Are there links between the the Knights Templar and the Freemasons?

Did some of the Templars escape the 1314 massacres and set up a secret network throughout Europe?

Do they still stand guard over the Holy Grail? This documentary, an investigation into the facts behind the legends, looks for the answers.

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Latin: Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici), also known as the Order of Solomon's Temple, the Knights Templar or simply the Templars, were a Catholic military order founded in 1119, headquartered on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem through 1128 when they went to the Vatican and were recognised in 1139 by the papal bull Omne datum optimum.^[4] The order was active until 1312 when it was perpetually suppressed by Pope Clement V by the bull Vox in excelso.^[5]

The Templars became a favoured charity throughout Christendom and grew rapidly in membership and power. They were prominent in Christian finance. Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades.^[6] Non-combatant members of the order, who made up as much as 90% of their members,^[2][3] managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom,^[7] developing innovative financial techniques that were an early form of banking,^[8][9] building its own network of nearly 1,000 commanderies and fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land, and arguably forming the world's first multinational corporation.

The Templars were closely tied to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the order faded. Rumours about the Templars' secret initiation ceremony created distrust, and King Philip IV of France – deeply in debt to the order – took advantage of this distrust to destroy them and erase his debt. In 1307, he had many of the order's members in France arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and burned at the stake. Pope Clement V disbanded the order in 1312 under pressure from King Philip. The abrupt reduction in power of a significant group in European society gave rise to speculation, legend, and legacy through the ages.