On the Templars

I don’t generally read either popular history or medieval history, so this was a novelty to me. Although I was familiar with a lot of the major characters and events, Jones does an excellent job of bringing them to life in a way that I wouldn’t have conceived on my own. Much of this is do to this book being written as a narrative history. Jones defends this choice arguing that he finds that analytical history often does not have nearly the same popular appeal as narrative history. Although this is certainly true, I would have enjoyed a much deeper analysis of the structure of the order itself and its relationship with both Europe and the Near East outside of warfare.

As I’m personally not interested in military history, the middle two sections of the book went a bit more slowly than the first and the last sections, but even battlefield chronicles are vivid and engaging. The last section on the book on the fall of the Templars was both vivid and gripping.

It’s clear that Jones has done his research and written a history of the Templars that avoids the mythologizing that surrounds them. As such, this functions as an engaging and fascinating book that I learned a great deal from.

Highly recommend.