Gnostic

Soon after the Knights Templar founded their order in the Holy Land in 1118 AD they assimilated into a very ancient gnostic tradition and lineage known as the Johannite Church, which had been founded by St. John the Baptist more than a thousand years previously. The ruling patriarch of this ancient tradition when the Templar Order first formed was Theoclete. The Johannites and St. John the Baptist Theoclete met the first Templar grandmaster, Hughes de Payens and then passed the mantle of his Johannite authority to him. Hughes de Payens thus became John #70 in a long line of gnostic Johannites (the “Johns”) that had begun with John the Baptist and included: Jesus, John the Apostle, and Mary Magdalene. John