Thread by @CultureExploreX

Friday the 13th wasn’t always unlucky.

It became cursed the morning the most powerful knights in the world were dragged from their beds in chains.

This is the story of the Knights Templar — warrior monks who built empires, invented banking, and died in fire. 🧵

Formed in 1119, the Templars began as nine knights sworn to protect Christian pilgrims on the dangerous roads to Jerusalem.

They lived atop the Temple Mount itself. Believed to be the site of Solomon’s Temple. That sacred address gave them instant mystique.

They were no ordinary knights.

Templars took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They lived like monks but fought like soldiers, a combination that shocked the medieval world.

Their banner was a red cross on white. It soon became a symbol of holy war.

On battlefields from Jerusalem to Acre, they charged in disciplined lines, refusing to retreat even when outnumbered.

But their real power wasn’t just military.

They created one of history’s first international banking systems.

On London’s Fleet Street stands Temple Church, consecrated in 1185 as the Templars’ home.

It was a place that served not only as their chapel but also as the city’s first bank for the warrior monks who fought holy wars while running a financial empire.

Pilgrims could deposit money in Europe and withdraw it safely in the Holy Land.

That system was secure. Historians believe they used encrypted codes to prevent fraud — a medieval form of cryptography centuries ahead of its time.

Donations poured in. Nobles left estates, peasants gave coins, and the order amassed land across Europe.

Within a century, the “Poor Soldiers of Christ” were richer than kings.

But wealth attracts enemies.

The Templars’ secrecy fueled rumors of heresy. Whispers spread that their initiations mocked the cross or hid pagan rituals.

None of it was proven, but the mystery stuck.

The real danger wasn’t rumor. It was debt.

By 1307, King Philip IV of France owed the Templars a fortune from his endless wars.

He couldn’t repay it, so he chose to erase it.

On Friday, October 13, 1307, Philip struck.

Templars across France were arrested at dawn. The charges: blasphemy, corruption, and heresy.

The evidence: confessions wrung out under torture.

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Their leaders, including Grand Master Jacques de Molay, were imprisoned.

In Paris, de Molay was forced to confess but when he recanted, he was burned alive at the stake in 1314.

As the flames rose, de Molay cursed both the king and the pope who condemned him, calling them to meet God within a year.

History records that both were dead by the following year.

The king’s dynasty soon collapsed into the chaos of the Hundred Years’ War.

The order itself was dissolved. Its lands were handed to the Knights Hospitaller.

Its warriors scattered, some executed, some absorbed into other armies, some vanishing into legend.

But the myths were just beginning.

Some said the Templars had spirited away their vast treasure before Philip’s men could seize it.

Gold, relics, perhaps even the Holy Grail itself.

Others claimed their fleet escaped La Rochelle, sailing to Scotland or Portugal.

There, new orders rose under different names, carrying the Templar spirit forward.

The order’s real contributions were staggering:

• A financial system that prefigured modern banking
• A network of castles and fortresses across Europe and the Holy Land
• A disciplined military elite that changed medieval warfare

But their fall leaves the lasting question:

Were they martyrs destroyed by a greedy king?

Or guardians of a secret so dangerous that it had to be erased from history?

The Templars’ wealth and power ended in fire.

But their greatest mystery, the treasure they may have hidden, lives on.

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