On the trail of the Templars in Portugal
In 1314, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar was burned at the stake in Paris. He cursed his executioners as the flames rose. Both the King of France and the Pope were dead within the year.
But the order he led? They didn't die with him.
In this episode, we follow the Knights Templar from their extraordinary beginnings — nine penniless knights in Jerusalem who grew into one of the most powerful military and financial forces the medieval world had ever seen — through their dramatic fall at the hands of a greedy French king, and into the one country where they didn't just survive. They thrived.
Portugal.
We explore the real history behind my novel The Templar Enigma — including the Templar fortress at Tomar that still stands after 800 years, the island castle of Almourol rising straight out of the River Tagus, and the mysterious spiral wells of Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra, built not for water, but for secrets.
You'll discover how the Templars essentially invented modern banking, why Friday the 13th has haunted Western culture ever since October 1307, and how one defiant Portuguese king outwitted the Pope to keep the order alive under a new name — and how their legacy went on to fund the discovery of the modern world.
This is history that reads like a thriller. Which is exactly why I wrote one.
The Templar Enigma is available now wherever you buy your books.
Here's what the Templar Enigma is all about:
A TEMPLAR CURSE
AN ANCIENT PROPHECY
A PULSE-POUNDING RACE AGAINST TIME
In 1314, Jacques de Molay, the last Templar Grand Master uttered a curse as he burned at the stake. Within months, both men responsible for his downfall, the King of France, and the Pope, lay dead.
Centuries later, a Templar descendant discovers the key to unleashing the curse's power: The legendary Seal of Solomon. Learning of the relic’s power, he plans a cataclysmic event which will return civilization to the Dark Ages.
Enter Eden Black. As the countdown begins, Eden is thrust into a web of intrigue that spans centuries, from the final days of the Knights Templar to the shadowy activities of a modern secret society.
But, learning just how deep this conspiracy goes, and who exactly is involved, Eden realizes things are much more deadly that she first thought.
From the crypt of a long-dead templar knight, to the shifting sands of the Sahara, and on to the palaces of Portugal, she uncovers shocking truths about her own destiny and the role she must play in the coming apocalypse.
The Templar Curse
I did an episode about the Templar Curse in the last season of the Adventure Story Podcast. Listen here.
Takeaways:
- The execution of Jacques de Molay marked a pivotal moment in the history of the Knights Templar, as he cursed both the King of France and the Pope before his death.
- The Knights Templar, originally formed to protect pilgrims, evolved into a powerful military and financial organization throughout the medieval period.
- King Philip IV of France orchestrated the downfall of the Templars by accusing them of heresy and dissolving their order in 1312, which was a significant political maneuver.
- Despite the official dissolution of the Knights Templar, their legacy persisted through the Order of Christ in Portugal, which retained many of their secrets and wealth.
- The Templars significantly influenced the modern banking system by introducing concepts like travelers' checks and international money transfers, which were revolutionary for their time.
- The architectural and historical remnants of the Templars can still be seen in Portugal today, exemplified by sites such as the Convento di Cristo in Tomar.
Links referenced in this episode:
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Transcript
The River Seine is cold and grey, and on a small island in the middle of the water, a crowd has gathered to watch a man die.
Speaker A:His name is Jacques de molay and he's 60 years old.
Speaker A:He's been a prisoner for seven years.
Speaker A:He's confessed to crimes he didn't commit and watched his brothers burn before him.
Speaker A:And today, by order of King Philip IV of France and Pope Clement, on the fifth, it's his turn.
Speaker A:A man offers a flame up to the wood and it lights.
Speaker A:The smoke starts to rise.
Speaker A:But before the flames reach him, before the roar of the fire swallows everything, de Molay does something no one expects.
Speaker A:He speaks.
Speaker A:He doesn't beg or cry, but with a voice loud and clear that booms over the jeering crowd, over the crackling wood, he.
Speaker A:He issues a curse.
Speaker A:He calls both the King and the Pope to stand before God and to answer for what they have done within a year.
Speaker A:The crowd laughs, the fire roars higher and silently, de Mole slips from this life.
Speaker A:But that's not the end.
Speaker A:Pope Clement IV is dead within the month.
Speaker A:King Philip, only 46 years old, apparently in perfect health, dies within six months.
Speaker A:But here's what the history books often miss.
Speaker A:While Jacques de Molay's body turned to ash on that island in the Seine, the order to which he had given his life, the order that the kings and the popes had conspired to destroy, lived on.
Speaker A:And with that, I suppose, so did he.
Speaker A:And today, we're going to find out where.
Speaker A:Hey, I'm Luke.
Speaker A:I'm an author of archaeological adventure novels.
Speaker A:I travel the world looking for stories to put into my books and to share with you right here on the Adventure Story podcast.
Speaker A:Now, before we dive in today, I've got a question for you.
Speaker A:How do you fancy exploring the places, the legends and the history from this episode for real, for the very first time?
Speaker A:I'm taking a group of adventurers just like you on the road.
Speaker A:We're going to Portugal.
Speaker A:We're going to stand inside the fortresses the Templars built.
Speaker A:We're going to cross the river to a castle that rises straight out of the water.
Speaker A:And we're going to descend into tunnels that were designed for keeping secrets.
Speaker A:We're going to feel the history.
Speaker A:We're going to walk in the footsteps of the Templars and just as importantly, in the footsteps of Eden.
Speaker A:Black.
Speaker A:All the details are in the show notes.
Speaker A:Have a look after the episode.
Speaker A:Right, let's get into this.
Speaker A: e Molay, burning on the stake: Speaker A:And that is how most people think the order of the Knights Templar ends.
Speaker A:But that's not strictly true.
Speaker A:First, though, before we get into that, let's go back.
Speaker A:Let's go back further and find out how they begun.
Speaker A:And for that, we're going to have to go to Jerusalem.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A:They came on foot, by horse, by boat, all of them with one thing in to walk where Christ had.
Speaker A:But the roads and the journey to the Holy City was brutal.
Speaker A:Pilgrims were robbed, they were killed, and their bodies were left to the wolves.
Speaker A:It was horrible.
Speaker A:Seeing this chaos, nine men made a vow to protect pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem.
Speaker A:And they had a really snappy name.
Speaker A:They called themselves the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ in the Temple of Solomon.
Speaker A:And because that's a really, really long name, everyone else called them the Knights Templar.
Speaker A:King Baldwin II of Jerusalem gave them lodgings in a wing of the royal palace.
Speaker A:Built on, it was believed, the foundations of Solomon's Temple itself.
Speaker A:And that location would fuel legends for centuries.
Speaker A:But I feel that's a conversation for another podcast.
Speaker A:At the start, though, these men had nothing.
Speaker A:They had no land, no resources.
Speaker A:They had.
Speaker A:They just had dedication and a vow and a mission to make this journey safer for people.
Speaker A: But in: Speaker A:Pope Honorus II gave the Templars official recognition.
Speaker A:They were the first military order ever to receive such a thing.
Speaker A:And so suddenly, people were interested.
Speaker A:They got donations of money, of land, of horses and of people queuing up, wanting to join their cause, wanting to help people, people get to the Holy land.
Speaker A: years later,: Speaker A:He exempted the Templars from all local laws.
Speaker A:He said they could cross any border freely, they paid no taxes, and they answered to no one on earth except the Pope himself.
Speaker A:Overnight, these men became untouchable.
Speaker A: had built a network of nearly: Speaker A:They had a fleet of ships, they had horses, they had diplomats, they had weapons, they had their own army.
Speaker A:They became, in just a few generations, one of the most powerful or organisations the medieval world had ever seen.
Speaker A:But that was just the beginning, because what's really interesting about the Templars is that they weren't just warriors.
Speaker A:In fact, the biggest part of Their vast organization wasn't military at all, it was financial.
Speaker A:The Templars essentially invented the modern banking system.
Speaker A:Think about it this way.
Speaker A:The problem, or the main problem the medieval pilgrim faced, is that they needed to travel from England or wherever to Jerusalem.
Speaker A:It's a journey of months through really, really dangerous territory.
Speaker A:If you take valuable stuff with you, you'll likely get robbed on the way, but you don't have a choice, because if you don't carry valuable stuff, you'll starve somewhere, probably two days from home.
Speaker A:You know, you get hungry on the road and have to turn back.
Speaker A:That's the end of it.
Speaker A:So you needed to take something, it was a problem.
Speaker A:And the Templars, they solved this with brilliant simplicity.
Speaker A:They allowed pilgrims to deposit their gold at a Templar house in their home country, then receive a letter confirming the deposit.
Speaker A:That pilgrim could then travel safely with nothing of value on them personally and present the letter in Jerusalem and collect the funds back.
Speaker A:It was brilliant.
Speaker A:It was genius.
Speaker A:Basically, a traveller's check.
Speaker A:But in the 12th century, but they didn't stop there, they offered current accounts, international money transfers and loans to individuals and rulers alike.
Speaker A:By the 13th century, the kings of France were storing their entire royal treasury with the Knights Templar.
Speaker A:Now, whilst individual knights took strict vows of poverty, the order itself was almost incomprehensibly wealthy.
Speaker A:And of course, that wealth made them powerful, and, of course, that power made them enemies.
Speaker A:And that brings us to one of the most interesting days, Friday the 13th.
Speaker A: Because in: Speaker A:And suddenly, well, without the Holy Land and pilgrims to protect, they had nothing to do.
