Editing Templar (section)

=== Myths and facts ===
[[File:KnightsTemplar.jpg|290px|thumb|left|Thems standing lookin cool n stuff]]The real life Knights Templar are one of the few groups to rival [[Ninja|ninjas]] for the amount of myths associated with them, to the point that the image people associate with the Knights Templar in fact has almost nothing to do with how they actually were.  Anyway, ideologues and conspiracy theorists, prepare to have your lives ruined, for here are some of the myths people believe about the Knights Templar.  
# They did not begin as violent religious extremists or with the goal of conquest.  They were founded to protect Christian pilgrims travelling to and from the Holy Land.  The area outside Jerusalem was not secure, so bandits, highwaymen and prejudiced Muslim marauders often preyed upon and slaughtered many Christian pilgrims heading to the Holy Land, sometimes killing hundreds at a time.  In response, the Knights Templar were founded in 1119 in Jerusalem by the French knight Hugues de Payens.  Hughes approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and proposed creating a monastic order for the protection of these pilgrims and King Baldwin II agreed.

# They did not invent the motto "Deus Vult!"  The earliest recorded use was in 1096, 23 years before the Knights Templar were founded (even Hughes - their future founder - was only a child at the time), and it was shouted by pilgrims during the first Crusade as Prince Bohemond I's forces gathered.
# The Templar's goals weren't to proselytize or forcefully convert non-Christians to Christianity.  While individual members may have, this would have been rare and there are no verified cases of forced conversions to Christianity induced by the Templars.
# The Knights Templar did not start the idea of “Friday the 13th” being bad luck.  This was started by superstitious scholars based on how their leaders incarceration began on originates with the date of the simultaneous arrest of many templars at the behest of King Philip IV on Friday, 13 October 1307.  This superstition was also pushed into the public eye in modern times by the notoriously inaccurate author [[C.S Goto|Dan Brown (of "The Da Vinci Code" infamy)]].
# The Knights Templar are not connected to the Freemasons.  The Knights Templar were stamped out in 1312 while the Freemasons weren’t formally organized until 405 years later in 1717.  While the Freemasons may have drawn some basic inspiration from them, the only commonality is an interest in spirituality (even there it’s not the same, as the Knights Templar were strictly Christian while the Freemasons are multifaith).  
# Despite their origin as a military organization, they weren't all combatants and later expanded to provide other services.  Non-combatant members of the order made up the majority of their order, at times as much as 90% of their members.  Apart from non-combatant roles for the order including chaplains and cooks, they also created and managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom, developing innovative financial techniques that were an early form of banking, building its own network of nearly 1,000 commanderies and fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land.  The deposit and withdrawal system they set up even helped lay the groundwork for what would become modern banking. They were effectively the world's first multinational corporation.
# The Templars had strict codes of conduct that they were expected to adhere to in battle and their daily lives.  They had to take vows of poverty, chastity, piety, and obedience upon initiation as well as vows to never retreat unless their commander gave the order and all their flags had fallen.  Their founder established 72 clauses about how they were to go about daily life, including a limit on the possessions they could own, rules on how they ate their meals and prohibiting physical contact of any kind with women.
# They did not have elaborate initiation rituals.  This rumor was started based on them discouraging outsiders from attending the ceremony, which accounts describe as a profound commitment and solemn affair. 
# Becoming a member of the Knights Templar wasn't a path to knighthood, as the Templars did not perform knighting ceremonies.  Anyone wishing to become a Knight Templar had to be a knight already.
#  While they were one of the wealthiest groups of their time, this was more due to every new member willingly signing over all their wealth and goods and establishing a credit system to store wealth for other people and groups.
# Beards were not prescribed by the Templar Rule, but later became customary for members of the order to wear by choice, and were long and prominent.  They were also permitted to shave their beards off under certain circumstances, including to avoid detection.
# Membership wasn’t required to be lifelong.  While most brothers joined for life, some were allowed to join for a set period.
# They did not go underground or form a secret conspiracy after their dissolution.  The remaining Templars around Europe were either arrested and tried under the Papal investigation (with virtually none convicted), absorbed into other Catholic military orders or pensioned off and allowed to live out their days peacefully.
# While they did seek religious relics at times, the vast stores of treasures that the order allegedly possessed have never been verified or discovered.  Some of them, like the supposed statue of Baphomet, may not have even existed (no one had seen the statue and there were various accounts of its appearance.  Given it was cited as part of a charge of heresy against the Templars, the statue might have been a fabrication as part of the slander against the Templars).  On that note, the Holy Grail is considered mythical by most scholars, Christian and non-Christian alike.