History's Greatest Mysteries (2020) s05e03 Episode Script

Tonight, a vast treasure
of gold and sacred relics
held by a medieval
religious order.
The Knights Templar
were the most charismatic,
powerful order of warriors
in the Middle Ages.
They're alleged to
have the Holy Grail,
the Ark of the Covenant,
the piece of the True Cross,
all this gold that
they accumulate
over a couple hundred years.
But in 1307 AD,
the Templar treasure
mysteriously
vanishes, or does it?
They fell so quickly
and so spectacularly,
and we don't know what
happened after that.
Where did all the wealth go?
Now, we explore the top theories
surrounding the Knights
Templar and its secret hoard.
The place where they
dig is called Oak Island.
He says that he saw the
Templars smuggle this treasure
and that it took 50
horses to move all of it.
There was interest
in Templar treasure
from a very sinister source,
the Third Reich
and Adolf Hitler.
Does the Templar's treasure
still exist and if so,
where is it?
November 1095, Pope Urban
calls on all Christians
to take up arms against Muslims
who control the Holy Land.
Christian Army set off
on what's going to be
the first of eight crusades.
They marched through modern
day Turkey, Constantinople,
and what is today,
Syria, Antioch.
There was a massive response,
probably about 100,000 people
from all walks of life,
mostly from the nobility,
but the poor, even Churchmen
left their monasteries
in order to go on this Holy War.
Pope Urban II wants to
liberate the Holy Land.
He wants to liberate Jerusalem
and the most holy sites for
Christians from Muslim rule.
Then they set their sights
on the holy city of Jerusalem.
It involves a siege process
that lasts about a month,
and by July of 1099,
they have breached the
walls of Jerusalem itself.
The Holy Land
and all its famed sites
are now back in the control
of the Catholic church.
This is a huge deal
because these are the holiest
places in Christian lore
and people come from all over.
They come from Italy,
from England, from France.
Pilgrims want to go now,
to visit the holy places.
But that brings a new challenge.
Then as now, travelers
were easy prey, especially
in a world in which there's
no such things as ATMs
or travelers checks
or credit cards.
You're gonna need money.
You're gonna need goods
for several months.
You're easy targets for robbers.
There's no Motel 6, there's
no local police forces
or things like that,
and so you have all
sorts of pilgrims
who now are being murdered
on the way to Jerusalem.
I mean, literally
the roads to Jerusalem
are littered with the
skeletons, the pilgrims.
In 1119,
with the blessing of
the Catholic church,
a French knight in Jerusalem
forms a security force
to protect the pilgrims.
They call themselves
the Poor Knights of the
Temple of King Solomon,
but will soon become known
simply as the Knights Templar.
This is a monastic order and
they take the vow of poverty,
the vow of chastity,
the vow of obedience.
So you have these Poor
Knights, but that will create
one of the wealthiest
orders in the world.
This idea of fighting for God
and the Holy Land really
captures the imagination
of the Christian world and
the Templars embody that.
They attract donations
from all over Christendom
and this transforms them
into one of the most powerful
forces of the period.
The Knights Templar were
the most charismatic, powerful
order in the Middle Ages.
Both priests and the bravest
soldiers in the crusades,
they really capture
the spirit of the age,
and particularly in Rome
where the Popes shower
privileges on them.
They're not answerable to
kings, to princes, to dukes.
They're only answerable
directly to the Pope in Rome.
The Templars' fortune grows
through their steady
stream of donations.
They also acquire
vast estates, castles,
and cathedrals all over Europe.
They're involved in
all kinds of sectors
of the European economy.
They're in manufacturing,
they're getting mills.
They're getting all kinds of
donations from wealthy donors,
so they're not just a group
of knights with swords.
There's an entire
intricate financial system
that's supporting that.
It spans all sorts of countries,
and it may be in fact
the world's first
multinational corporation.
The Templars have outposts
throughout Christendom
and go on to create the world's
first modern banking system.
They set up a system
of effectively banking
in which if you were a pilgrim,
you could make a deposit at
a commandery or an outpost,
and then you would have
a script you could redeem
when you get to Jerusalem,
and you were good for
it when you got there.
These Templar commanderies,
they are banks,
but they're not ordinary banks.
I mean, they're fortresses.
Example, the Paris Temple
looms over the city.
I mean, it's enormous.
