The Knights Templars: God's Warriors, the Devil's Bankers

by Frank Sanello

Overview

This book captures the intriguing nature and reality of this mystic-warrior society and provides a fascinating account of medieval religious campaigns and the political interests that shaped them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780878333028
Publisher:	Taylor Trade Publishing
Publication date:	07/11/2003
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.46(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.17(d)

About the Author

He is the author of 15 books on celebrity biography and history. As a journalist for the past 25 years, Sanello has written for the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times Syndicate, People, Redbook, Cosmo and Penthouse magazines. He was also the film critic for the Los Angeles Daily News and a business reporter for UPI. He lives in Los Angeles, California. His previous books are Reel V. Real: Separating Fact from Fiction in Film and Spielberg .

Editorial Reviews

The medieval Knights Templar were warrior-monks, mostly aristocratic men who took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in return for assurances that they would enter heaven. Thus guaranteed salvation and eternal life, they fought in the Crusades with reckless abandon. Sanello (The Opium Wars) pedantically traces the order's rise and fall over the course of two centuries. It originated in the 12th century to provide protection to pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land, and Templars fought courageously in various Crusades. By the beginning of the 13th century, they had become victims of their own courage, suffering tremendous military losses in Palestine. But their presence in Europe grew and their reputation as bankers developed. As Sanello points out, the Templars invented the check and established the first branch banks, where pilgrims could take out loans for their travels to Jerusalem. By the early 14th century, however, the order had fallen on hard times, accused by the Inquisition of homosexuality, greed and heresy. Their Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1314, and with this the order was banned. Through a focus on various legends that have since arisen-that the Templars were the precursors of Masons and keepers of the Holy Grail-Sanello shows how the order has been kept alive in name if not in reality. This isn't history at its richest: the writing is overly simple, though spiked with strange attempts at sophistication, as in referring to St. Bernard's "anal-retentive charter" for the order. Illus. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly