Templars and the Holy Grail: Medieval Romance vs Later Legend

The Knights Templar and the Holy Grail are now so often paired that many people assume the order was founded to protect it. Neither medieval records of the order nor the early Grail romances support that idea. The link grew from one ambiguous word in a German poem of around 1200, and became a confident legend only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The historical Templars

The Order of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon was founded in Jerusalem around 1119–1120 to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land. It received its rule at the Council of Troyes in 1129, grew into a wealthy international order, and was dissolved by the Pope in 1312 after the French crown's campaign against it. Its surviving records describe property, warfare, finance and religious life. They do not mention guarding the Grail.

The Grail in medieval romance

The Grail entered literature in Chrétien de Troyes's unfinished Perceval, or the Story of the Grail, written in the 1180s, where a graal, a serving dish, is carried through the castle of the wounded Fisher King. Soon afterwards Robert de Boron made the Grail the vessel of the Last Supper, used to catch Christ's blood and carried west by Joseph of Arimathea. From then on it was a holy relic at the centre of Arthurian romance.

Where the Templar link begins

The one medieval text that comes close is Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, written in German around 1200–1210. Wolfram's Grail is not a cup but a stone, and the knights who guard it at the Grail castle are called templeisen, a word that echoes the Templars. Whether Wolfram meant the real order is debated; his Grail knights are figures of romance, not a historical organisation.

From romance to legend

The idea that the historical Templars were the Grail's guardians took shape much later. Nineteenth-century writers began to read Wolfram's templeisen as the Templars themselves, and twentieth-century bestsellers turned the connection into a story of hidden treasure and secret knowledge. These are modern legends, and they make good fiction, but they are not history.

Templar–Grail symbolism in jewellery

A design that combines Templar and Grail imagery is best understood as a reference to the romance and the legend together: medieval chivalry, the quest for the Grail and the mystery that later writers wove around the order. See the AURYN Templar Holy Grail charm, read about the Templar cross and shield, or explore our guide to Christian cross types.