The only thing I can
think of to describe it
is the castle of Disneyland.
You know, it's that kind of
presence in the landscape.
And so, its banking system
that will allow pilgrims
to travel without resource.
That way, they're less
attractive to robbers.
Nothing to take.
Pilgrims from all
over Europe feel safer
because they're protected
by the Templar Knights.
When the Templars
established themselves
as a presence in Jerusalem,
they're given the Al-Aqsa
Mosque as their headquarters
built upon the
Templar of Solomon.
It's on the Temple Mount.
It's one of the most holy places
of all three major
religions in the world.
This is the platform that
was once the foundation
for King Herod's massive temple.
Underneath rumored to be
lots of holy treasures.
So having got there,
the Templars start digging
below to find that treasure.
During work in that
area, the story goes,
the Knights Templar discovered
two extremely important items
for the Christian faith,
the Holy Grail and the
Ark of the Covenant.
And so they had not
only wealth, but relics.
But in 1187 AD,
things change for the Templars.
Crusades continue for centuries
and in 1187, the Muslims
re-conquer Jerusalem.
So those pilgrimage sites
are now under Muslim control
and Christians are
forbidden from being there.
And the function the
Knights Templar had
of protecting the
pilgrims of the Holy Land
shifts dramatically in 1187
when you can't make
that pilgrimage anymore.
The Templars
are forced out of Jerusalem.
The Knights Templar flee
and presumably take all of
their treasure with them.
That would've included perhaps
the Ark of the Covenant,
the Holy Grail, and gold.
They move their headquarters
to the port city of Acre,
about a hundred miles north
in what is now Israel.
Acre is a tremendously
important city
because it's a meeting
point between east and west
on one of the major trade routes
from all the way to
China at the time.
So it was a very wealthy city,
and so it was well defended.
They have a massive
fortification there.
It's got 20 foot thick walls.
It's the most
formidable fortress
on the Mediterranean
at that time.
After a century based in Acre,
in 1291, the Templar fortress
is attacked by Muslim fighters.
A servant to the Templars
named the Templar of Tyre
writes of the battle
and even makes reference
to the fabled treasure.
So the Templar of Tyre is one
of the important chroniclers
from the late period
of the Templars.
He does record the last
battles the Templars have.
He describes the chaos
of a medieval siege
as the enemy has
now broken through.
He describes a main tower
with four golden lions
at each corner, and then
another older treasure tower,
which clearly has been
built to protect something.
The Templars'
fortress may be strong,
but they are cornered
with no way out,
and the treasure seems
to be in imminent danger
of being seized.
If Templars brought
the sacred treasures
from Jerusalem to Acre,
and if, at that battle,
the Knights had to
leave in such a hurry
that they weren't able to take
all that treasure with them,
then there's the
exciting possibility
their treasure could
still be there.
One of the great
things about the Templars
is they're great builders,
and this goes back to
the Temple of Solomon,
you know, this amazing structure
that forms part of their
name of the Knights Templar.
The Templar of Tyre describes
how the Templars construct
these magnificent castles,
and presumably that is where
the Templar treasure is stored.
We know this because we
have surviving examples.
Templar castles
would shape the way
castles were built
all over Europe.
Obviously Acre was
a model of that,
a fist of iron and stone
right there on the coast.
And the Templars
didn't just build
these elaborate
fortifications up above ground
to protect cities like Acre,
but they also built
tunnels underground
as a part of their
defense strategy.
Is it possible
the treasure is still there,
just underground?
In 2019, a team decides to
search using new technology.
What the LIDAR
technology is able to do
is to create a 3D image of
the remains of the fortress
underneath today's housing,
so you get a much
clearer picture
of what was originally there.
The LIDAR technology helps plot
what the Templar fortress
originally looked like.
The team has been able to
approximate, more or less,
where the original Templar
treasure tower stood,
and we get a much clearer idea
of where the Holy Grail
may once have been kept.
But if gold and priceless relics
are buried here,
they won't be
recovered anytime soon.
Governments can be finicky
about digging under things,
especially a place like Israel
where there's so much archeology
and so much stuff
has been dug up.
But another
discovery, this one in 1994,
reveals more about
what's underneath Acre.
There's a blocked sewer pipe,
they get a plumber to come,
and he discovers this tunnel
that no one's known
about for 800 years.
