Knights Templar (Freemasonry)
The Knights Templar, full name The United Religious, Military and Masonic Orders of the Temple and of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and Malta, is a fraternal order affiliated with Freemasonry. Unlike the initial degrees conferred in a regular Masonic Lodge, which (in all Regular Masonic jurisdictions) only require a belief in a Supreme Being regardless of religious affiliation, the Knights Templar is one of several additional Masonic Orders in which membership is open only to Freemasons who profess a belief in Christianity. One of the obligations entrants to the order are required to declare is to protect and defend the Christian faith. The word "United" in its full title indicates that more than one historical tradition and more than one actual order are jointly controlled within this system. The individual orders 'united' within this system are principally the Knights of the Temple (Knights Templar), the Knights of Malta, the Knights of St Paul, and only within the York Rite, the Knights of the Red Cross.
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.