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00:06the Holy Grail is one of the world's greatest mysteries a two thousand year old mystery this
00:14is the legendary cup from the Last Supper a cup used to collect the blood of Christ it's
00:22an object of power that people have searched for for centuries I want to explore the myths
00:29the mystery the history I'm going on my own Grail quest
00:38from Jerusalem to the Vatican there are a number of places that claim to have the Holy Grail
00:46but in Britain there's a long tradition that says it was brought here in this series I'll be
00:53traveling across Britain from the chalk cliffs of the south coast to the hills of Scotland
00:59in search of the truth behind the legend these are fragments of the church of the Holy Sepulchre
01:08really the objectives really were to recover the Holy Land Syria Lebanon Israel Palestine here we have
01:18the famous temple combe head believed to be Jesus Christ Radford did stumble upon something but he
01:25didn't realize he could have found the earliest church at Glastonbury he could have well have done and he
01:30missed it and I'm meeting a man with an astonishing archaeological find I call it a grail bowl it's
01:38certainly not an ordinary stonemasons drinking vessel it's containing something very holy whilst also
01:45radiating the power of those contents oh look at this this is fantastic it's like finding treasures
01:51within treasures
02:00so this is it miles this is the bowl that has been found what do you think of it it's
02:05intriguing it's very
02:11intriguing in the first part of my journey I followed the trail of Joseph of Arimathea a character from the
02:18Bible exploring his mythical links to Britain and the Holy Grail but now I want to delve into an even
02:29more
02:30famous British legend I'm saying in Oxford because I've realized that in order to understand the grail and
02:44to take me on the next stage in my grail quest I've got to understand I've got to dig into
02:49another legend
02:51and that is the legend of none other that King Arthur
03:01King Arthur is an iconic figure in British folklore the heroic ruler of Camelot leading the charge
03:10against Saxon invaders he's famous for heading up the knights of the round table for his sword Excalibur and
03:22for launching the quest for the Holy Grail and I've been fascinated by Arthur and the grail for a long
03:32time
03:34so this is my own copy of the more data by Mallory and I've had it a while it was
03:44given to me by my
03:45grandmother Mary Williams name Mills the first version of Mallory's more data was written and then it was
03:57printed by Caxton between 1469 and 1470 this version of the King Arthur story also contains the Holy Grail
04:08and the Holy Grail appears to King Arthur and his knights after dinner one evening it says then they
04:17entered into the hall the Holy Grail covered with white Samite then the holy vessel departed suddenly
04:24that they were wist not where it became so it just disappeared it's very magical then they all had
04:31breath to speak and then one of the knights Gawain says that he is frustrated that he hasn't seen the
04:40Holy
04:41Grail and he then says I shall labor in the quest of the Sangreal the Holy Grail and he's going
04:47to do
04:47that over 12 months and a day to try to see it again it's such a strange story because it
04:54seems
04:55to imply that the Grail is something more than an object that it's something about hidden knowledge
05:02perhaps it's fascinating how this myth has come about how does the myth of King Arthur end up being
05:13completely entangled with the myth of the Holy Grail that's what I want to understand
05:23it's stunning isn't it I mean the depth of history and the depth of learning here and centuries of it
05:29as well still picked out above the doors in all the different names for different schools yeah
05:35I've realized at this point I really need to understand how the Grail becomes associated with
05:41King Arthur because it's so embedded in that story how does that happen so one of the things
05:45that's happening with Arthur is that the world is actually very unhappy with knights and the way
05:50knights behave they weren't nice people they were trained from the age of about four or five just to
05:54kill people so there was a real attempt sort of in the 1100s to try to civilize knights so you
06:01had
06:01movements like the creation of a Knights Templar when these would be godly knights but the creation of
06:05the Knights of the Round Table is another attempt to try and project a new idea of what knighthood can
06:10be
06:11so it's saving their reputation it's even their reputation but it's also saving society because
06:14knights running around these armed people you know every day they cause a lot of trouble one
06:18of the reasons why the crusades happens is that people are keen to get these people out of Europe
06:21because they're just not a positive influence that's interesting that you've got you've basically