It's a tunnel from the fortress
that goes almost 500
feet out into the city,
which is a really good way of
smuggling things in and out.
Could it be that at one time,
the treasure was under Acre,
but that it was on
route to somewhere else?
What we know from
historical records
is that the last Templar there,
the Grand Master,
Guillaume de Beaujeu,
dies in that defense
of the siege of Acre.
According to accounts,
Thibaud Gaudin,
the Deputy to the
Templar Grand Master,
Guillaume de Beaujeu,
was told, get all
that sacred treasure,
take it into the tunnels,
and for God's sakes,
get it out of Acre.
The Knights
Templar held immense wealth
during their 200 year existence.
But after their fortress in Acre
falls to Muslim
marauders in 1291,
the Templar treasure
seems to disappear,
it's fate a mystery.
Is it possible that
they escaped with it?
The thought was that they
could get these valuable items,
meaning the Ark of the
Covenant, the Holy Grail,
or any of the other
Templar treasure,
out of the treasure tower
through one of these
subterranean tunnels
and spirit them away.
They're able to bring the
treasures they have out of Acre
because you have to remember,
they have fortresses
throughout Europe,
so they've got places,
so does some of the
treasure go here?
Does some of the
treasure go there?
As the legend goes,
the Templars look to the next
safest place for the treasure.
France is an obvious place.
This is where their
founders came from,
and it's kind of the nerve
center of the Templars.
France has changed
when the Templars return
in the 13th century.
King Philip IV was
heavily in debt
because of his war with England.
It was a costly war,
and Philip IV had actually
looked to the Templars for help.
He was deeply indebted to them.
This is sort of an
uncomfortable situation
as he's looking at
this increasingly
powerful organization
within his own kingdom.
King Philip says, oh,
we should get rid of them.
And by the way, that means
my debt is canceled to them,
and by the way,
I can get their goods
and take their treasure.
In the Middle Ages, if you
want to discredit somebody,
you say that they're a heretic.
You say that they're a witch.
And this is exactly
what King Philip says
about the Templars.
He says that they
are worshiping Satan,
that they are engaged in
illicit sexual practices
with each other.
The misinformation campaign
against the Templars
really does work
because public support
for these knights,
which was once so strong,
now completely craters.
On October 13th, 1307,
King Philip IV gives
orders to arrest
and imprison all
Knights Templar.
That order goes into effect
throughout Christendom,
but there is one place in France
where the Templars are not
arrested and imprisoned.
Could this be the place
where they keep their treasure?
The village of Rennes-le-Chateau
has a very interesting history.
The Templars have taken what
they had in all of Europe,
and this organization
has been reduced
to this isolated community
that really is in many ways
insulated from the church.
And this relationship
develops with the locals,
even extending
into a relationship
with the Count of Barcelona.
Fast forward six
centuries to the late 1890s
and to a small church
in Rennes-le-Chateau
sitting in the shadow
of the Templar Castle,
high on the hill above.
There's a little church
dedicated to Mary Magdalene
and run by a parish priest
called Berenger Sauniere.
And he wants to
renovate this church.
And the story goes that
when he's supervising
the renovation of the
area around the altar,
he sees something incredible.
What he finds is sealed in
wax in one of the pillars,
and has three wooden cylinders
with parchment inside.
The parchments
are said to contain
complex ciphers and
coded messages.
That's not the only
strange discovery
during the renovation.
Story goes, when
construction workers
are working on a hallway
in an entirely different
part of the church,
they unearth this clay pot
and within it are gold coins
and a necklace, a bracelet,
and most intriguingly,
a gold cup.
Could the Templars
have buried their treasure
in different parts of the
Church of Mary Magdalene,
and could the
parchments provide clues
as to where the
rest of it might be?
He's really excited
with the parchments
that he's discovered,
so he takes them to Paris
to be deciphered by
church officials,
but then he returns and
he's a different man.
He's not talking
about it anymore.
He doesn't say anything
about the hidden meaning
of these parchments,
but all of a sudden,
he's got a lot of money
and he spends it on the
renovations of the church.
After his return from Paris,
Sauniere will spend
almost 700,000 francs
in two decades time,
the equivalent of
over $4 million today.
Not only did he spend thousands
and thousands of
francs just renovating
the church at Rennes-le-Chateau,
there's an estimate that says,
well, he spends 36,000 francs
building his own estate,
which is an astronomical
amount of money,
especially in the 19th century.
