“The Knights Templar were a monastic order created by French Knight Hugues de Payens around 1119 after the holy crusades began. The Order was comprised of men who represented both the religious world and that of the military; the Knights Templar were considered both spiritual monks and fierce warriors.
After Jerusalem was taken by the Christians, pilgrimages began to the holy land. Pilgrims were being attacked and murdered in large numbers by bandits in outlying areas, and the Order of the Templars was brought into being as an effort to protect them.
They were given a wing of the royal palace at the Temple on the Mount.
The wing they operated out of was thought to have been built atop the ruins of King Solomon’s temple. Because of this they took on the name “The Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon”, or the Templar Knights.
“ In 1818, Austrian pseudohistorical writer Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall connected the Grail to contemporary myths surrounding the Knights Templar that cast the order as a secret society dedicated to mystical knowledge and relics. In Hammer-Purgstall's work, the Grail is not a physical relic, but a symbol of the secret knowledge that the Templars sought.”