Twelfth: The Order of the Temple

The Knights Templar is a fraternal order affiliated with Freemasonry. It is one of several additional Masonic Orders in which membership is open to Freemasons who profess a belief in Christianity.  One of the obligations entrants to the order declare is to protect and defend the Christian faith.

In one of the grandest and most impressive ceremonies in all of Masonry, the true capstone of the YORK RITE, the candidate represents a knight of the period that succeeded the Crusades, who has made a vow to visit the Holy Sepulcher, and who seeks admission into the ranks of the Templars, the better to fulfill that vow. 

As a trial of his worthiness there is enjoined upon him seven years of preparation, beginning with an unarmed pilgrimage in the direction of the Holy Shrine. After having served six years of this preparation, he is commanded to devote the remaining year of preparation to penance, as a trial of faith and humility. Beautiful lessons of the death and ascension of our Savior are inculcated, and the candidate is at last received into full fellowship in a most solemn manner. 

Like the Masonic Red Cross of Constantine being inspired by the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George, and the Order of Malta being inspired by the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, the Masonic order of Knights Templar is inspired from the historic military order Knights Templar. However, it does not claim any direct lineal descent from the original Templar order.

The original medieval Order of Knights Templar was established after the First Crusade, and existed from approximately 1118 to 1312. There is no known historical evidence to link the medieval Knights Templar and Masonic Templarism. 

In 1779 the High Knights Templar of Ireland Lodge, Kilwinning, obtained a charter from Lodge Mother Kilwinning in Scotland. This lodge now began to grant dispensations to other lodges to confer the Knights Templar Degree. Some time around 1790 the Early Grand Encampment of Ireland was formed, which began to warrant Templar Lodges, and these evolved into the Supreme Grand Encampment in 1836. It seems that the Templar degree had filtered into the lodges of the Antients from Ireland about 1780, and was recorded at York about the same time. 

The historic Order of the Temple was suppressed and its members dispersed, and the warlike spirit of the Order has passed away. But there remains a spirit of refined and moral Chivalry which prompts the members to be ever ready to defend the weak, the innocent, the hapless and the oppressed, and at last to be greeted as Brethren and received into the "widely extended arms of the blessed Emanuel”.  

Experience a symbolic representation of the rigors of crusader knighthood by culminating your Masonic career with the Order of the Temple.