06:25trained up these young men they want to go to war and if you don't push them away to go
06:30to war
06:30elsewhere they're gonna they're gonna do it here they hang around drinking causing trouble and it was it was
06:33completely the problem so the church tried things like the peace of god and the truce of god trying to
06:37say
06:38look there are particular days on which you can't fight there are things when you need to be a
06:41peaceable citizen but it just wasn't working yeah so so arthur this kind of early medieval warlord gets
06:47reinvented as this paragon of chivalry or rather he and his court and so arthur gets wrapped into that
06:53whole much bigger story that's going on and then how does the grail come to be part of that so
06:58the grail
06:58comes in because the very first grail story with with christian of troy has percival who's the first
07:03grail knight but over time it becomes galahad who becomes the main knight and because that's
07:08all associated with arthur it just gets bunged into one big massive ever-growing story
07:16so dominic we seem to have these two quite separate myths that are running along side by
07:20side for a while you've got the myth of the grail and joseph of arimathea and then you've got the
07:25arthurian legends which are becoming more and more elaborate and then at some point they intertwine when
07:31does that happen so the thing about arthur is that he's a magnet and all these stories suddenly get
07:35added into his tale so the grail which has been growing as a separate story since the 1100s doesn't
07:41really come into the arthurian stories until the 13th century so they have independent lives before
07:46they get brought together so who does that who's the author that knicks this together we don't know we
07:52don't know the name but it's something called the vulgate cycle or the lancelot grail cycle which is
07:57after some of the named authors but that really is the body of text that thomas mallory draws on
08:02very heavily yeah so that's what ends up in mort d'artoe and the the idea of the knights seeking
08:07this grail i mean i find it extraordinary that you've got this kind of idea of something that is
08:11real and then it disappears and then they decide to go off on a quest rather than just going well
08:15who
08:16took it out it has salvific properties doesn't it it can it can save people so therefore it is it
08:20is of
08:21another realm i find it fascinating because it is it so it is a search for meaning which i think
08:26everybody does every human does that in their life they search for meaning in different ways
08:30and the grail kind of represents that somehow well we often think that we're more sophisticated now i
08:35mean we certainly have access to more knowledge but medievals dealt with exactly the same issues
08:39that we do exactly the same questions of life and why are we here and what's it for and what's
08:42the
08:42meaning and are there supernatural things you've told me where the grail becomes associated with king
08:47arthur i want to trace him back to a time and see if i can actually find him as a
08:53historical figure
08:54or not i love the myths and the legends but i do want to get to the history which is
08:58the greatest
08:58arthurian quest of all of them to investigate the historical arthur i'm heading over to oxford castle
09:08because it was here that a medieval writer called jeffrey of monmouth wrote his history of the kings of
09:18britain it's an amazing space and we're in a very precious preserved bit of oxford castle here because
09:25most of it's just gone yeah absolutely so we have this crypt and also saint george's tower the rest of
09:31the castle was all destroyed at the end of the english civil war so there's a bit of a jeffrey
09:36of monmouth
09:36connection here isn't there yes so he was one of the monks who taught here so he was teaching students
09:42in the chapel above us yeah so we know he was definitely here in the mid-12th century okay
09:47because he signed documents with the archdeacon of oxford but you think he was here when he wrote
09:52his history yes we do because also he dedicated it to the archdeacon of oxford which is why we think
09:58he
09:58was definitely here when he wrote it and of course he gives us a lot of this uh early legend
10:03of of king
10:04arthur i mean he writes down all these legends of king arthur and of merlin as well yeah so they're
10:10both
10:10basically born here we call ourselves the birthplace of arthur and merlin but he must have been drawing on
10:18earlier stories yeah so again we think that documents came from the archdeacon of oxford so
10:23we believe that he maybe have given jeffrey some of the books that contain these stories and we also
10:28think that maybe some of the stories might have been inspired by the political situation at the time and we
10:33think that
10:33maybe struggles with the crown could have influenced some of the stories that he wrote down
10:39jeffrey of monmouth describes a heroic arthur his battles his conquests his queen guinevere his
