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Hello, for 200 years, the Knights Templar were a major fighting at Financial Power and

the Crusader States and in Western Europe.

They were founded around 1119, 20 years after the Crusaders captured Jerusalem with

the mission to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land.

They became extremely wealthy.

Yet as the Crusaded group on Jerusalem slipped, their political fortune declined and they

were persecuted out of existence.

Their last grandmaster burned at the stake in Paris in 1314, surviving only in legend.

We'll be to discuss the Knights Templar R.

Helen Nicholson, Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University.

My car, lecture in late medieval history at the University of Edinburgh and Jonathan

Lips, Professor of Crusading History at Royal Holloway University of London.

Jonathan, what was the status of the Holy Land in 1119?

How secure was the Crusaders hold on it?

The first Crusaded captured Jerusalem in 1099 and succeeded in establishing what we call

the Crusader States in the Near East.

But those first 20 years were very difficult.

...