As the title states, this is the real history behind the Templars. It is well researched and cites many primary sources. The chapters are nice and short too, so you won't get bogged down! ( )

The book is a series of more or less disconnected short chapters with no chronological or probably any other order; as such, it reads as a poorly written high school textbook. It could still be valuable though if it were a trustworthy, well-researched work - but is it? I have my doubts. [a: Sharan Newman|50581|Sharan Newman|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1412689005p2/50581.jpg] stresses throughout the work the importance of footnotes and critical reading. Well so she gets it.

She claims, for instance, that:

recently some imaginative writers have decided that “Holy Grail”—San Greal—is simply a misprint for Sang Real, “Royal Blood,” and that medieval writers were using it as a code for a hidden secret. This is cute but there are a number of problems in the theory, the most important being that this only works in modern Spanish. Old French, the language of the first Grail poems, would write it Saint Graal, Grel, or even Gresal

Completely wrong. This "works" in Medieval French, spoken if not written, and this false etymology is not a recent invention. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913 is well aware thereof, as are several books. OTOH, this "misprint" does not work in modern Spanish, the Spanish word for blood is sangre and not sang as she seems to assume.

Granted, this still is a false etymology, and it wasn't probably invented (at least no earlier evidence survived) until very late in the Middle Ages, but still, it does work in Medieval French, it does not work in modern Spanish, and it is far from being a modern invention by conspiracy theorists, who are simply parroting (or perhaps reinventing) this centuries old mistake.

But this is not even the worst blunder she had made in the book.

The following is, quoted verbatim, the footnote 23 from the 48th chapter:

http://www.templariusze.org/artykuly.php?id=27 “Moguncji zrobił to osobiście preceptor z Grumbach, Hugo von Salm wraz z dwudziestoma uzbrojonymi rycerzami.” Okay, my Polish is rough. He might have been the preceptor of Grumbach, but I think it says that Moguncji was preceptor. For more see chapter 35, The Trials outside of France.

Rough? Well, no, not rough, completely nonexistent (I am a native speaker, btw). I don't believe that she had taken as much as a lesson of Polish. And not just that, she has failed to comprehend the text so miserably that she has started the quotation worse than in midsentence. Now for a more complete quotation (the article is now found here):

W Niemczech na żądanie papieża zwołano w kilku prowincjach synody mające sądzić templariuszy. Na niektórych z nich jednak w obronie zakonu stanęli życzliwi mu biskupi, w Moguncji zrobił to osobiście preceptor z Grumbach, Hugo von Salm wraz z dwudziestoma uzbrojonymi rycerzami. Przybyli ostro zaprotestowali przeciwko oskarżeniu zakonu o herezję, a przerażony arcybiskup zawiesił prace synodu na okres dwóch miesięcy.

and my translation (a rough one, I admit):

In Germany, at the pope's request, in several provinces councils were convened to try the Templars. In some of them friendly bishops stood in the order's defence, in Mainz the preceptor from Grumbach, Hugo von Salm did it himself, with twenty armed knights. They contested strongly the charges of heresy against the order, and the terrified archbishop suspended the council for two month's time.

(Both in the quote and the translation, the fragment quoted by Newman is in italic)

As can be seen, she completely misunderstood the text, so much so that she thought Moguncji to be a personal name (I think it says that Moguncji was preceptor) when it is the Polish name of the German city of Mainz (more precisely, Moguncja is the name; Polish nouns are inflected), and the fragment means that Hugo von Salm, who was preceptor from Grumbach, appeared in person at the council in Mainz to defend the order, accompanied by 20 armed knights. She's so incompetent in the Polish language that she inadvertently split the city name from the preposition - w Moguncji meaning exactly in Mainz.

Obviously, she doesn't need to know Polish, and no book is free from mistakes, so it may feel like I'm making much ado about nothing. But I don't think so. I would not be writing this if I thought this to have been a simple mistake. But, frankly, it doesn't look as one. It looks as if she googled the name Hugo von Salm, copied the offending fragment (perhaps directly from search results, or else how did she manage not to notice that she was splitting a name from a preposition?!) and without so much as trying to ask someone with even a passing knowledge of Polish she inferred that the mysterious Mr. Moguncji was a preceptor in Grumbach, and - since it's written on a Polish website - von Salm must have been in Poland to defend the order.

In short, it appears that she completely made this one up on the basis of one badly misunderstood fragment of a sentence from a Polish website.

This might look as gratuitous nitpicking, but I don't think it is. I am not an expert in Templar History, and I wanted to read a book by one. But, now aware of the reckless abandon Sharan Newman treats her sources with, I am sure this is not a book I can trust.
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Awesome. Just. Awesome. I love a good history book, as people who know me at all know. Even more than that, I love a well-written, engaging, yet thoroughly researched and reliable history book. She had footnotes throughout the entire thing. The last two pages of every chapter were nothing but footnotes. I have a four-page list of to-read books gleaned from this book alone. I am in heaven.

Oh, and the book? Interesting, informative and well-written. I love how she presented the information in a well-structured, cohesive manner. She didn't jump around too much in the timeline. I was impressed with her ability to move onward from the inception of the Knights Templar to their dissolution without tangetializing too much on the individual events that led up to the dissolution. She still covered the individual events in depth, don't get me wrong -- but each of those individual events (obviously) has other events that tie into them, with others that tie into them and so on and so forth. Ms. Newman has quite the ability to stay on topic.

I also enjoyed the last few chapters, where she addresses some of the myths and pseudo-histories that have arisen around the Knights Templar. I have to admit to some flabbergasted curiosity at some of the things she hinted at.

Because of this book, I want to learn more about The Hospitallers, the Inquisition and the various Crusades. I was absolutely fascinated at the wealth of information that glimmered on the edges of this book, tangential to the topic at hand but still oh-so-alluring. ( )

November 2008 selection
We liked the author's editorial comments on what can be, at times, dull subject matter. Some found the pace of the book laborious, but had an easier time when reading each chapter individually, as opposed to looking for continuity. The Templars themselves are fascinating, but the facts about them tend to be dry. The author does a good job of forming these facts into something palatable. If you want to know all, and I do mean all, the facts about the Templars, this is the book for you. However, if you are after more of the romance and intrigue surrounding them, you'll want to try a 'random page test'- open to a random page and read a bit, you'll be able to gauge if you like it.
Pros: enjoyable writing, interesting information
Cons: Lots and lots and lots and lots of footnotes, some repetition of material due to book's structure
Author's website: http://www.sharannewman.com/newman/te... ( )

This is an excellent book! Newman is writing for a general audience, but despite her easy conversational writing style, she manages to avoid "dumbing down" the information. She includes footnotes that demonstrate she has done her research very thoroughly. She discusses the history of the Templars and the origins of the myths about them. She takes a wonderful common-sense approach to the sources. Very entertaining and informative. ( )