game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion borrows extensively from the history of the Knights Templar. The game features a group of warrior-monks known as The Blades. The Blades life a communal and spartan lifestyle, and their grandmaster, Jauffre, is the prior of an abbey. They also eat in a refectory and have a library/scriptorium, among other similarities to the Templars. Templar-like order is also featured in Oblivion's expansion pack Knights of the Nine.
- The Ballad of Parzival by Sir Walter Scott, features Parzival the hero as a knight templar. The ballad is the basis for Richard Wagner's great opera with the same name.
- The mythos of the Knights Templar (presented as the fictional "Knights of the Cruciform Sword") as keepers and defenders of the Holy Grail is also a central plot point in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).
- Dolph Lundgren plays the role of a modern day member of the Knights Templar in the 1998 movie The Minion.
- National Treasure, 2004
- Kingdom of Heaven, 2005 shows the incompetent last King of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan, and his bloodthirsty henchman, Reynald de Chatillon (not a Templar himself), as Templars.
- A series of horror films (Tombs of the Blind Dead, Return of the Evil Dead, The Ghost Galleon, Night of the Seagulls and The Church) by Spanish director Amando de Ossorio depict the Knights Templar as resurrected mummies in search of human blood.
- The Templars are mentioned in various video games such as Ion Storm's Deus Ex, Deus Ex 2 and Revolution Software's Broken Sword, which suggests a Neo-Templar group. Many of these plots are derived one way or another from the Illuminatus trilogy.
- Utilizing material from the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail the third Gabriel Knight game, Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, posits both an alternative history of Christ and the suggestion that the Templar treasure, buried in France's Languedoc, is Christ's remains.
- The Black Templars Chapter of Space Marines from the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop wargame are based directly on the historical Knights Templar.
- Knights of the Temple: Infernal Crusade, from 2004 by TDK and Starbreeze.
- The Knights Templar feature as playable characters in Flagship Studios' upcoming game, Hellgate: London.
- Knights of the Cross is a concept album about the Templars by German metal band Grave Digger.'
- The Templars (band) a NYC Oi! band is inspired by the Knights Templar, it is where the bands name is from, also the albums titled "The Poor Knights of Acre" 1993 Sonic Aggression Records, "Return of Jacques de Molay" 1994 Dim Records, "1118-1312" 1997 Do A Runner/Go-Kart Records,"Night of the Seagulls" 1997 Headache Records, "Omne Datum Optimum" 1999 GMM Records, "Milites Templi" 2000 TKO Records/Templecombe Records, and "Outremer" 2005 GMM records. are derived from events and locations of The Knights Templar. The Album "Omne Datum Optimum" 1999 GMM Records has a song titled "The Templars".
- The Templar Knights are featured in the 2001 French film Le Pacte des loups, in which the symbol of the Templar Knights is seen upon the walls of an old Templar stronghold and upon the Beast's armor. The cult seen in the movie is also supposedly a rogue templar organization, originally sent by the Pope to teach the King of France a lesson.
- The song "Night of the Seagulls" has Knights Templar-related lyrics.
- Templecombe Records The Templars (band) a NYC Oi! bands own label (in conjunction with TKO Records) is from a Knights Templar site in Sommerset, England.
- HammerFall, a Swedish Power Metal band, refers to themselves as "The Templars of Heavy Metal", making frequent and clear reference to the Templars. Songs such as "The Templars Flame" and "Knights of the 21st Century" off of their 2005 release "Chapter V: Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken", "Hearts on Fire" from their 2002 release "Crimson Thunder", "Templars of Steel" and "Keep the Flame Burning" from their 2000 release "Renegade", "Heeding the Call" and "Stronger than All" from their 1998 release "Legacy of Kings" and "Steel meets Steel" from their 1997 release "Glory to the Brave" make direct or indirect reference to the Templars. As well, their first two concert DVD releases were entitled "The First Crusade" (1999) and "The Templar Renegade Crusades" (2002). They even have a section of their website named the "Templar Area".
- Templar and Dark Templar are unit types for the Protoss, a playable race in the 1998 video game Starcraft. The game introduces an expansive mythology, with the Templars being the warrior caste within Protoss society, and the Dark Templars outcasts after ages of civil strife.
