babe they are real, but most of the stories popularly known about them are all fake. Blame Dan Brown.

Blaming Dan Brown would be really silly. There have been hundreds of books written about Templar conspiracy theories. Dan Brown based virtually all of The Da Vinci Code off a pair of previous books, Foucault's Pendulum and Holy Blood Holy Grail.

Brown's work is very, very derivative. Everything he said had been said dozens if not hundreds of times before. You can't blame him for Templar conspiracy theories just because his book happened to become wildly popular.

Many place names in the UK are a direct link to the Templars.

Temple bar in London is one example, but there are stacks more known sites such as templar Churches in many areas of both the UK and Europe.

They were The most powerfull order of Christian knights, and even after they were forced out of existance with many being put to death stories circulated that many had survived and still followed their own codes.

There is a lot of evidence for Templar communities surviving in Scotland, and the so called white host of horsemen that is suposed to have arived at the tail end of The Battle of Banockburn to help carry the day for the Scots is thought by some to have been the Knights Templar.

The whole Knight Templar thing is a magical mixture of undisputed fact and hotly contested stories and rumour.

I quite like that, history should have lots that we may never know.

"Shrouded in the mists of time" does it for me.

If we knew it all what a sad day that would be for those of us that have a bit of imagination.

here's a link it explains more, and mentions the banking theory

link [historymedren.about.com]

I think what you'll find is,they did excist,but like a lot of things,they've became lost in time and nobody really knows whats fact and whats fiction like a lot of things,King Arthur and Camelot,the lost City of Atlantis for instance.

I for one don't take everything that Wiki and Google say as dead set fact,we've always had experts say "this is what happened"but in thruth,it's their interpretation of what may or may not be facts.

I just finished reading a book,by Stephen J Rivell,called A Book of Days.
It's the Diary of a Knight from France,Roger,Duke of Lunel,and HIS account of the Crusades and what happened there ,it is all Fact,but nowhere in there does he make mention of the Templar Knights,now that's not to say they were in the Crusades at the very same time.

History has a way of forgetting,we have a way of turning truth and reality into romantic fantasy.In Dan Browns, Da Vinci Code,he made them sound all very romantic over there In the Crusades and trying to find Mary Magdelane,but the truth is they lived in a Time when,if you went into war you fought the other men face to face and the stench of blood and death was all around you,so where's the romance part gone??

They may still excist today,IF they did at all,there's more going on around us than we the average person knows about,or cares to want to know.

Atlantis and Camelot are old legends. Stories.

The Knights Templar existed. There's no question about it. It's simple historical fact. We have lots of hard tangible evidence.

I admit, mr brown opened my eyes to a whole lot of learning. It was the dav code that ignighted my interests in the templars and led me to read more about them.

They definatly did exist and were a cold and brutal order not nearly as pious as a they may seem.