Overview
In The Murdered Magicians, Dr. Peter Partner provides a full and succinct account of the history and mythical metamorphosis of the military crusading order, known as the Knights Templar were an order of soldier monks bound by religious vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, who engaged in religious war in the Holy Land.The Templar myth can be tied to a single incident in crusading history: the story of the trial, persecution, and fall of the Knights Templar. At the end of the thirteenth century the Templars became the apparently innocent victims of a terrible campaign of slander and persecution mounted against them by the French government.
Many were tortured, others were burned alive in order to intimidate the rest into confession. Throughout the trials the unifying factors in the Templar story were accusations of magic and sorcery. It was by these accusations that the Knights Templar were transformed from ignorant, obedient servants of an oppressive ideal into enlightened magician-heroes of freedom and knowledge.
The Templar trials and persecution only lasted a short period (1307-12) but in the end the Templar order was dissolved forever.