The mystery of Sauniere's
wealth continues to intrigue us
because we just don't know if
he had the Templar treasure,
had access to part of
the Templar treasure,
or if he only sold
the parchments
that he found in
the parish church.
Sauniere keeps his mouth shut
until the end of his life
when he entrusts the secret
to his loyal housekeeper.
Marie Denarnaud.
Marie Denarnaud is
the only one that knows
what's the secret to
this fabulous wealth
that this little
parish priest has.
But unfortunately,
she dies in 1953 of a
sudden and massive stroke.
So the secret dies with her.
Did Sauniere come by this wealth
through the Templar treasure,
or did he get his money in a
very different kind of way?
Sauniere spent
the last several years
of his priesthood
under suspicion by the
church for a practice
called selling masses.
So there is the possibility
that what the priest was
actually trying to mask
was his own criminal activity.
Selling masses, a church crime
that goes back centuries.
When people are selling masses,
the priest is charging,
effectively, admission
to come into the church
and to be present
when the miracle of
the Eucharist happens,
when the mass is celebrated.
The church has been very
clear in its teaching
that this should never happen,
but teaching and reality
are very different
things sometimes.
If Sauniere
didn't get the treasure,
could it still be
here in the church?
It was purported
that one of the things
she said before her death
was that the people
of Rennes-le-Chateau
were walking on gold
and didn't even know it.
Is that a cryptic indication
it's the location of
the Templar treasure?
At the height of their power
in the 13th century,
the Knights Templar hold
fortresses across Europe.
Experts believe any one of
them could hold their treasure,
but for some, clues point
overwhelmingly to one.
Outside of France,
the Knights Templar had
influence in Portugal.
And keep in mind that Portugal
was an area of intense battle
between Christians and Muslims,
and the Knights Templar were
helping Christian fighters
take back the area.
In 1160 AD,
the small town of Tomar
becomes the Templars'
Portuguese headquarters.
There is a Templar
Grand Master in Portugal,
Gualdim Pais.
His statue still dominates
the main square in Tomar.
And this battle scarred figure
oversees the construction of
a Templar fortress in Tomar.
And inside this fortress is
the Convent of Christ Church,
which is a UNESCO
World Heritage site.
Gualdim Pais is famous in part
because of this church
he builds at Tomar
called the Round Church.
It has 16 sides, built that way
so the Templars could
attend mass on horseback.
And this was done
so they could be ready
to ride out at a
moment's notice.
But in July 1190,
Tomar is surrounded
by Muslim forces
determined to take
the city back.
They are attacked,
and during that battle,
the Templars defend Tomar
and they defeat them.
So the defense of Tomar is
a really important moment
for the Templars,
and it establishes
Gualdim Pais as a hero
in Templar lore.
Tomar is a landmark site
because of that victory,
and many believe this
would've been a place
where the Templars would
have kept their treasure.
A major discovery in the 1960s
might lend credence
to that theory.
In the 1960s,
you had all sorts of
treasure hunters in Europe,
but you didn't have
the same kinds of laws
that we have today
about antiquities
and taking antiquities out of
one place to another place.
And so they're
essentially grave robbers
looking for Roman artifacts.
So you have these
treasure hunters
who are at the Convent of
Christ Church in Tomar.
They dig into a grave and
they pull out two caskets.
But what they find isn't Roman,
it's something
quite extraordinary.
There's a chalice
that's obsidian.
There's a reliquary
to hold relics.
There's a sword that has a
Templar design and a cross,
but they don't know what it is,
and so they sell it
off piece by piece.
But clearly what they find
are Templar artifacts.
This collection,
now known as the Tomar Hoard,
is believed to be one of the
only stashes of Templar relics
ever found.
You have treasure hunters
digging up the whole place.
So, much of the hoard left
Portugal, sadly, in the 1960s,
but over the last
decade, Templar hunters,
Carl Cooksen and Hamilton
White, have been striving
to bring all these items
back into one place,
and they now have achieved that.
And so you have a scholar,
Jonathan Tokley Parry,
who looks at the Tomar
Hoard to authenticate
where these things
come from and says,
yes, this is authentic.
This actually does go
back to the Templars,
that this is part of the
treasure the Templars had.
And we know that
because due to aging,
the items inside
have a certain amount
of calcium deposits on them,
and this helps to
date these items
that do indeed date back
to the Templar period.
