Lost Relics of the Knights Templar

Carl and Hamilton are back on more familiar ground with a stunning white marble chalice from Hamilton’s Knights Templar treasure hoard, where the relics they explored in the first series came from. They travel to Chartres Cathedral in France, believed to have been built by the Templars, to examine a depiction of a very similar chalice on the north portico. Inside the Cathedral they also come across a famous depiction of a black Madonna which is at the centre of a Christian cult and was also revered by the Templars. Wanting to find out more about the cult of the black Madonna, Carl and Hamilton travel to a spot in the south of France which has given rise to an extraordinary theory – made popular by the novel and movie The Da Vinci Code – that Mary Magdalene travelled from the Holy Land after the crucifixion and was carrying Jesus’ child. Back in the UK, Janina looks at some of the sources that inspired The Da Vinci Code.