10:48friendship with merlin and his final journey to avalon but frustratingly for me there's no mention of the holy
10:57grail for that i need to head west
11:05i'm driving into wales
11:10i've come to the beautiful town of caleon in monmouthshire its name means the fort of the legions
11:17and in roman times it was the site of a permanent legionary fortress it's also a town with a strong
11:25connection to arthur and the grail this is all very mystical are you alan i certainly am lovely to meet
11:33you and to you too i'm alice hello alice i'm on a i'm on a grail quest right i'm trying
11:39to track down
11:39the grail if you've got it in here no unfortunately not we've got excalibur okay or at least a replica
11:46of
11:46it anyway and it comes in its own stone unfortunately not that's just a display okay you have to find
11:51a
11:51stone sticking to indeed so there's a real connection between king arthur and caleon it seems yeah he was
11:57first mentioned in the fourth branch of the mabinogion which are the only welsh caltic tales and it said
12:03that he um it was his caleon upon us was his favorite court and he spent he spent christmas easter
12:11and witsun here there must be lots of people who come to caleon hoping to somehow find arthur here indeed
12:19they do and maybe the grail as well the run table the amphitheater they used to call it arthur's table
12:25all those years ago before it was even excavated once the romans had left we were prayed to anybody
12:31that wanted to invade the country yet again the saxons were giving us a bit of a tatering around
12:36this area and arthur was the boy to sort them out you know is that spirit still strong here oh
12:41my wife
12:42seems to think so yeah you know but look alan you haven't got the grail here unfortunately not no
12:49well my quest continues
12:53i'm heading over to caleon's amphitheater a site with a legendary king arthur link to meet with welsh
13:00historian graham loveluck edwards graham said this is king arthur's table yes yeah apparently the people
13:07of the town uh were convinced because uh jeffrey of monmouth placed arthur in kyleon that this old
13:12amphitheater was in fact the remains of of his round table yeah it's not though is it no left over
13:18by the second augustine absolutely fantastic place so was jeffrey monmouth the first person to locate
13:26arthur here prior to to jeffrey monmouth writing about arthur arthur didn't really have a life story so he
13:32wasn't he wasn't located anywhere specifically so he had to give him a home but there are claims that
13:37some of the grand roman buildings were still here so it sort of lent itself to the romance of the
13:44idea
13:44that this would have been the seat of a great king so arthur then becomes part of that kind of
13:49roman or
13:50post-roman story he's usually pinned in the sixth century that's the sort of period we think he is
13:55but he's he's existed in in in welsh folklore for such a long time so you've got mentions of arthur
14:02in welsh folklore how far back does that go well the trouble with folklore is it's really difficult
14:07to date exactly where it came from i mean the earliest dateable reference we have to him is from
14:12uh something called the historia britonum that is probably from about 828 it's bardic it's full of
14:19inaccuracies and that's putting arthur in north wales yes and this is the thing with arthur he
14:24shouldn't really be of any specific place we've also got a fantastic uh old poem called a godothin
14:31which again is capturing a battle a disastrous battle there's a throwaway comment where a great
14:37warrior is described as highly skilled in battle but he was no arthur just saying he's all right but
14:43he's no arthur that's enough you know where you are yeah so he's kind of i mean he's like an
14:47early
14:47medieval superhero that's spot on that's exactly what he is so have you got any grail mythology here
14:57in wales not necessarily grail we sort of went in more for cauldrons less biblical though less
15:02biblical uh but you've got a vessel that's that contains some kind of magical powers uh and there's
15:09one which is really croak close to chretien de toi's uh story of the grail with the uh the visit
15:16of sir percival to the to the castle of of the fisher king and he has a vision where he
15:20sees a
15:21bleeding lance then the grail which contains some magical healing properties so it's very very closely
15:27aligned to the grail story this is really interesting because that that seems to hark back to earlier
15:32a potentially pre-christian mythology as well with it you know the ideas of cauldrons in in welsh
15:38welsh mythology but also archaeologically we do see this interest in in cauldrons and we we find
15:43things like cauldrons deposited in watery places this is so interesting what you're telling me that you
15:48know the the idea of the grail mixed up with the idea of these these sacred magical vessels these
15:55cauldrons which which are potentially pre-christian they then get a kind of christian overlay yeah they
