Knight Templar in garb "no longer of the cross", but armed with lance and sword.. The Order of the Knights Templar was a military order founded in 1118 by Hugues de Payens, a knight of Champagne, and eight other knights to protect pilgrims to the Holy Land. From humble beginnings as "Poor Knights of the Temple," they grew to become a powerful and rich army of warrior monks, with barracks/monasteries all over Europe, and several castles in Palestine: Safed (1140), Karak (1143), and Castle Pilgrim (1217). The order came to a tragic end in 1312 when all the Templars were branded as heretics, tortured and executed.. Handcolored copperplate engraving of a knight from a religious military order from Robert von Spalart's "Historical Picture of the Costumes of the Principal People of Antiquity and of the Middle Ages" (1796).