The Real Da Vinci Code: George Smart and the Knights Templar
By Kristen Twedt
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Author George Smart embarked on an 8-year fact finding mission to clarify the Biblical story of Jesus after reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the historical account of the Knights Templar, their mysterious mission and some highly controversial findings regarding the life and times of Christ.

The Knights Templar Chronology: Tracking History’s Most Intriguing Monks, authored by Smart, provides a comprehensive bibliography and timeline of commercially available resources on a subject recently set ablaze by Dan Brown’s provocative novel, The Da Vinci Code.

A_P: What provided the impetus to embark on 8 years of research and write a book on the Knights Templar?

GS: I stumbled across Holy Blood, Holy Grail and other books by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, including The Messianic Legacy and Temple and the Lodge. They are some of the books that Dan Brown used in researching The Da Vinci Code.  My attraction to those titles was that for the first time, they told a story that really seemed to make sense.

A_P: A story regarding Jesus and the church from an historical perspective, right?  Did you have a church influence from which you approached your research?

GS: I was raised in the Episcopal church. I always found the stories of Jesus to be quite uplifting. The story as told by the Bible is what didn’t make sense. What we read in the Bible about Jesus goes something like: ‘Here’s a story and then a miracle happened; then a story and then another miracle happened,’ and so on. You have to remember that the stories themselves are what most people find most fulfilling. But when you connect the stories, they defy reason.

A_P: So did your research for this book on the Knights Templar and their role in Christian history change any aspect of your beliefs or faith?

GS: Out of this research, I got an even more profound understanding of Jesus. When you read more, beyond the Bible, you begin to appreciate Jesus the man, for his courage and wisdom, especially his tolerance and forgiveness.

I read everything I could get my hands on, everything that took an historical approach to reconstructing the life of Jesus. Inevitably that led to the Knights Templar and their role in bringing certain archives from Jerusalem to Europe in the early 12^th century. This group of nine guys was fascinating. I decided to dig deeper into their story.

A_P: Do we know the identities of these founding Templars?

GS: Yes.  The names of the nine are in the book. Generally, it’s an accepted list. Hughes de Payens was the first Grand Master of the Order.

A_P: How and why did the Knights Templar organize?

GS: We don’t know the whole story, but we do know a few things for sure. Bernard of Clairvaux in France was responsible for organizing them.  He later became Saint Bernard.  At this time, he was the most famous monk in the world.  (Note: The Templars were officially declared to be a monastic order in 1139.)

[First] these nine guys go to Jerusalem and disappear for nine years.  But, the rest of their existence was highly chronicled.

A_P: The Templars remained viable and visible for 194 years, correct?

GS: Yes. And much has been written about that time, except when they initially disappeared. We know nothing for certain about those first nine years.

A_P: According to the Catholic church and others, the purpose of the Knights Templar was to protect Catholic pilgrims on their journey from Europe to Jerusalem. Was there another mission?

GS: It’s ludicrous to think they, a group of just nine men, were protecting all those pilgrims. Too, if that were the case, there would certainly be many accounts from those they encountered with this work. That period of time for the Templars is completely devoid of information. They returned in 1126 to tour France, England and Scotland as celebrities, meeting with pious rulers. These rulers were suddenly wanting to give them enormous amounts of money and property. Everybody wanted to be a Templar. 

A_P: Why were they so wildly popular upon their reemergence?

GS: The traditional historians said it was because the Templars did such a great job of fending off the infidels in the Holy Land. Again, this doesn’t add up because there were many crusaders in the area. The Templars wouldn’t have been doing anything special just as protectors of pilgrims.

A_P: What were they doing and how does that connect with later history concerning their enormous power and wealth? Didn’t they have something to do with banking?

GS: The Knights Templar developed the check and banking system, branch banking.

The prevailing theory as far as what they did during those  [first] nine years is that they were archaeologists sent to Jerusalem to dig the Temple Mount and recover the treasure of the Jews. This was inscribed on the Copper Scroll. (Note: The Copper Scroll was part of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in 1952 in a cave at Khirbet Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea.)

We know more now about the Apostles because of the accounts dug up with the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Scrolls in Egypt. Together they painted a slightly different picture than we learn from the Bible, a more realistic view of the environment.

These scrolls tell us that Jesus came in and took over the John the Baptist movement, which was challenging the ideas of the time of Roman occupation. It was a very politically intense environment. Here comes Jesus with a message of tolerance and forgiveness. In that kind of environment, this was quite revolutionary. At that time, there were very strict levels of society, and you stayed within your level. Then here was Jesus, daring to cut across class lines, which is quite an act of courage in any culture.

A_P: In your chronology, you reference the excommunication of Catholic Hans Kung and his accusation that “…Rome is not waiting for dialogue but for submission.” Have you found that the Church has obstructed truth regarding historical verification and open discussion of the facts? 

GS: It’s unfair to pick on the church too much because every large organization takes on similar characteristics as it grows. One of those is that it is more important to be right than to be accurate.

A_P: A common theory regarding the Knights Templar and their work is that they protected the Holy Grail. What is the Holy Grail?

GS: The Holy Grail is primarily a metaphor, and we don’t know what that metaphor stood for or even that it stood for just one thing. The reason I got into this research was to get past the metaphors and to discover what really happened.

A_P: Why did the Knights Templar go from a very public and highly revered organization to one of relative obscurity?

GS: The Knights were a public organization from 1126 on. A variety of factors were at play to change public favor.

A_P: King Philippe of France had a large role in their ultimate fall from public grace, right?

GS: Philippe had applied to the Knights Templar and was rejected as a member. They also rejected his application for funding or his many failed military operations. It is believed that he was jealous of their immense power and influence. Their headquarters were in Paris and therefore in his backyard. The Templars had more say-so in medieval politics than he did. So he went about the business of bringing them down.