Featured in numerous works of fiction, television shows and films, the Templars have been presented variously as heroes, martyrs, thugs, bullies, victims, criminals, perverts, heretics, depraved subversives, guardians of the Holy Grail, protectors of Christ’s secret bloodline and time-traveling agents of global conspiracy.

In fact, their real deeds were even more extraordinary than the romances, half-truths and voodoo histories that have swirled around them since they fell. Theirs is a tale of a seemingly endless war in Palestine, Syria and Egypt, where factions of Sunni and Shi’a Muslims clashed with militant Christian invaders from the West. Their story chronicles a “globalized,” tax-exempt organization that grew so rich that it became more powerful than some governments. It tells of the relationship between international finance and geopolitics, and of the power of propaganda and mythmaking. And it pulls back the curtain on centuries of violence, treachery, betrayal and greed.

To understand it all, we have to start in Jerusalem, in the aftermath of the First Crusade…