16:01get they get explained biblically yeah but they're there throughout the welsh mythology unless it's
16:08anchored in christianity anything magical is seen to be demonic or witchcraft it's a really successful
16:13meme and it's successful because it's changed and it's adapted over time absolutely it's great to see
16:19school kids still coming to clinton i remember coming here but primary school i think it was obligatory
16:24oh yeah got far and wide
16:34the legend of king arthur is really rooted here in south wales and it's tied up with
16:43the romans and then the centuries after the roman army left with the idea that
16:48arthur might have been some kind of war leader there's not really any mention of the grail here
16:57that i can find so i'm going to travel now across the bristol channel to another place that's got a
17:05very
17:05strong king arthur connection but also a connection to the grail itself
17:18i'm in the medieval town of glastonbury in somerset
17:23there's a strong link with king arthur here he was even said to have been buried at the abbey
17:33but like the grail itself the story is cloaked in mystery so this is it this is mentary the site
17:43of king arthur's tomb as it says here but the doubt starts to creep in it says in the year
17:511191 the
17:52bodies of king arthur and his queen were said to have been found on the south side of the lady
17:58chapel
17:58so what is the truth
18:04i know just the person to help me get to the bottom of this
18:09i've asked archaeologist win scutt from english heritage to help me with this question
18:17so this is what i wanted to talk to you about win because it says with no shadow of a
18:22doubt this
18:22is the site of king arthur's tomb yeah then a little bit of doubt starts to creep in because
18:26it says in the year 1191 the bodies of king arthur and his queen were said to have been found
18:31on the south side of the lady chapel bit of doubt there it's the monks making a story up everybody
18:39wanted to be identified with the great story of arthur in the 12th and 13th centuries yeah yeah and
18:47so if you wanted to make some money from pilgrims and all the rest of it you would well the
18:52perfect
18:52thing would be to have king arthur's actual burial place so it's like having a saint's relic it is
18:58like having a saint's relics but actually i think even though he isn't a saint even better actually yeah
19:02this would have really brought the punters in where are they getting this idea from then well it really
19:07goes back to the 1130s when geoffrey of monmouth writes his his story well history of the kings of
19:14britain yeah and uh he introduces the idea that arthur was a great hero arthur was born in tintagel
19:20or at least conceived in tintagel in cornwall yeah the whole story takes off then in the 1100s
19:27and then later on at the end of the 12th century you get uh chrétien de toit in france picking
19:34up the
19:34story and expanding it into the stories of lancelot and the holy grail and all that yeah and then that
19:40same story spreads across europe and gets developed and enhanced and ends up in italy um of all places
19:46so it becomes european hollywood in a way and then archaeology takes it on and it tries to work out
19:54what's happening and of course it's what we used to call the dark age that period after the romans yeah
20:00and it is dark as far as the written records are concerned there are hardly any you know nennius and
20:05gildas and you know just a few other written documents but that's all we have for that
20:09and dark ages as we used to call it yeah so arthur wasn't buried here at glastonbury that was a
20:16story
20:16made up by medieval monks and the legend of king arthur clearly became more elaborate over time
20:23but can archaeology help us get closer to the truth at tintagel everybody thought that our excavations
20:32in 2016 and 2017 were designed to find king arthur and of course that makes the great headline but it
20:39wasn't about king arthur at all we just wanted to understand what was happening at tintagel yeah
20:43in the fifth and sixth centuries because it's a really strange and weird site because the place
20:50is stuffed full of pottery that comes all the way from turkey north africa and greece is it a place
20:57of
20:57pilgrimage is it a pirate center is it a royal center what on earth is sucking in all these rich
21:04goods to
21:04this particular one particular place wealth is coming in but once going out some people have
21:10suggested tin from cornwall it can be knowledge christianity that religious spirit and even the
21:16connection with arthur so how fascinating that the modern archaeology is showing us that tintagel was a
21:22high status place and then somehow that then feeds into this mythologizing doesn't it you know there's
21:29there's maybe a memory of tintagel being this important place that is the really great question
21:34as to why jeffrey of monmouth in the 1130s picks up tintagel and says it's where arthur was conceived
21:41so maybe there was some kind of folk memory of this being a really important place maybe arthur had lived
