Knights Hospitaller
The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem (; ), also known as the Order of Saint John, Order of Hospitallers, Knights Hospitaller, Knights Hospitalier or Hospitallers, was a medieval and early modern Catholic military order. It was headquartered in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, on the island of Rhodes, in Malta and St Petersburg.
Knights Templar in popular culture
Graham Hancock in his "The Sign and the Seal" (1992) claimed that the Templars discovered secrets of the Masons, builders of "Solomon's Temple, Zerubbabel's Temple", and "Herod's Temple" at the Temple Mount, along with knowledge that the Ark of the Covenant had been moved to Ethiopia before the destruction of the first temple. Hancock claims that allusion to this is made in engravings on the Cathedral at Chartres, the construction of which was greatly influenced by Bernard of Clairvaux, the Order's patron. Further links to both the search by the order for the Ark and to its discovery of ancient secrets of building are supposedly suggested by the existence of the monolithic Church of Saint George in Lalibela, Ethiopia, which stands to this day but whose construction is incorrectly attributed to the Knights Templar.