Garden of Thought E.366 A Whole Lotta Groups

April 12, 2026·2 hr·9 clips

On Friday October 13, 1307, Philip IV of France simultaneously arrested all Templars in France to seize their treasury — the origin of Friday the 13th superstition.

1. Garden of Thought, hosted by Jeff Flitman, features returning guest Professor Rick Spence for a deep-dive into the history of the Knights Templar and their relationship to Freemasonry. 2. Rick Spence is a retired University of Idaho history professor who taught for nearly 35 years before retiring in 2020; he has produced multiple Great Courses series including 'The Real History of Secret Societies,' 'Crimes of the Century,' and 'Great Villains of History.' 3. The episode's core goal is to separate documented Templar history from the centuries of mythology and conspiracy theory that have accumulated around the order. 4. The Templar-Freemasonry connection became popular in 18th-century French Freemasonry, largely due to anti-clerical Freemasons who saw the church-condemned Templars as heroes and appropriate role models. 5. Chevalier Ramsey, a Scottish Freemason in France circa 1738, wrote an appeal to reconcile Freemasonry with the Catholic Church — but his letter only references 'the spirit of the crusading orders,' never specifically naming the Templars, contradicting 200 years of citation. 6. Pope Clement XII issued a papal bull against Freemasonry in 1738, the first in a long series of anti-Masonic papal edicts that extended to the end of the 19th century — suggesting, as Spence notes, that none of them worked. 7. The Knights Templar were founded around 1118 in Jerusalem by nine French knights, led by Hugh de Payens, who swore monastic oaths of chastity and poverty to protect Christian pilgrims; they took their name from their base on the Temple Mount. 8. The founding was triggered by the Seljuk Turk invasion of the Middle East, which closed pilgrimage routes to Jerusalem that had been relatively accessible under the Arab Umayyad Caliphate. 9. The Templars received official papal recognition in a document called the 'Omne Datum Optimum' around 1129, which gave them a unique status: answerable only to the Pope, bypassing all other church hierarchy. 10. By their peak around 1200, the Templar order comprised 15,000-20,000 people, with only about 2,000 actual knight-brothers who wore the white cloak with the red Templar cross — the rest were sergeant brothers in black cloaks, associate nobles, squires, and artisans. 11. The order controlled approximately 9,000 separate properties stretching from Scotland to the Middle East, organized into 14 provinces, effectively forming an invisible state within Christendom. 12. The Templars created an early letter-of-credit banking system: a crusader deposited gold in Paris, received an encrypted document with a split passphrase, and withdrew the equivalent gold at a Templar bank in Jerusalem — charging fees rather than interest, which the church prohibited. 13. By 1300 the Templars had shrunk from 20,000 to roughly 10,000 members, their military purpose gone after the fall of the crusader states, and their treasury and land holdings concentrated increasingly in France. 14. Philip IV of France — described by Spence as 'a gangster' — had already expelled France's Jewish population in 1306 after extorting their wealth, killing those who refused on an island in the Seine. 15. Philip controlled Pope Clement V, who was his prisoner in Avignon (Philip's predecessor had had the previous pope beaten so severely he died), giving him the papal authority needed to strip the Templars of their protection. 16. On Friday October 13, 1307, Philip issued a simultaneous secret arrest order for all Templars in France, believing they held a large hidden treasury. 17. Grand Master Jacques de Molay and his lieutenant Geoffrey de Charney initially confessed under duress, then retracted their confessions — making them unrepentant heretics — and were burned at the stake in 1314. 18. Outside France, Templar trials in Germany, England, and Italy mostly resulted in acquittals; in Portugal the king simply renamed the order the Knights of Christ and they continued unchanged. 19. History enthusiasts interested in medieval secret societies, crusading orders, and the intersection of banking, religion, and political power will find this episode particularly valuable. 20. Listeners expecting alien content or sensationalist conspiracy theory treatment will be disappointed — Spence's approach is documented-evidence-first academic history.

As heard by us

A Templar execution story that keeps shifting between history and myth.

The episode opens in ad traffic, then settles into Jacques de Molay, the Templar executions, and the way a historical event hardens into myth.

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Why you'd press play

You want a Templar story that starts ragged and ends on a Paris plaque.

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