“At the Ruined Tower” Surrealism and the Templar Legend “Why this hand of fire ?" Nadja - André Breton “…the Prince of Aquitaine in his ruined tower …” The Chimaeras - Gérard de Nerval At first glance, the Templars are not very present in the surrealist imagination, which can easily be explained to the extent that they are, as Jean-Pierre Lasalle writes, an order of “Knights of military religions , soldier-monks , combatants and priors, shock commandos but also professed ”(1) to be linked, in addition, and notwithstanding the anachronism, to an occupation of the colonial type …Precisely what the surrealists had always rejected with the greatest force! Seen from...