Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hello everyone smile I am new to this guild and I am glad that someone has created this guild smile History is a huge interest of mine, I love sitting back and reading about history of ancient times. But my first historical interest is with.... The Knights Templar, if you are not aware of what the Knights Templar were, I have provided this link for you to read more about them smile

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Templar

There you go! smile Now.. I bet your asking what is so interesting about these guys? My answer to that is... EVERYTHING!....
But what catches my attention and my interest the most about them is that for what reason did they seem to vanish into thin air? Sure some of them were executed after being charged with HERESY. But not all of them were found, and not all of them were executed either... Depending on where they were, some places did not execute.
Its believed many of these Knights Templars fled, but where to? Rumor has it that, the Knights Templar came to Canada... OAK ISLAND to be exact smile Now.. I am Canadian and I live in Nova Scotia which is not to far from OAK ISLAND, its believed that the Knights Templar have left their treasure on OAK ISLAND. That is another thing that has captured my imagination. If this treasure is actually there, what kind of stuff did they leave behind? The Ark? or something else?
Time may tell.. Or we may never ever know.

No I have not yet read that book smile But I am planning on buying it soon. You see smile My Supervisor is a freemason who shares the same interest as me, and he too has asked if I have read that book smile And I will be joining also smile Hooray!

Many of the Knights Templar were noblemen who simply returned to their homes and lands and lived quietly hoping they would not have to answer a charge of heresy. Living with the threat of being burned at the stake would make anyone crave the quiet life and deny being a Knights Templar.

I think, if there was any treasure, it would have been discovered by now and anything valuable or mystical would have been removed 'for safe keeping' by the government. During the Second World War, Hitler really was obsessed with getting hold of the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail and the Spear that pierced the side of Jesus Christ. He believed that it would give him the leading edge in the war and give him the power to establish the Fourth Reich worldwide. Whether or not the artifacts actually had any power, the Allied Forces would have done anything, and probably did, to stop him realising this ambition if only for the psychological advantage.

Sort of a random note here: the Da Vinci Code is indeed fictional, and the majority of the important 'facts' in the book are not facts at all, but fabrications. If you read the wikipedia article on the book, there should be a link to a full page of criticisms that lists many of the false claims within the book.

Yes, I wouldn't recommend reading The Da Vinci Code as a source on the Templars. There are quite a few good non-fictional books and websites out about them, so just do some research like that.

It's also been postulated that a number of former Templars banded together in new groups. (I've got this from sources other than Dan Brown's books, by the way.) Several organizations which are almost as infamous as the Templars themselves have been fingered for this, but unfortunately there's no factual evidence to prove this once and for all.

What is factual is that the Templars amassed most of their wealth and power through creating a sort of banking system. This is probably also what caught up with them in the end, having become too great a force. The King of France and the Pope of those times started a witch-hunt against them and practically destroyed the Templars.