The Name of the Order: L’Ordre du Temple de Jerusalem

20 May 2023

The Name L’Ordre du Temple de Jerusalem

Many Templars have asked why we have changed the name of the Order. We have not changed the name of the Order; we have simply registered it under its historical provenance.

The name, Sovereign and Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem (OSMTJ) and its many translated versions, is not original or ancient. We don’t really know the true founding name of the Order (presumably something related to The Poor Knights of Christ). As best we know, the OSMTJ name first appeared in Belgium around 1932 when the Belgium Templar association was registered under that name. All honors afforded to the Order by the Emperor Napoleon and others were not to an entity named OSMTJ. They were to an Order of the Temple. Furthermore, the name OSMTJ was never registered as an international organization. This lack of international registration of the Order prevented several activities of the Order, especially affiliation with the United Nations and other international groups where one of the first questions asked in the affiliation process is “where is the Order registered?” Consequently, registration was long overdue.

Unfortunately, the name OSMTJ is no longer an honored name: Is it the OSMTJ of the Hastier-Haimovici Obedience, the OSMTJ of the Van der stock obedience, the OSMTJ of the Martinez obedience, the OSMTJ of the Timothy Jones group, the OSMTJ of the Matta obedience or the OSMTJ of the Mangum obedience? Games played in the past several years have destroyed the sanctity of our Order’s name.

We do know that through the centuries the Order was simply referred to as the Order of the Temple. Some radical groups, such as the Freemasons and the Solar Temple, copied and exploited that name. Consequently, we have returned to the historically correct name of the Order – The Order of the Temple or L’Ordre du Temple, with the addition of “de Jerusalem” to clarify our distinction from radical temple groups. Therefore, the name of the Order has returned to its historical provenance, L’Ordre du Temple de Jerusalem.

National subgroups of the Order may continue to use the OSMTJ name, but at the international level, the Order is L’Ordre du Temple de Jerusalem or simply The Order of the Temple.

General Ronald Scott Mangum, Master