Speaker A:They retreated to Cyprus.
Speaker A:They're still rich, they're still powerful, but they don't have that clear mission anymore.
Speaker A:Their rivals, the Knights Hospitalier and the Teutonic Knights, circled, waiting to see what happened.
Speaker A:European rulers grew uneasy about a private army that could cross their borders freely and answer to no one.
Speaker A:It looked as though the days of the Knights Templar were over.
Speaker A:And into this vulnerability stepped one man, King Philip IV of France.
Speaker A:Philip, known as Philip the Fair for his looks rather than his character, because he was horrible, had a problem.
Speaker A:He had borrowed enormous sums of money from the Templars to fund his wars.
Speaker A:And he liked fighting.
Speaker A:He had tried and failed, in fact, to become the grand master of the Order himself.
Speaker A:And he had an ambitious new pope, Clement iv, who was so under his influence that the papacy had literally been moved from Rome to Avignon in France.
Speaker A:Philip had the motive.
Speaker A:He had the Pope under his thumb.
Speaker A:And now he made his move.
Speaker A: October: Speaker A:Spooky Halloween films.
Speaker A:I've got you.
Speaker A:Philip's agents executed a single, simultaneous, coordinated arrest over the entire country in one dawn sweep.
Speaker A:Virtually every Templar in France was taken into custody.
Speaker A:The charges were devastating and mostly made up.
Speaker A:Heresy.
Speaker A:Blasphemy.
Speaker A:Worshipping a mysterious idol called Baphomet.
Speaker A:Spitting on the cross, performing obscene rituals at initiation ceremonies.
Speaker A:Of course, under torture, many knights confessed to anything and everything just to get it to stop.
Speaker A:But having arrested all of the Templars in France, Philip didn't find what he was after.
Speaker A:The treasure.
Speaker A:He didn't find a single coin, a single relic, or a single piece of the Templar's legendary wealth, despite searching every property they owned in France.
Speaker A: Then, in: Speaker A:Well, that's what people believed anyway.
Speaker A:But now I'll let you into a secret.
Speaker A:The truth behind Friday the 13th.
Speaker A:The Templars knew what King Philip was planning.
Speaker A:And before he struck, they moved all their treasure somewhere else.
Speaker A:Some say it went to Switzerland.
Speaker A:Others say it ended up in Scotland.
Speaker A:Some people even say it made it across the Atlantic and formed legends like the Oak Island Money Pit.
Speaker A:But I think, at least to start with, they went south to Portugal.
Speaker A:And here's why.
Speaker A:King Denis I of Portugal had long been a supporter of the Templars.
Speaker A:And rather than arrest them, as King Philip of France had asked him to do, he did something clever.
Speaker A:He renamed the Order the Templars now became the Order of Christ.
Speaker A:They were the same knights, they had the same wealth, the same secrets.
Speaker A:Just had a new badge.
Speaker A:I'll tell you, when I was writing my book, the Templar Enigma, this was the moment in my research that made me sit back and think, that's clever.
Speaker A:The most hunted military order in Europe just walked across the border and kept going, hiding in plain sight.
Speaker A:And I tell you what, the Order of Christ, they didn't fade into obscurity.
Speaker A:They went on to shape the modern world.
Speaker A:Vasco da Gama, the explorer who opened the sea route to India, sailed under the Red Cross of the Order of Christ.
Speaker A:Prince Henry the Navigator, who launched Portugal's entire age of exploration, a member of the Order of Christ.
Speaker A: sed to have been destroyed in: Speaker A:And in Portugal, you can still see the fingerprints of the Templars there today.
Speaker A:In the 12th century, as the Templars helped the young Christian kingdom push back against the centuries of Moorish rule, they built an entire network of fortresses, a connected chain that stretched across the landscape, each one placed to watch a valley or control a river, or hold a particular part of the kingdom that was still being won hard, inch by inch.
Speaker A:One place that you feel this particularly strongly is, is the city of Tomar.
Speaker A: e castle and convent there in: Speaker A:The Convento di Cristo is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Speaker A:It's now a complex of cloisters and chapels, blending various architectural styles.
Speaker A:But at its heart, the original Templar heart, is the Charola, the round church modeled after what the Crusaders believed was a remnant of King Solomon's temple in Jerusalem.
Speaker A:You stand inside it and you feel the geometry of it, the way it draws your eye upwards, the way the light falls through it.
Speaker A:It was designed to look in a certain way, and it still does eight centuries later.
Speaker A:The keep at Tamar is one of the oldest in Portugal, too.
Speaker A:It's a design the Templars brought with them from Normandy and Brittany.
Speaker A:So is the use of the round towers in the outer walls stronger against siege weapons than the square ones?