21:49in it or maybe jeffrey just thought ah that's the perfect place for me to plant the idea of arthur
21:55yeah
21:55i'll have him conceived there but do you think arthur himself was a real historical person well funnily
22:02enough he might be i don't think the name can just come out of nowhere it's possible that he's an
22:09ancient figure that is every so often reinvented to suit the the needs at the time that the thread
22:15goes back even further could do the archaeology certainly helps us peer back into the dark ages
22:22and see what was happening at places that became associated with king arthur in legend like tintagel
22:29but can we dig back through the layers of myth and find the real historical arthur i'm meeting
22:36archaeologist miles russell up here on glastonbury's famous landmark the tor which is itself cloaked in
22:44arthurian legends so what is the first mention of arthur that we can find we actually get the first
22:51mention of the battle that he's most famous uh being associated with which is the battle of mount
22:56badden yeah and gildas describes that he's writing in about the 85 40s okay and gildas is one of the
23:02most miserable monks you can imagine he's writing his huge polemic a moral tale to his flock about how
23:09corrupt society has become yeah and he hasn't got a good word to say about anyone except one person
23:14called ambrosius aurelianus who he says fights the battle at mount badden and defeats the saxons in
23:20a huge sort of slaughter so do you think that ambrosius aurelianus is a real person it seems to
23:25be yeah gildas is describing him to an audience that knows him understands him okay um so all the
23:31other characters that gildas mentions we do know exist and ambrosius aurelianus as you say that's a
23:36very roman sounding name it is it is and annoyingly because gildas is writing to an audience who already
23:41knows the story he doesn't bother giving us any of the detail other than you sort basically you know
23:45it was a great victory when does arthur appear in the histories arthur's really sort of uh is it one
23:50of those many name form corruptions i think that's where the problem is that when geoffrey of monmouth
23:54is writing the history of the kings of britain down he's using a whole series of different accounts some
23:59are written most are oral so the names have changed the spelling has changed the legend of king arthur
24:06seems to have been inspired then by real historical figures but names and spellings have changed over
24:14time when we think about arthur today it's very much the sense of of a romantic story he's a likable
24:22character he's not a likable character in the earliest accounts he's a blood-soaked psychopath
24:26he slaughters people men women children that's the warlord of the first to fifth century idea that's
24:32the kind of character that people would identify with and is he still a blood-soaked psychopath
24:36when we get to geoffrey of monmouth oh yeah absolutely yeah he is the most unlikable person
24:40you could imagine there's none of the later romance with sort of lancelot and and guinevere guinevere
24:45is in there but in the much more sort of basic character there's none of the knights of the round
24:49table that's obviously added because you can't identify always with with somebody who has got no
24:54sort of likable qualities the communities as well are waiting for arthur to return so it's a big
25:01thing for an individual like edward the first to say he's not coming back i found his bones his bones
25:06are in a big tomb they're in glastonbury he's not coming back he's dead it gives no one any sort
25:11of
25:11excuse to to argue against it
25:21miles when does king arthur become specifically associated with this hill it's really jeffrey of
25:26monmouth who provides the the contact point for that because he describes arthur having been
25:30mortally wounded and then transported to the isle of avalon where he will be recovered and then he'll
25:35return to his people this is the point where he dies and does jeffrey say that avalon is here he
25:42does
25:42mention glastonbury once or twice in the in the text this is where he feels arthur should end up
25:48disappearing and whilst by the time we get to thomas mallory writing what d'artur we've got the holy grail
25:54as
25:55part of this myth as well it's one of those things that is certainly brought in at a much later
25:58date
25:59but we do know that a lot of christian sites um when they first sort of develop in the first
26:04and
26:04second centuries ad outside of the mediterranean they are being generated by missionaries who
26:09are bringing relics with them as a sort of sense of this is part of the life of of the
26:14savior whether
26:15those relics are genuine or not the critical thing is they're believed by people to have some kind
26:19spiritual power yeah so i think the holy grail is part of that sense of an object associated with
26:24the life of christ yeah whether it's actually the holy grail or whether it's something else and it
