NOTE: THE LOCATION OF THIS LECTURE IS DIFFERENT FROM THE REST IN THE SERIES

The medieval period has always occupied a paradoxical position in our cultural memory. An age of fantasy unimaginably distant from historical reality, it is also an era onto which writers and artists—and now moviemakers and gamers—have long projected their fears and desires. Why do cultures remake certain figures from the past—but not others--in their own image?

Join Professor Emerita of History Robin Stacey for this five-lecture series where she looks at the present’s relationship with the past through the lens of the making and remaking of important historical figures—some real, some fictional, and some the creatures of myth.

Lecture Four: "A sure sign of a lunatic": The Remaking of the Templars
Perhaps no group has traveled further in the popular imagination than the Templars. Once an international military and banking order associated with the Crusades, they appear now most commonly as the progenitors of the Freemasons, members of a secretive Order guarding the Holy Grail, and the stars of numerous video games. How and why did this happen?