Speaker A:And not far away, the Castle of Amaral rises from a tiny island in the Targus river, like something out of a legend.
Speaker A:This is fascinating.
Speaker A:Surrounded by waters, the fortress seems to be frozen in time.
Speaker A:This castle didn't just defend the land, but controlled the river.
Speaker A:Maybe this is where some of that treasure passed.
Speaker A:Maybe there are more than secrets hidden in the stones.
Speaker A:So then, when the Order was supposedly destroyed and Philip of France had burned their grandmaster and the Pope had signed the dissolution papers, King Denise, he looked at this, he looked at the castles and the fortresses, he looked at the knowledge and he looked at the wealth that the Templars brought to his country.
Speaker A:And he refused to prosecute them.
Speaker A:He welcomed them as refugees to Portugal, along with their wealth and along with their nautical, cartographic and astronomical knowledge.
Speaker A:And I tell you what, I think they made Portugal a stronger place for it.
Speaker A:And so the Order of Christ was born.
Speaker A:The same men, the same stories, the same secrets, just a different name on the door.
Speaker A:And that takes us to a very interesting place in Sintra.
Speaker A:Nestled in the hills near Sintra a UNESCO World Heritage town of fairy tale palaces.
Speaker A:Just west of Lisbon lies an estate called Quinta di Reguilera.
Speaker A:It was built in the early 20th century by a wealthy Portuguese eccentric with a great name, I think, called Antonio Augusto Carvello Montero, a man obsessed with all things esoteric, freemasonry, and, of course, the Knights Templar.
Speaker A:Now, while the estate was built in the 20th century and filled with hidden symbols, it's the underground tunnels and grottos and most remarkably, to extraordinary wells that spiral down deep into the earth that interest me the most.
Speaker A:Now, remember this?
Speaker A:The Templars had incalculable amounts of gold and other jewels and other precious things that were never found.
Speaker A:So it's got to be out there somewhere, right?
Speaker A:Is it possible?
Speaker A:I wonder if what's under the estate at Quinta di Reguilera was already there when Monteiro built his palace.
Speaker A:It's the two initiation wells that make me think that.
Speaker A:Now, these were never used for water.
Speaker A:They were built purely for ritualistic and symbolic purposes.
Speaker A:Their spiral staircases descend through nine landings, representing, it's believed, Dante's nine circles of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.
Speaker A:Secret tunnels then connect these wells to grottos and the palace above.
Speaker A:Now, whether this leads anywhere, whether this is a code or a secret map, I don't know.
Speaker A:Or maybe it was simply the obsession of a very rich man.
Speaker A:But I tell you this, standing at the bottom of that initiation well, looking up at the spiral staircase, at the stone carved with all of the symbols that it has, the light barely reaching you from the sky above, it's easy to feel something and knowing that you're moving in the footsteps of the Templars, the places that they walked, the places that they moved, the places that they survived longer than anywhere else in Europe.
Speaker A:That seems like something of a coincidence to me.
Speaker A:It's the place where my novel the Templar Enigma, the the fifth book in the Eden Black archaeological thriller series reaches its climax.
Speaker A:And having stood there myself during our trip to research it, I can tell you the book doesn't exaggerate.
Speaker A:Now, everything you've just heard.
Speaker A:The curse of Jacques de Molay.
Speaker A:The fortress at Tamar.
Speaker A:The island castle at Amaurot.
Speaker A:The spiral wells descending into the earth at Quinta de Reguillera.
Speaker A:We've been to those places.
Speaker A:We felt what Eden feels like in those places.
Speaker A:And for a long time, that was just for me.
Speaker A:But now I'm inviting you to come too.
Speaker A:On the 6th of October this year, I'm taking a small group to Portugal.
Speaker A:We're going to explore the Templar fortress at Tamar.
Speaker A:We're going to cross the water to Amaril Castle and descend into the initiation wells at Quinta de Reguillera in Sintra.
Speaker A:The exact places that are in this podcast and the exact places that inspired my book the Templar Enigma.
Speaker A:Now let's get this right.
Speaker A:This isn't a bus tour.
Speaker A:It's a small group adventure following in Eden's footsteps and to the places where the Templars actually lived, hid and survived in Portugal.
Speaker A:There are very few spots and and I'd love for you to join me if you're able.
Speaker A:All the details you need are in the show Notes.
Speaker A:This is the Adventure Story Podcast.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for hanging out with me today.
Speaker A:It's been great to be back.
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Speaker A:If you have a story you'd like me to explore as well, let me know in the comments or or on email helloukerichardsonauthor.com and if you need more adventure in your life, and let's be honest, who doesn't?
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Speaker A:Head over to lukerichardsonauthor.com adventuresociety and if you're a fan of adventure stories like the one we've talked about today, check out my books@lukerichardsonauthor.com Bon voyage.
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