Knights Templar and Freemasons — Linked or Not?

What it claims

Tony McMahon writes that there is no documentary evidence linking the Knights Templar to Freemasonry.The Knights Templar were founded in 1118, while Freemasonry was organized in the early eighteenth century.He points out a gap of roughly 600 years between the two organizations.He also presents the claim that Templars fleeing persecution in 1307 hid within stonemasons' guilds.He writes that after a 1738 papal ban on Freemasonry, both organizations came into conflict with the Roman church.

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