A order of religious soldiers founded during the Crusades with the aim of aiding and protecting pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. The official name of the order "the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon" comes from the fact that their residence was the part of the Temple Mount—King Baldwin II's palace—known as the Temple of Solomon.
With the failure of the Crusades after the fall of Acre in 1291, the Knights Templars lost their purpose. By then, however, they had grown secretive but also powerful and, with royal endowment and pious donations, exceedingly wealthy (wealthy enough to give out loans to the Sultan of Damascus). Their influence also made them powerful enemies; in 1312 the Pope dissolved the order, many of their members were murdered on charges of witchcraft, heresy and sodomy, and most of their processions distributed to the Knights Hospitallers.
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