History

​​Ego frater Johannes Marcus Larmenius, hyerosolimitanus, Dei gratia et secretissimo venerandi sanctissimique martyris, supremi templi militiæ magistri (cui honor et gloria) decreto, communi fratrum consilio confirmato, super universum templi ordinem, summo et supremo magisterio insignitus, singulis has decretales littera svisuris, salutem, salutem, salutem.
​Notum sit omnibus tampræ sentibus quam futuris, quod, deficientibus, propter extrema mætatem, viribus, rerum angustia et gubernaculi gravitate perpensis, ad majorem Dei gloriam, ordinis, fratrum et statutorum tutelam et salutem, ego supradictus, humilis magister militiæ Templi, inter validiores manus supremum statuerim deponere magisterium: Id circo, Deo juvante, unoque supremi conventus equitum consensu, apud eminentem commendatorem et carissimum,Franciscum Thomam Theobaldum Alexandrinum, supremum ordinis templi magisterium, auctoritatem et privilegia contuli, et hoc præsenti decreto, pro vita, conferocum potestate, secundum temporis et rerum leges, fratri alteri, institutionis et ingenii nobilitate morumque honestate præstantissimo, summum et supremum ordinis templi magisterium, sine commilitonum templi conventus; et, rebus ita sese habentibus, succesor ad nutum eligatur.
Ne autem languescant supremi officii munera, sint nunc et perenniter quatuor supremi magistri vicarii; supremam potestatem, eminentiam et auctoritatem; super universum ordinem, salvo jure supremi magistri habentes; qui vicarii magistri apud seniores secundum professionis seriem eligantur. Quod statutum a commendato mihi et fratribus voto sacro sancti suprà dicto venerandi beatissimique magistri nostri, martyris (cui honos et gloria) amen.

​​But, in 1804, Claude-Mathieu Radix de Chevillon, an elderly and ailing Templar of the Order, who claimed to be the Regent of the title of Grand Master during the Revolution (a title he had no intention of personally assuming), allegedly met with some friends with the intention of conferring upon them the powers transmitted to him by the Duke of Cossé-Brissac shortly before his death.

​The group consisted of Dr. Philippe Ledru (according to some sources, the personal physician of the Duke of Cossé-Brissac), the notary De Courchamp, Bernard Raymond Fabré-Palaprat, and Prosper Charpentier De Saintot (it was a group of brothers belonging to the Masonic lodge of the Chevaliers de la Croix (Knights of the Cross), a lodge that, however, dissented from the common Masonic thought of the time, according to which Templarism (or rather neo-Templarism) should be subordinate to Freemasonry. Chevillon then appointed Ledru as Lieutenant-General for Africa, De Saintot as Lieutenant-General for Asia, De Courchamp as Grand Preceptor, and Fabré-Palaprat as the new Grand Master of the Order.

​The Ancient and Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem was thus reconstituted on November 4, 1804, by Bernard Raymond Fabré-Palaprat – a former seminarian, adventurer, and physician (or perhaps chiropractor) born in 1773 in Cordes (in the Tarn region of France) – and associates, characterizing itself as a neo-chivalric and, above all, non-Masonic institution. This last detail attracted the attention and approval of the new Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who saw in this act an alternative to Templarism linked to anti-monarchical Freemasonry and therefore favored the spread of the Order throughout the Empire. The Emperor even had a solemn ceremony of rehabilitation of Jacques de Molay celebrated by the Parisian clergy in 1808.

​The gradual distancing of the neo-Templars from Freemasonry was concretized in 1811, when the Order officially dissociated itself from the Grand Orient of France and, at the same time, emphasized the Catholic aspect (applications for membership from Protestants were rejected) of its intentions.

​Fabré-Palaprat, probably fearing that the Order would eventually be absorbed by the Catholic Church, then decided to develop his own autonomous church with its own doctrine. The opportunity presented itself in 1814 when he came into possession (or found on a stall) a Gnostic-themed manuscript written in Greek, called the Levitikon (containing a series of religious doctrines and rituals of the nine degrees of the Templar Order) and another text, called the Evangelikon, a version of the Gospel of Saint John – a probable ancient but not too old forgery (of the 15th or, according to others, the 11th century) – heavily modified (without the miracles and the resurrection: chapters 20 and 21 were missing), with an unprecedented Jesus (initiated in Egypt into the great mysteries of Osiris), who had conferred divine knowledge or gnosis on his favorite disciple (John).

​Based, therefore, on the doctrines expounded in the Levitikon and Evangelikon, Fabré-Palaprat founded the Église Johannites des Crétiens Primitif (Johannite Church of Primitive Christians) in 1828.

​To give a valid apostolic succession to the consecrations carried out in his Church, he involved a "jureur" bishop (that is, one of the prelates who had sworn allegiance to the French Republic), Monsignor Guillaume Mauviel, bishop of Cayes (in Haiti), who consecrated him a bishop on July 29, 1810.

​In turn, Fabré-Palaprat consecrated Monsignor Jean Machault (48th) as Primate of the Church on the same day as his investiture; finally, it was Machault who consecrated on February 20, 1831, the most famous (at the time) adherent to Fabré-Palaprat's church, namely the former radical dissident Catholic priest Ferdinand-François Châtel (49th), founder of the French Catholic Church.