26:29becomes the ground in later retellings it's a matter of debate but there's certainly very good evidence
26:33that that that relics are part of that sort of first wave of christianity spreading across western
26:38europe so if the holy grail was ever a real object it would have been part of this wider trade
26:46in
26:46holy relics across europe king arthur may be a memory of several people woven into one character
26:54the grail then gets attached to his legend later on but it seems the closer i get to understanding
27:01king arthur and the grail the more i try to pin them both down the further they recede as if
27:08they're
27:08determined to remain mysterious i love this landscape it's just so mystical especially on an evening
27:18like this with the mist rolling in and you can imagine yourself back to a time when you'd have been
27:25looking out at a watery landscape and all of these hills would have been islands rising up with this one
27:31being perhaps the most prominent and so i can see why jeffrey of monmouth wanted to associate
27:39the arthur legend with this iconic place in the english landscape arthur is born at tintagel
27:50and then his body is brought here to avalon the isle of apples and one day he'll rise again
27:59so far on my journey i've been dealing with myths and legends and characters who we have no definitive
28:06proof ever actually existed but now i want to investigate some real historical knights who i'm
28:14hoping might provide some tangible evidence in this mysterious grail quest
28:23this is my next stop in my quest to trap down the holy grail or use the myths around the
28:30holy grail
28:30and we're about to meet some of the key players in the story hidden here in modern london are medieval
28:39traces of the knight's temple i'm starting here at temple church which is hidden away just off fleet street
28:48this incredible building dates to 1185 and was the english headquarters of the knights templar
28:57this is a really lovely church but it's really unusual if you look at the shape of it
29:05you've got this rectangular section here now that's quite usual with the central aisle and the two side
29:11aisles that kind of basilica style of church but then usually what you might expect is an is an apse
29:19a
29:19semicircular end to it and that would be where the altar was placed we haven't got that instead
29:24at the other end we've got this and it's not an apse it is completely round it is a rotunda
29:35it's really beautiful and it carries meaning because what this was meant to represent or copy in some way
29:46was the church of the holy sepulchre in jerusalem so that's why it's this shape
29:55the church of the holy sepulchre is a sacred site revered by the templars and still by christians today
30:02it's believed to mark the place where jesus was crucified buried and rose again
30:10it's also a site which housed various holy relics reputedly even the holy grail
30:24this building is a clue to the power wealth and influence that the knights templar possessed
30:30but it's also been claimed that they held valuable treasure including holy relics
30:36and the grail itself to delve deeper i'm on my way to the nearby museum of saint john's
30:46headquarters to another medieval religious order called the knights hospitalers
30:52it's also a building which holds many templar secrets
30:59here i'm meeting with templar historian steve tibble
31:04steve what i want to understand is why the knights hospitaler and the knights templar were set up i
31:10mean what were they actually about you need to take a step back before you look at each of them
31:16really because they were both set up for the same thing basically the first crusade reached the middle
31:23east very luckily managed to achieve most of the objectives way beyond reasonable expectation so they
31:31managed to to recover a lot of the holy land so a lot of the guys the majority said brilliant
31:36you know
31:37this is the end of the crusade we've recovered jerusalem the vow is done and had people made money
31:42out of it as well would they come back wealthy mostly it worked the opposite way you know you'd take
31:48a rich
31:48person uh they bankrupt themselves trying to go on crusade possibly die but they do something that's
31:55important to them from a spiritual perspective so the the answer to that was this kind of weird hybrid
32:02which is to get people who have the commitment and piety of monks but are also elite soldiers who can
32:09remain in the field forever and that's exactly what the templars and the hospitalers are they were two
32:14different orders of monks that became effectively europe's finest warriors one role was to act as
32:20security guards they were the bouncers at the holy sepulcher right because there were holy relics there
32:25yeah but their other main job was to send cavalry patrols up and down the road from from the sea
32:31to
32:31jerusalem so the pilgrims could get there during the crusades the templars were said to have taken
