On Christmas Day, 1119, the king of Jerusalem, Baldwin II persuaded a group of French knights led by Hugh de Payne II to save their souls by protecting pilgrims traveling the Holy Land. And so the Order of the Knights Templar was formed .

This revolutionary order of knights lived as monks and took vows of poverty and chastity, but these were monks with a difference – they would take up arms as knights to protect the civilians using the dangerous roads of the newly conquered Kingdom of Jerusalem. From these humble beginnings, the order would grow to become one of the premier Christian military forces of the Crusades.

Over the next 900 years, these warrior monks would become associated with the Holy Grail , the Freemasons and the occult. But are any of these associations true, or are they just baseless myth?

Read more: ancient origins