What we can't say with
absolute certainty
is that they were
put in the ground
by the Knights
Templar themselves.
In their
search for more evidence,
Cooksen and White make
a startling discovery.
During their research,
Cooksen and White discovered
that in the 1930s,
there was interest in
Templar treasure in Tomar
from a very sinister source,
the Third Reich
and Adolf Hitler.
For Hitler, it was
not only the wealth
for a financing of war,
but think of what
these objects were,
the Ark of the Covenant,
the Holy Grail.
If you have those objects,
you have control over people
for whom those
objects are valuable,
and you know, the
Germans were Christian.
And so having the Holy Grail,
the most important
symbol for Christendom
in Hitler's possession
would've been a huge
source of power for him.
And so he sent basically Nazi
treasure hunters to Portugal
to try and find this treasure.
And Hitler assigned
some of his best people,
including a troop led
by Heinrich Himmler,
and we have reports of
them searching in Portugal.
But by all accounts,
they came up empty handed.
So it's another quarter of
a century after the Nazis
have been digging
around in Tomar
that we get these Templar
hunters turning up.
But neither party
seems to have found
the Ark of the Covenant,
the Holy Grail,
or any of the other
Templar treasure.
So as things stand today,
it looks like the Templars
either took whatever they had
away or it's still buried.
In the eight centuries
since the Knights Templar
fled Jerusalem, many
theories have surfaced
about where their mysterious
treasure could be.
Some believe it remains
in what's now Israel.
Others suggest it could
be in Portugal or France,
all former Templar strongholds.
But what if the treasure was
taken somewhere more surprising,
to a place where the
Templars were certain
that no one would look?
It's where they've believed
they will be able to
hide their treasure away.
And unlike other
parts of Europe,
there weren't that
many prying eyes
looking at what the
Templars were up to
because it's very much on the
fringes of the Templar world.
There's a legend
that the Templars
had gone to Western Poland
from Paris to seek safety,
to seek refuge, both for the
Templars and the treasure.
The Templars arrive
in Poland in 1232
when they're given land around
the town of Chwarszczany
on the Mysla River,
which is just a stone's
throw from the German border.
And the Templars started
building this chapel
of St. Stanislaus,
and it most likely took
many decades to complete.
In the aftermath
of these arrests,
on Friday the 13th, 1307, there
is sort of a ripple effect
across the Templar
realm of influence
so that everywhere the
Templars had extended influence,
from Western Europe
as far as the reaches
of what is today,
Poland, ceased to exist.
Fearing for their own safety,
many Templars fled and would've
taken whatever treasure
they had with them.
What became of that treasure?
That's the big question.
The story goes that the treasure
found its way to Chwarszczany
with a small band of Templars
and medieval documents
described the well near the
chapel of St. Stanislaus,
and it's rumored that the
chapel has an entrance
to a secret tunnel.
Friday the 13th is significant.
That's the date the
arrest take place.
So facing arrest,
the Knights Templar,
under the cover of darkness,
took the Holy Grail
and other valued materials
and sunk them in a nearby lake.
The lake dried up long ago,
and no treasure has
been found there,
but the theory that the
treasure made it somewhere
in Chwarszczany continues
to attract attention,
including interest from
a local archeologist.
Fast forward 700 years,
in 2004, an archeologist,
Przemyslaw Kolosowski,
brought a team of archeologists
to conduct tests and excavations
at the Chapel of St. Stanislaus.
What the team were
hoping to discover
was a Templar fortress
underneath this chapel.
What they found instead
was a cobbled floor,
and that was pretty much it.
But then,
one of the archeologists
notices a small
rectangular depression
beneath the cobblestone.
The team brings in
ground penetrating radar
for a better look.
What they find shocks them.
They find seven vaulted crypts
that could date back
to the Templar times.
These vaults are empty,
which of course leads
people to wonder,
what could have been there?
Then another discovery is made
of a secret tunnel under
the town of Mysliborz,
not far from the chapel
of St. Stanislaus.
And between this
tunnel at Mysliborz
and the chapel of St. Stanislaus
is the dry lake bed
where some believe
the Templars hid their treasure.
So we have this chapel,
we have the entrance to a
subterranean medieval vault.
We have the lake
where the treasure
may have been buried
under cover of night,
and then in a nearby town, we
have this inexplicable tunnel.
