Some dates approximate.
1023 Bl. Gerard Thom founds the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, also known as the Knights Hospitallers, to care for sick pilgrims
1070 Approximate date for birth of Hugues de Payens
1095 Alexios I Komnenos sends an appeal for military help to Urban II at the Council of Piacenza; First Crusade begins with the Council of Clermont
1097 Nicaea, under the control of Kilij Arslan I, is recaptured by the Crusaders and Byzantines
1098 County of Edessa, the first Crusader state, is created, followed soon by the Principality of Antioch
1099 Crusaders recapture Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Jerusalem is created
1100 Battle of Melitene: Bohemond I of Antioch is defeated, captured, and held for ransom by Malik Ghazi Gumushtekin
1101 Crusade of 1101 (also known as Crusade of the Faint-Hearted, because it involves people who were not willing to risk the First Crusade) attempts to reinforce the Crusader kingdoms
1104 County of Tripoli, a Crusader state, is created
1107 Norwegian Crusade begins under Sigurd I (first Crusade led by a king; Sigurd wins every battle, mostly in Muslim Spain on the way to the Holy Land)
1110 Siege of Sidon: Baldwin I of Jerusalem and Sigurd I of Norway combine forces to take Sidon
1113 Milites Sancti Sepulcri, later known as the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, are officially recognized by Paschal II
1119 Hugues de Payens proposes a military order for the protection of pilgrims; the new order is given a headquarters on the Temple Mount by King Baldwin II of Jerusalem, from which it will get both its official name (Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon) and its colloquial name (Knights Templar)
1122 Concordat of Worms
1123 First Lateran Council
1129 St. Bernard of Clairvaux advocates for the Templars at the Council of Troyes; Honorius II gives papal recognition to the Templars
1135 St. Bernard praises the Templars in De laude novae militiae
1136 Robert de Craon becomes second Grand Master of the Templars
1139 Second Lateran Council; Innocent II gives papal support to the Templars in the bull Omne datum optimum
1144 Celestine II gives papal support to the Templars in the bull Milites Templi
1145 Eugene III gives papal support to the Templars in the bull Militia Dei
1147 Second Crusade begins (it will be a fairly consistent failure); Everard des Barres becomes third Grand Master of the Templars
1148 Council of Acre among Crusader nobility determines to lay siege to Damascus; Siege of Damascus is a disaster for both sides, but especially for the Crusaders as it leads to distrust among the major Crusading powers
1149 Templars help defend Jerusalem against Turkish raids
1500 Templars begin to involve themselves in banking by issuing letters of credit for pilgrims
1151 Bernard de Tremelay becomes fourth Grand Master of the Templars
1153 Andre de Montbard becomes fifth Grand Master of the Templars; Baldwin III seizes Ascalon with the help of the Templars
1154 Crusaders begin Campaign against Egypt
1156 Bertrand de Blanchefort becomes sixth Grand Master of the Templars and begins to reform the order
1169 Philip of Nablus becomes seventh Grand Master of the Templars; Saladin appointed vizier of Egypt
1171 Eudes de St. Amand becomes eighth Grand Master of the Templars after the resignation of Philip of Nablus
1177 Battle of Montgisard: King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem with the help of Templars crushes a massively larger army under Saladin by taking Saladin by surprise
1179 Third Lateran Council; Battle of Jacob's Ford: the Templar Castle of Chastellet is seized and destroyed by Saladin, marking the beginning of Saladin's string of military successes
1181 Arnold of Torroja becomes ninth Grand Master of the Templars (he will take steps to reduce strain and rivalry between the Templars and the Hospitallers)
1185 Gerard de Ridefort becomes tenth Grand Master of the Templars
1187 Battle of Hattin: Saladin defeats Guy of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem, and recaptures Acre and Jerusalem
1189 Third Crusade begins (it will recapture Acre and Jaffa but does not try to retake Jerusalem)
1191 Knights of St. Thomas founded at Acre to tend to sick and wounded; at about the same time, the Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem, later known as the Teutonic Knights, are formed for the same reason; Robert de Sablé becomes the eleventh Grand Master of the Templars after the capture and beheading of Gerard de Ridefort; Battle of Arsuf marks a decisive victory for the Crusaders
1192 Kingdom of Cyprus, a Crusader state, is created
1193 Death of Saladin; Gilbert Horal becomes the twelfth Grand Master of the Templars (in his tenure tensions between Templars and Hospitallers will begin to boil over)
1197 Crusade of 1197, also known as the German Crusade shores up the County of Tripoli but fails in its goal to take Jerusalem because of the death from illness of Emperor Henry
1201 Philippe de Plessis becomes the thirteenth Grand Master of the Templars
1202 Fourth Crusade begins; Venice makes the capture of Zadar from Hungary a condition of its transportation, and Zadar is captured
1203 Fourth Crusade, co-opted by the Venetians, lays siege to Constantinople, ending in an unstable truce
1204 Sack of Constantinople; the Latin Kingdom of Constantinople begins and the Byzantine Emperor flees to Nicaea, where the last fragments of the Byzantine Empire will begin to consolidate
1210 Guillaume de Chartres becomes the fourteenth Grand Master of the Templars (during his tenure the order will have major successes in Spain)
1213 Fifth Crusade begins
1218 Peire de Montagut becomes the fifteenth Grand Master of the Templars (during his tenure the relationship between the Templars and the Hospitallers will improve greatly; the Grand Master of the Hospitallers was Guerin de Montaigu, who might have been related)
1228 Sixth Crusade begins under Frederick II (it will eventually restore limited control of Jerusalem to the Crusaders under a ten-year truce)
