Where did the Knights Templar - those mysterious, twelfth-century white-mantled Knights of Christ - really come from?
This is the question that Butler and Dafoe set out to answer - and the discoveries they made demand a dramatic reassessment of the entire period relating to the First Crusade and beyond. The true genesis of the Knights Templar belongs far back in time, long before Christianity even developed. The Templars were an offshoot of a little understood monastic brotherhood, the Cistercians, who themselves danced to the tune of an immensely powerful group of individuals inhabiting Burgundy and Flanders from the time of the Romans onwards.
Butler and Dafoe offer a detailed account of the rise of a specific group identified as 'the Troyes Fraternity' - a group that did not simply respond to the caprices of history; it made it. Behind the Knights Templar lay a belief pattern almost as old as humanity, and a heritage that was already ancient before recorded history began. This shocking and compelling story exposes the shadowy and influential organisation that brought the Knights Templar into being and will leave readers in no doubt as to their true intention
