The Templars by Dan Jones

The Templars by Dan Jones

Dan Jones is an entertainer, but also a bona fide historian. Seldom does one find serious scholarship so easy to read. - The Times, Book of the Year

A New York Times bestseller, this major new history of the knights Templar is a fresh, muscular and compelling history of the ultimate military-religious crusading order, combining sensible scholarship with narrative swagger - Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem

A faltering war in the middle east. A band of elite warriors determined to fight to the death to protect Christianity's holiest sites. A global financial network unaccountable to any government. A sinister plot founded on a web of lies.

Jerusalem 1119. A small group of knights seeking a purpose in the violent aftermath of the First Crusade decides to set up a new order. These are the first Knights Templar, a band of elite warriors prepared to give their lives to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over the next two hundred years, the Templars would become the most powerful religious order of the medieval world. Their legend has inspired fervent speculation ever since.

In this groundbreaking narrative history, Dan Jones tells the true story of the Templars for the first time in a generation, drawing on extensive original sources to build a gripping account of these Christian holy warriors whose heroism and alleged depravity have been shrouded in myth. The Templars were protected by the pope and sworn to strict vows of celibacy. They fought the forces of Islam in hand-to-hand combat on the sun-baked hills where Jesus lived and died, finding their nemesis in Saladin, who vowed to drive all Christians from the lands of Islam. Experts at channeling money across borders, they established the medieval world's largest and most innovative banking network and waged private wars against anyone who threatened their interests.

Then, as they faced setbacks at the hands of the ruthless Mamluk sultan Baybars and were forced to retreat to their stronghold in Cyprus, a vindictive and cash-strapped King of France set his sights on their fortune. His administrators quietly mounted a damning case against the Templars, built on deliberate lies and false testimony. On Friday October 13, 1307, hundreds of brothers were arrested, imprisoned and tortured, and the order was disbanded amid lurid accusations of sexual misconduct and heresy. They were tried by the Pope in secret proceedings and their last master was brutally tortured and burned at the stake. But were they heretics or victims of a ruthlessly repressive state? Dan Jones goes back to the sources tobring their dramatic tale, so relevant to our own times, to life in a book that is at once authoritative and compulsively readable.

Dan Jones is the author of The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Built England, which was a #1 international bestseller and a New York Times bestseller, as well as Wars of the Roses, which chronicles the Plantagenets' fall and the Tudors' unlikely ascent, Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty, and Summer of Blood: England's First Revolution. He starred alongside George R.R. Martin in the Netflix series Secrets of Great British Castles, which he wrote and presented. Martin appears in the HBO documentary that delves into the true origins of Game of Thrones. Knightfall, an A&E drama about the Templars, used him as a historical adviser.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780525501299
ISBN 10	0525501290
Title	The Templars
Author	Dan Jones
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Diversified Publishing
Year published	2017-09-19
Number of pages	736
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.