I would say so, absolutely. I hold the templars in very high regard. They were the Special Forces of their day. They also built the first system of what amounts to "travelers' checques" in the world.
Traveling with money was a very dangerous proposition back then. Thieves were everywhere. But what a traveler could do was to deposit a sum of money with their local Templar office, which in return they would get an encrypted document that could only be decrpyted at another Templar office. They would go on their journey and visit the local Templar office when they got to their destination, present the encrypted document... and get their cash paid out on that end. I don't know, but I would assume that the encrypted document included some kind of description and positive ID of the true owner of the deposit. This made the document useless to anyone but the rightful owner, and let many people travel without having to risk losing all their money to robbers.
Ingenious, that. They invented the travelers' check.
I know all that.
Catholics holding Knights Templar in high esteem is contrary to their history.
I was just getting ready to circle back around and tackle this subject but you have done an excellent job.
Bravo.
And yes, the Knights Templar were the good guys.
They only became bad guys when some potentate type ran out of money and became very desirous of the Knights Templar banking system.
Seems they had a considerable amount of wealth in their system, in which the monied people could simply write a check, instead of carrying around large amounts of cash, gold, rubies, goats, etc.
So the avarice of the potentate type fella was all consuming and he rounded all of the Knights up on Friday the 13th(where we get the term from) and took em apart piece by piece, killing nearly everyone of them.
Thereafter lies and slander where foisted on their character and that is why people don’t think of them as good guys.
But, you would have to be pretty good guy to take Jerusalem back in the name of God, from the Moslem hordes who were doing everything they could to erase an evidence of Jewery in Israel, then called Palestine.
Further, you would really have to be a good guy to get a lot of really rich people, kingdoms, fiefdoms and countries to let you be their money managers.
Knights Templar = Good Guys.