So local people are
absolutely convinced
that there is a secret that
the Knights left there.
But despite these discoveries,
no treasure has been
found in Poland to date.
What these discoveries
point to is the tremendous
building abilities of
the Knights Templar.
But what these tunnels
and what these locations
were actually used for is
a matter of speculation.
Most of the Knights
Templar brought to Paris
after the arrests in 1307
refused to talk
under interrogation.
But one did,
and he paints a vivid picture
of the treasure's movement.
Confessions were extorted
under terrible torture
from individual Knights Templar.
One of them, Jean de Chalons,
claimed that the treasure was
taken from the Paris Temple
was extremely strongly
fortified building,
undercover of night, down
to the Port of La Rochelle.
And there were waiting ships.
He says that he saw the
Templars smuggle this treasure
and that it took 50
horses to move all of it.
When they arrived at the port,
they had 18 ships
waiting for them,
and the treasure was loaded
up and they sailed off.
Because of where they
were in eastern France,
historians speculate that
the ships leaving there
would've gone to Scotland
as a place that they
could defend easily,
because of course,
it's an island.
According to the story,
when the Templars
arrive in Scotland,
a war of independence
is underway.
They find an ally in the
Scottish king, Robert the Bruce.
And there's a legend
that Robert the Bruce
fought alongside the Templars
at the Battle of Bannockburn,
and it was a major
victory for Scotland
in the war for independence.
It's said that Robert
the Bruce was so grateful
to the Templars for helping
him to defeat the English,
that he gave them privileges,
he gave them titles,
he gave them lands,
he helped them to
regroup, reassemble,
and find their strength
again in Scotland.
And one of the places associated
with the Templars in Scotland
is the small town of Rosslyn,
and it's there that
the Sinclair family,
an aristocratic
family in Scotland
who developed close
bonds with the Templars
also built this intriguing,
fascinating chapel.
The Sinclair family
is also connected
with Robert the Bruce.
So you have a direct
lineage of this family
with the Templars and the
chapel that they built.
And so you get this story
beneath this chapel,
there is a secret
vault that contains
those treasures of
the Knights Templar.
Some refer to Rosslyn
as a Grail Chapel.
What they mean by
that is it was a place
where the Templars
brought the Holy Grail.
And the story goes that it
was buried under the nave,
under flags stands,
and kept in place with sand
brought from Jerusalem,
and that it may also
include the True Cross
upon which Jesus Christ
was crucified in Jerusalem.
It is an amazingly
detailed little chapel
with the kinds of iconography
that you would expect
to the Templars.
In the chapel,
there are marvelous images
of singers and musicians,
and so there's a story that says
if you stand in
front of this wall,
which is believed through the
wall that leads to the vault,
and you play a particular
note on that instrument,
that will cause
the wall to open.
No one has yet cracked that code
or found any treasure.
This whole idea about Rosslyn
being central to the story
of the Templar treasure
really only gained
traction in the 1980s
with the publication
of a bestseller
called Holy Blood Holy Grail,
and then 20 years later, of
course, The Da Vinci Code.
Rossyln Chapel is
actually the final setting
for the closing chapter
of The Da Vinci Code.
This is where the entire
conspiracy comes unraveled,
where it is realized
that the Holy Grail
is in fact not located
at Rosslyn Chapel,
but the Holy Grail
actually represents
Mary Magdalene herself.
The Da Vinci Code is a
really compelling story,
but I think we need to remember,
it is ultimately fiction.
But even if Rosslyn Chapel
doesn't hold the
treasure itself,
could it hold the key
to where it is now?
One of the images that
appears in stone at Rosslyn
are ears of corn.
You may think, that's
unspectacular.
But what you'd remember is that
corn didn't arrive in Europe
until Christopher Columbus
got to the Americas in 1492,
and crops that had
never been seen before
suddenly arrived in Europe.
So how does the Sinclair family,
when they're building
Rosslyn Chapel in the 1450s,
decades before Columbus
gets to America,
how do they know about corn?
So consider this, going
back to the Sinclair family,
so Henry Sinclair, a
friend of the Templars
and also an able seaman
in his own right,
he helps the Templars
take the treasure
out of Rosslyn Chapel, and
using his fleet of 12 ships,
they set sail, bound
for the Americas.
