[Question:]{.underline} What were the Knights Templar, and what was their relation with the Knights of Malta?
[Answer:]{.underline} The Templars or the Knights Templar were a military order, namely a religious order that added to the usual three vows of religious the vow of taking the Cross, as Crusaders. They followed the rule of St. Benedict and wore the white Cistercian habit. They were founded in 1118 to defend the recently established Catholic Kingdom of Jerusalem. After the fall of that kingdom, the order became popular, and also quite powerful and wealthy. It was considered to be a threat by King Philip IV of France, who ruthlessly attacked its members, as well as the recently deceased Pope Boniface VIII. Although history has argued about the truthfulness of the gross, incongruous and contradictory accusations made against the Templars, and although many Templars confessed under torture, they mostly repudiated their confessions in the presence of the representatives of the Pope, Clement V. Eventually in 1312 the Pope bowed to the political pressure from the King of France and suppressed the whole order, without accepting the truth of the accusations or condemning the members.
The members of the order who were not so accused were allowed to enter the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, or Knights Hospitallers, and it is in this way that the two order became one. The Knights of St. John were founded for nursing and hospital work, but were also Crusading Knights, in the Holy Land, Cyprus, Rhodes and Malta. They still exist to this day, but the so-called “O.S.J.” is not a part of the Knights of St. John, being a schismatic, counterfeit break off from the Knights of Malta under Czar Paul I of Russia in 1798.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.