The Masonic Connection
Templar or Mason?
A short, honest explainer of how the medieval Knights Templar and the modern Masonic Templars are — and are not — connected.
The Masonic Order of the Temple, whose full title in England and Wales is The United Religious, Military and Masonic Orders of the Temple and of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and Malta, is a Christian chivalric order organised entirely within Freemasonry. It is not a continuation of the medieval Knights Templar. Rather, it is an eighteenth-century body inspired by the ideals and symbolism of the medieval order.
The medieval Templars were suppressed by papal bull in 1312 and their estates transferred to the Hospitallers. There is no documented, unbroken lineage between the two orders. Claims of secret survival — that the Templars fled to Scotland, or that they became the Freemasons — are picturesque but not supported by evidence.
Even so, the connection matters. Masonic Templars have kept the memory of the medieval order alive locally for centuries: pilgrimages to sites like Slebech, restoration of Templar churches, sponsorship of historical research. Much of what is remembered about the Welsh Templars today has come down through Masonic scholarship.
This site treats the two separately. When we speak of "the Templars" we mean the medieval order (1119 – 1312). When we mean the modern Masonic body we say so explicitly. The distinction is important — precisely because visiting a site like Slebech gives you a real, tangible connection to the medieval history that inspired the Masonic tradition.
The living order
Meet the Provincial Priory of Monmouth and South Wales — sixteen Preceptories still meeting from Newport to Aberaeron, in scarlet mantles and Maltese crosses.