1230 The Teutonic Order begins to conquer pagan Prussia and founds the State of the Teutonic Order (from this point both the Hospitallers and the Templars begin to take an interest in the idea of founding their own military-monastic states)
1232 Armand de Périgord becomes the sixteenth Grand Master of the Templars
1236 Knights of St. Thomas given papal approval as a military order
1239 Crusade of 1239, also known as the Barons' Crusade, massively expands the territory under the control of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
1244 Siege of Jerusalem: Khawarazmian army captures Jerusalem and razes most of it; Battle of La Forbie: major Crusading powers, including the military orders, join forces with the Sultanate of Damascus against the Sultanate of Egypt and, after severe losses on both sides, the Crusaders lose, marking the beginning of the complete collapse of Crusader power throughout the Holy Land
1245 First Council of Lyon; Innocent IV calls for a new Crusade; after the capture of Armand de Périgord, Richard de Bures administers the Templar Order, but it is unknown whether he actually became the seventeenth Grand Master
1247 Guillaume de Sonnac becomes eighteenth Grand Master of the Templars (if Richard de Bures is counted)
1248 Seventh Crusade begins under St. Louis IX, in a direct attack against the Egyptian Sultanate
1249 Siege of Damietta: French forces with the help of the Templars seize Damietta
1250 Battle of Mansurah: Crusaders are defeated but the Templars under Guillaume de Sonnac perform extraordinary feats of valor; de Sonnac, heavily wounded, barely escapes with his life; Battle of Fariskur: de Sonnac is killed and St. Louis is aptured and held for ransom; Renaud de Vichiers becomes nineteenth Grand Master of the Templars (if Richard de Bures is counted)
1256 Thomas Bérard becomes twentieth Grand Master of the Templars (if Richard de Bures is counted)
1260 Constantinople is recaptured by the Byzantine Empire
1270 Eighth Crusade under St. Louis IX begins but is hampered by illness and the death of St. Louis
1271 Ninth Crusade under Edward of England begins (it is mildly successful but is cut short when Edward needs to return home); the capture of Krak des Chevaliers, one of the most important Hospitaller castles, results in a ten-year truce between Crusaders and the Sultanate
1273 Guillaume de Beaujeu becomes twenty-first Grand Master of the Templars (if Richard de Bures is counted)
1285 Philip IV the Fair inherits the crown of France, which is heavily in debt, especially to the Templars
1289 County of Tripoli is conquered
1291 Kingdom of Jerusalem falls, and the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller retreat the Kingdom of Cyprus; Thibaud Gaudin becomes twenty-second Grand Master of the Templars (if Richard de Bures is counted)
1292 Jacques de Molay becomes the last Grand Master of the Templars
1293 Jacques de Molay tours the major Western kingdoms trying to stir up support for the Templars and the remnants of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in Cyprus (he is able to get promises of supplies, but no interest in another Crusade; in addition, he has to fight off suggestions from the Papacy and elsewhere that the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller should merge)
1296 Pope Boniface VIII issues the bull Clericis laicos, sharply criticizing Philip IV and beginning a full-scale power struggle between the French monarchy and the Papacy
1297 Louis IX is canonized by Boniface VIII
1299 Jacques de Molay begins working toward a Frank-Mongol alliance against the Mamelukes (it will never quite come together due to timing); La Roche-Guillaume, the last Templar stronghold near Antioch, falls to the Mamelukes
1302 Boniface VIII issues the bull Unam sanctam, escalating the power struggle between the Papacy and the French Crown; Philip IV tries, but fails to seize the pope
1305 Raymond Bertrand de Got, a strongly pro-French partisan, becomes Pope Clement V, which effectively marks the victory of the French Crown over the Papacy in the ongoing power struggle between the two
1306 Henry II of Cyprus (formerly also of Jerusalem) and his brother Amalric become locked in a power struggle; the Templars back Amalric and Henry is deposed and exiled to Armenia; Philip IV expels the Jews from France in order to seize their assets
1307 Philip IV arrests Knights Templar throughout France, seizing their assets, and torturing them in order to get confessions of heresy and wrongdoing (most will later recant their confessions)
1308 Under pressure from the French king, Clement V sets up papal commissions to investigate the Templars with the bull Faciens misericordiam; the 'Chinon Parchment': Templar leaders are confessed and absolved by representatives of the Pope
1309 Clement V moves the Papal Curia to Avignon and the 'Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy' (1309-1377)begins; after an extensive series of political clashes with Venice, Clement V tries to encourage a Crusade against the Venetians
1310 Amalric of Cyprus is assassinated and Henry II returns to the throne with the backing of the Hospitallers; Philip IV has 54 Templars burned at stake
1311 Council of Vienne; Clement V orders the arrest of the Templars throughout Europe with the bull Pastoralis praeeminentiae
1312 Clement V formally dissolves the Templars with the bull Vox in excelso and hands over Templar assets to the Hospitallers in the bull Ad providam and a series of further bulls
1313 Henry II pushes through the dissolution of the Templars in Cyprus
1314 Philip IV has Jacques de Molay burned at stake; Clement V dies shortly after, and Philip IV shortly after that
1317 James II of Aragon, who had opposed the Templar dissolution, gets permission from Pope John XXII to form a new military order to take over former Templar property
1319 Military Order of Christ is founded in Portugal for former Templars
Note: Of the religious military orders of the time, two are still in existence and under protection of the Holy See: the Hospitallers (as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta) and the Order of the Holy Sepulcher.