After traversing
the Middle East and Europe
in search of the fabled
treasure of the Knights Templar,
could searchers be looking
on the wrong continent?
A discovery centuries after
the Templars disbanded
suggests the possibility
that the treasure
could be thousands of miles
across the Atlantic Ocean.
In 1795, on an island off
the coast of Nova Scotia,
a man called Daniel
McKinnis and his friends
stumbled upon something
on a particular spot
that piques their curiosity and
they go to discover further.
And so they start excavating
with a great deal of enthusiasm.
And the place where they
dig is called Oak Island.
As they dig, they uncover
stones on top of planks.
They continue to dig
and they find more
stones on top of planks.
They understood this to
be a human construction.
They go as far as they can,
but then, you know,
their technology,
they can't go any further.
And so they build a
company with these partners
to help continue on digging.
The digging continues
and at the 90 foot mark,
they find a large stone
engraved with strange symbols,
their meaning, as yet, unknown.
This area becomes
known as the money pit,
and you can see that in
two very different ways.
Is it the money pit because
at the bottom of this pit,
is the money, the treasure?
Or is it the money pit
because you've
poured so much money
into this trying to
find the treasure
that you're never gonna
get your money back?
Since Daniel McKinnis's
discovery two centuries ago,
a long line of
researchers and explorers
have invested resources
on Oak Island.
A whole range of people
have turned up looking for
treasure in the money pit,
and they include a young
Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
future President of
the United States.
It isn't until the 1980s
when a big discovery begins
to point to Templar origins.
In the 1980s, there's a real
game changer of a discovery.
And that is a series
of boulder-like stones.
And when seen from above,
they're shaped as a cross.
Now this points to
Templar activity.
More wooden structures
are then found underground
in the second half
of the 20th century.
Chisel marks indicate
the work was completed
before the invention
of modern tools.
If we think about it,
the Knights Templar
were crushed in 1307.
Now, Christopher Columbus
arrives in the Americas in 1492,
so we've got a big gap.
Columbus was certainly
not the first European
to set foot on American shores.
There was a Viking
presence there,
probably for like,
a hundred years
in the midst of the Middle Ages.
Going back to the Henry
Sinclair around 1398,
some accredited Sinclair
was discovering Nova Scotia,
which is New Scotland.
So it's possible that
the Sinclair family
held on to the Templar
treasure at Rosslyn Chapel,
which they built
for that purpose,
before then, at
the right moment,
setting sail with
it for the Americas.
The timeline, the geography
make this all feasible,
that the Templar treasure
was taken from Scotland
and then eventually
deposited into the money pit.
In 2006, search intensifies
when brothers Rick
and Marty Lagina
purchase controlling
interests of Oak Island.
They begin following
the old clues
and discovering new
ones of their own.
One of the more
compelling discoveries
was a lead cross with a
kind of loop at the top
that has been scientifically
analyzed and dated.
And they do date back to
the Knights Templar period.
And it's a period of
history on Oak Island
when there's not known
to have been any
other human activity.
I mean, Oak Island does
seem to be kind of the place
where you go to look for
things that shouldn't be there,
but maybe they're there,
so who knows what
they'll find next.
It's that
dazzling array of possibilities
that has kept the
treasure hunters
coming back to the mystery
of the Templar treasure.
I think one of the things
that people find fascinating
about the Templars,
even to this day, is the fact
that they fell so quickly
and so spectacularly,
and we don't know, kind of
what happened after that.
It seems like it
should have continued,
or there should have
been something
that happened afterwards
or some sort of resistance
or something there.
And so we're just wondering,
where did all the wealth go?
The Templars captured
the imagination of Europe
at the time, and continues to
be both revered and reviled
down through the centuries.
Authors have made them
villains and heroes
like some of the Robin Hood
legends and things like that.
The Templar treasure
is so powerful
because you're dealing not
just with physical treasure,
with gold, silver, jewels.
You're dealing with
people's faith.
You're dealing with
religious matters,
not just simply worldly goods.
They were this
huge organization,
commanderies all over the place.
They had a massive
number of people.
They had massive
influence across Europe,
and then it was suddenly gone.
We have a hard time wrapping
our heads around that.
Is the treasure of the Knights
Templar still out there?
And what priceless
relics does it hold?
For now, the search
continues for this mysterious
and allegedly vast hoard.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching
History's Greatest Mysteries.