32:36holy relics from constantinople and the holy land bringing them back to western europe did they have
32:44the holy grail there is actually talk of something that could have been the grail on on the crusades
32:50there's actually a a genoese contingent in the capture of caesarea 1101 and the genoese were
32:57famous for being mean clever merchants but they gave up huge amounts of money to take away a green
33:06glass goblet no and it still exists it's in it's in the cathedral treasury in genoa they believed that
33:13they had got something grail-like there i mean if you want relics i mean and you want templars the
33:19obvious
33:19one is the true cross and you do find you know the templars protecting it you do find the templars
33:25bringing fragments of the true crafts back to europe they thought they had possession of the true cross
33:29and it was this spiritual secret weapon we know before it was lost it was it was wheeled out at
33:35least
33:3531 times that we know in in record but also fragments of it were used time after time as a
33:41kind of
33:42rallying ground the power of that oh yeah absolutely it does empower an army it inspires an army
33:48by the early 14th century the templars had enemies in high places on friday the 13th of october 1307
33:56king philip the fourth of france had the templars rounded up they were tortured and executed
34:03but there's a story that some knights had heard about this plan in advance and escaped from la rochelle
34:09by ship taking treasure and possibly the holy grail with them but what about this story about the
34:17knights templar that when they realize that they're being persecuted they that they put all their
34:22treasure on these ships and off they go from la rochelle i think key word is story in that in
34:28that
34:28sentence you don't believe it no not a bit of it i mean if you if you look at the
34:32english case study
34:33or the british case study we we know pretty much exactly you know we've got all the trial records we
34:38know who was questioned there were about 144 templars questioned and we know that about 12 sort of ran off
34:46when the knights templars were dissolved in the 1300s many members were absorbed into the knights
34:52hospitalers and that order evolved into the founders of today's st john's ambulance
35:00here at st john's museum they still hold a few rare templar pieces
35:08anna you've selected some artifacts here which all have some kind of templar connection so can you take
35:14me through them they do so these are three uh casts of 13th century templar seals so they're both to
35:22do with sales of properties so this one was to do with the sale of a house in paris and
35:27that was to
35:27do with the transfer of land so we're getting a little glimpse there of the empire of the of the
35:34templar
35:35knights so these coins are a little bit earlier these are both 12th century and on this side this is
35:42a coin of amoric the first he was the king of jerusalem and it's interesting because you can see
35:48on there a depiction of the church of the holy sepulchre and it's such an iconic church isn't it that
35:53then inspires the the templar's own church here in london yeah what's in the box over there so these are
36:01fragments of the church of the holy sepulchre really oh my goodness do you think they were
36:08official souvenirs or do you think somebody has just taken a piece of the church of the
36:13holy sepulchre it's hard to say but i think that theory would not be unfounded okay so this one has
36:19an inscription that one is literally just a piece of limestone just a piece of and it's dressed on this
36:23side so i mean that's pretty anonymous isn't it you could come back with that you can say this is
36:29a
36:29piece of the church of the holy sepulchre and nobody can argue with you no and what about this is
36:33that an
36:34inscription yeah so he's written on it in ink the person he gave it to us in 1931 and it's
36:39apparently
36:39from the corner of the church the holy sepulchre okay oh yeah so it says that it is part of
36:45the
36:45holy sepulchre and just records that it was a gift of major newgate in 1931 so like the templars the
36:51knight's hospital are built around the church did they on this site yeah yeah um and so it had that
36:57significance for the hospitalers as well which is why why they've ended up here well thank you it's lovely to
37:02see some definite templar artifacts because they're so few and far between they are they're so little
37:08archive there are very few surviving templar artifacts but i've read of a strange painting
37:16which exists in a small sleepy church in somerset i'm traveling there to meet historian tony mcmahon
37:23could this be a lost link to templar relics or even to the grail itself
37:40what's a lovely medieval church
37:45so here we have the temple comb head which is supposed to be a depiction of jesus
37:52possibly owned by the knights templar really i mean where does it come from so it was actually
37:58found in temple comb by a woman called molly drew okay and she found it in her outhouse so this