​Not all adherents of the Ancient and Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem took Fabré-Palaprat's heterodox ideas seriously and remained firm in their Catholic faith. This situation led to a split in the Order between Catholics and followers of Fabré-Palaprat, which was not definitively resolved, even after the founder's death, despite the mediation of the new Grand Master, the English Admiral Sir William Sidney-Smith. After Sidney-Smith's death, the Templars decided to open their doors to Christians of any denomination, although the official religion remained Roman Catholic, and fidelity to the Catholic Church was always part of Templar values (along with "tradition" and "order").

​A period of deep crisis followed in the Order. One after another, the various priories closed or went into dormancy (borrowing a Masonic term).

​Only a few priories remained active, including the Belgian Templars, who, on November 11, 1894, organized the establishment of an International Templar Secretariat in Brussels, despite the dissent of other nations, such as the English Templars, who pursued an autonomous path. The Belgian Templars also, on October 1, 1933, established the Grand Priory of Belgium in Leuven, refounding the Magisterium of the Order in Brussels in the same year and entrusting its regency to Théodore Covias.

​Ten months later, on August 8, 1934, Emile-Isaac Clement Vanderberg became the new Regent.

​During the height of World War II, in November 1942, he decided to entrust the Order's archives to Count Antonio Campelo Pinto de Sousa Fontes, Grand Prior of Portugal.

​At the end of the world conflict, however, the unexpected happened: de Sousa Fontes refused to return the archives and, after Vanderberg's death in an accident in 1945, proclaimed himself Regent, and then Grand Master of the Order (Ordre Souverain et Militaire du Temple de Jérusalem, OSMTJ), worsening the situation with a nepotistic designation of his son Fernando Campelo Pinto Pereira de Sousa Fontes as his successor.

​These decisions by de Sousa Fontes provoked a series of schisms.

​– On March 24, 1956, the Regent of the French Chapter, Remy Guerardelle de Ribauville, transmitted his powers to the Brazilian Gabriel Inellas, giving rise to the so-called "Brazilian" branch, also present in Italy as Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani Ordo (Supreme Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem). 
​– In Portugal, meanwhile, upon the death of de Sousa Fontes, his son, as expected, succeeded him, proclaiming himself Regent of the Order with the title of Prince Regent (Portuguese branch). 
​– A group that did not accept this nepotism of the de Sousa Fontes family met in Paris in 1970 and elected the Polish Marshal and Count Anton Zdrojewski (d. 1988) as Grand Master of the Order, who retained the acronym OSMTJ (Ordre Souverain et Militaire du Temple de Jérusalem). 
​– In 1995, the majority of Templars, united under the acronym OSMTH (Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani) and residing in Austria, France, Italy, Finland, England, Wales, Scotland, and the USA, decided to disown the regency of Fernando de Sousa Fontes and to organize themselves autonomously. 
​Finally, a babel of other minor Templar acronyms proliferates to this day. All these groups, including those derived from various local schisms, have a presence in Italy.

​An autonomous development with respect to the lineage descending from Fabré-Palaprat occurred in Scotland.

​The revival of the Templar order in Scotland took place during the Jacobite period in 1745. In particular, an original letter from the third Duke of Perth to the Earl of Airlie Lord Ogilvy, shortly after the Jacobite victory against English troops at Prestonpans, describes a secret ceremony at Holyrood in which Prince Charles Edward Stuart was elected Grand Master of the ancient chivalry of the Temple of Jerusalem on September 24, 1745.

​But the true refounder of the Scottish Templar tradition was a seal engraver, Alexander Deuchar, a descendant of a family sympathetic to the Jacobites.

​The new Order formally began in 1805 when a charter was delivered to Deuchar by the First Great Encampment of Ireland, with the title of Encampment of Edinburgh No. 31, which later became the Grand Assembly of Knights Templar in Edinburgh.

​Today in Scotland there are several Templar organizations, both within and outside Freemasonry. These include: 
​– The Autonomous Grand Priory of Scotland; 
– The Grand Priory of the Knights Templar in Scotland; 
– The Grand Priory of the Scots; 
– The Confederation of Scottish Knights Templar; 
– The Ancient Scottish Military Order of Knights Templar; 
– Militi Templi Scotia; 
– The Prince Henry Sinclair Scottish Knight Templars.

​Finally, I, by decree of the supreme assembly of the brethren, by the supreme authority entrusted to me, the Scottish Templars, deserters of the order, struck down with anathema, and those and the brethren of Saint John of Jerusalem, plunderers of the domains of the military (of whom God have mercy) outside the precinct of the temple, now and in the future, I will, say, and command. Signs, therefore, unknown and unforgivable, I have decided to establish for the pseudo-brethren, to be delivered by word of mouth to my fellow soldiers, and in the manner in which, in the supreme assembly, it has already pleased to deliver them. But may these signs only be revealed after due profession and equestrian consecration, according to the statutes, rites, and customs of the fellow soldiers of the temple, transmitted to me by the aforementioned eminent commendator, just as they were delivered into my hands by the venerable and most holy martyr Master Jacobus de Molaya (to whom be honor and glory). Let it be as I have said. Amen.