The Knights Templar

Over 20 years before "The Da Vinci Code," Henry Lincoln shocked the world with the possibility that Christ had fathered a child. He now explains the origins of "The Code" and reveals the results of his ongoing research.

Josh Bernstein researches the controversial theory laid out in Dan Brown's book "The Da Vinci Code" that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and that she conceived a child - and that the bloodline continues to this day.

For centuries, adventurers, archaeologists, and even Indiana Jones have searched for the Bible's most sacred lost treasure: the Ark of the Covenant. How could something so powerful and holy simply vanish?

The existence and location of the Ark of the Covenant has remained one of the most enduring mysteries in archaeology. Follow global detective Professor Tudor Parfitt as he decodes texts and clues to track it down.

For nearly two centuries, the Knights Templar were the most powerful order in the Medieval world. Then came accusations of unspeakable crimes.

The Knights Templar defended the Holy Land through bloodshed and prayer. Experience the city the Knights knew as Tortosa and learn the secrets of their headquarters at Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

In 1099 the Crusaders took Jerusalem in the bloodiest of battles, wrenching it back from the Muslims for the first time in 400 years. But over the decades that followed, the Islamic world dreamed of fighting back.

In 1095, Pope Urban II launched a military campaign to seize back Jerusalem from Muslim hands. Over 60,000 Christian warriors would spend years journeying and fighting to reclaim the Holy City in God's name.

People have searched for centuries for the cup from which Jesus drank at the last supper. Is it possible this Holy Grail has survived as a hidden treasure - or even in plain sight?

In the seven centuries after their destruction, a host of rumors, myths and legends have grown up around the legacy of the Order of the Temple.

The Templar organization was without frontiers and constructed a financial system years ahead of its time. It was this vastly powerful Templar corporation that enabled their elite warrior knights to survive on the frontline, the Holy Land, surrounded by the hostile forces of Islam.

The Knights Templar needed enormous resources to survive in a hostile environment thousands of miles from home, and over the years developed a massive supply network that enveloped nearly every country in Europe.

In the year 1119 AD the Order of the Temple of Solomon was founded in Jerusalem by a band of nine Christian knights who had vowed to protect pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land.