38:05is
38:051945 she's getting firewood her husband's out fighting in the war and a bit of plaster's fallen
38:11from the ceiling in her outhouse and she just sees these two eyes staring back at her she then gave
38:18it to
38:18the church for safe keeping yeah unfortunately the rector of this very church decided the best thing
38:24to do is to clean it with vim no the household cleaning product apparently this was a lot brighter
38:31when she found it yeah but he scrubbed it clean i think it always had a ghostly appearance but now
38:37it has an even more ghostly appearance
38:43oh my goodness i've got so many questions about this and how old is it and why is it associated
38:49with
38:49the templars so this has been carbon dated and it's between 1280 and 1340. now the templars got crushed
38:59in 1314 and they were around it yeah for the first part of that period and the thing is this
39:04whole
39:04area temple combe the clues in the name was a templar preceptory so that's beyond doubt so that's not
39:11crazy to think that that was actually created by the knights templar i mean that is such a curious object
39:17but what is it it can't have always been a ceiling surely i mean there is a theory that it
39:23may actually
39:23have been a lid from a chest so if you imagine a knight he's got a chest for his armor
39:28for his
39:29clothes he's off to the holy land what does he do he paints his chest he puts an image of
39:35jesus on the
39:36chest but conversely it may have been something that had a role to play in their initiation rituals
39:43something that was venerated so we have a painting in a place with a definite templar connection
39:51and it dates to the right period it may have been part of a chest could it have held holy
39:59relics
40:02we know the templars had holy relics because they they boast about it they use them
40:07as fundraising apart from anything else they use them to attract people to their churches and so on
40:12there are people who think that they were based for example in the temple in jerusalem because they
40:17were digging underneath looking for holy relics did they have the holy grail did they have the shroud
40:22of jesus and some people have speculated that this is actually a painting of the shroud which we call
40:29the turin shroud today of jesus because there's a theory out there that the templars found the shroud
40:36of jesus or possibly stole it from the byzantine empire and brought it back to the west and that is
40:43actually a depiction of the turing shroud oh my goodness the the myths here are just weaving
40:51together that's the problem with the templars you know is that fact and fiction are really intertwined
40:57the conspiracy theories have been running alongside the templars you know all the time they were they
41:02were subject to lies and calumnies while they existed they've become part of the turing shroud story
41:08and they've become part of the arthurian legend you know did they have the holy grail for example
41:13it was this accumulation of holy relics that helped the templars amass wealth but they also had income
41:19from other sources the knights templar had these things called preceptories they were these wealth
41:27creating hubs that were all over europe and they were creating the wealth that funded what they were
41:33doing in the holy land their military activities yeah they also got involved in money lending a money
41:38lender would lend money and then say by the way go and pay the templars back and if you don't
41:43pay
41:44they'll be round to get it they actually on occasions managed the state finances in france and in england
41:51and is that another part of the explanation for why they become became unpopular and were disbanded if
41:57a lot of people owed them money yeah the king owed the money popes owed the money you know nobles
42:02owed the money but also by the time they're disbanded they've been shoved out of the holy land
42:07they failed in their mission but they're sitting on loads of money still so you can see
42:12why the king of france and other monarchs thought you know what it's time to grab that money back
42:18i understand the templars so much better now and i've disentangled the myth from the history they were
42:28knights they were crucial to the mission of the crusades they were medieval bankers essentially
42:36but this myth that associates them with it with the grail just kept going and i'm going to have to
42:44follow the trail now to a place that's become completely entangled with the grail with the
42:51templars thanks to a very modern story
42:58it's a bit of a medieval masterpiece isn't it there's so much to see everywhere you look
43:03ah this is the person i've been searching for what do you think it is i call it a grail
43:08bowl it's not
43:10from zero bc maybe i'm wrong and i'm gonna have to eat my hat it's such an astonishing object it's
43:16got
43:16its secrets that it's holding on to
43:40which is
43:42it's
43:42it's
43:51it's
43:54it's
43:55it's
43:57it's
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