The Last Crusade Of The Templars

Times Of London ^ | 11-29-2004 | Ruth Gledhill

[blam]

The last crusade of the Templars

By Ruth Gledhill

The knights want a Papal apology nearly 700 years after they were disbanded and hounded into exile

THE VATICAN is giving “serious consideration” to apologising for the persecution that led to the suppression of the Knights Templar.

The suppression, which began on Friday , October 13, 1307, gave Friday the Thirteenth its superstitious legacy.

A Templar Order in Britain that claims to be descended from the original Knights Templar has asked that the Pope should make the apology.

The Templars, based in Hertford, are hoping for an apology by 2007, the 700th anniversary of the start of the persecution, which culminated with the torture and burning at the stake of the Grand Master Jacques de Molay for heresy and the dissolution of the Order by apostolic decree in 1312.

The letter, signed by the Secretary of the Council of Chaplains on behalf of the Grand Master of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ and the Temple of Solomon Grand Preceptory, with a PO box address in Hertford, formally requests an apology “for the torture and murder of our leadership”, instigated by Pope Clement V.

“We shall witness the 700th anniversary of the persecution of our order on 13th October 2007,” the letter says. “It would be just and fitting for the Vatican to acknowledge our grievance in advance of this day of mourning.”

Apologies have already been made by the Roman Catholic Church for the persecution of Galileo and for the Crusades. The Templars hope that these precedents will make their suit more likely to succeed.

Hertford Templar Tim Acheson, who is descended from the Scottish Acheson family that has established Templar links and whose family lived until recently in Bailey Hall, Hertford, said: “This letter is a serious attempt by a Templar group which traces its roots back to the medieval Order to solicit an apology from the Papacy.”

He added: “The Papacy and the Kingdom of France conspired to destroy the Order for reasons which modern historians judge to be primarily political. Their methods and motives are now universally regarded as brutal, unfair and unjustified.

“The Knights Templar officially ceased to exist in the early 1300s, but the order continued underground. It was a huge organisation and the vast majority of Templars survived the persecution, including most of their leaders, along with much of their treasure and, most importantly, their original values and traditions.”

The Hertford Mercury newspaper has reported newly discovered Templar links with Hertford, including a warren of tunnels beneath the town. At the heart of the maze of tunnels is Hertford Castle, where in 1309 four Templars from Temple Dinsley near Hitchin were imprisoned after their arrest by Edward II, who believed that they were holding a lost treasure. The treasure was never found.

When Subterranea Britannica, a group of amateur archaeologists, expressed an interest in investigating Hertford’s tunnels last month, they received anonymous threats telling them not to.

The Templars captured Jerusalem during the Crusades and were known as “keepers of the Holy Grail”, said to be the cup used at the Last Supper or as the receptacle used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch Christ’s blood as he bled on the Cross, or both.

Interest in the Templars and the Holy Grail is at an unprecedented high after the success of books such as The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, and the earlier Holy Blood Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, which claimed that Jesus survived the crucifixion and settled in France.

The Knights Templar were founded by Hugh de Payens, a French knight from the Champagne area of Burgundy, and eight companions in 1118 during the reign of Baldwin II of Jerusalem, when they took a perpetual vow to defend the Christian kingdom. They were assigned quarters next to the Temple. In 1128, they took up the white habit of the Cistercians, adding a red cross. The order knights, sergeants, farmers and chaplains amassed enormous wealth.

In Rome, a Vatican spokesman said that the demand for an apology would be given “serious consideration”. However, Vatican insiders said that the Pope, 84, was under pressure from conservative cardinals to “stop saying sorry” for the errors of the past, after a series of papal apologies for the Crusades, the Inquisition, Christian anti-Semitism and the persecution of scientists and “heretics” such as Galileo.

[Slipperduke]

Strewth. That may actually add up. I am preparing to eat a slice of humble pie back here!

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks very much for the links. The info I posted about 33rd degree was told to me some years ago by a FreeMason as he showed me the permissible parts of the temple. I guess he could have been mistaken, or lying to me (although I've known him since I was ten).

During our tour of the permissible parts of the temple, some regalia-decked martinet came out and (without speaking to me, looking at me; merely referring to me) demanded to know what my friend was doing with "him" (meaning me). My friend replied that he was showing me "the permissible parts of the temple" The martinet told him that better be all he did.

And, to top all, in the library where we'd spent a good bit of time, there was a framed photo of the inner sanctum, from a much earlier decade.

Finding out one way or the other (re: 33rd degree) isn't important to me, because I regard FreeMasonry as a bunch of ridiculous, phony, made-up hocus-pocus secret-handshake ritualistic wannaB-S.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

We can agree to disagree. Since I don't adhere to "collective guilt" theories, there's no need for anyone to apologize. No one alive did anything wrong in the 1300s. The debasement of religious institutions by flawed, evil men is certainly a subject for debate, historical and scholarly study, and heated discussion. The crimes of officials of the Church of England, the Congregationalists of 17th-century New England, German Lutherans and Anabaptists are certainly parallel moments of injustice.

EVERY educated and civilized Catholic I know agrees that religious executions and religious-sanctioned murder are wrong. And I am not sure that liberal secular humanists, despite their enthusiasm for pointing figures at odd moments in Catholic history, would find the revival of religious military orders to be all that welcome.

[Taliesan]

You're telling me that in 80 years, Communists managed to kill more people than thousands of years of jihads, crusades, wars, skirmishes, sacrifices and persecutions?

Can't speak for Islam, but the number of souls killed by the various agents of Christendom is a FRACTION of what Stalin himself accomplished in a single decade.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

That's right about the numbers for Communist homicide/genocide. If you count the Nazis and other horrific modern episodes of political genocide in the 20th-century by non-Christians, the numbers soar even higher.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

It's likely that fewer people in Western Europe were killed or died (including by natural causes) in total numbers throughout the entirety of the medieval period (from the reign of Charlemagne to the Protestant Reformation in 1517)than were exterminated by Communists in the 20th-century. If you add modern abortions in secular humanist countries as examples of genocide, then that is certainly the case.

[winodog]

I must apoligize for taking too much a defensive stand and assuming that you were a "dont bash cathlics, we have never done anything wrong stance" I, like you do not believe in the collective guilt stuff. I am willing to take the oppisite side in this case. I appreciate and respect your honesty and your ability to talk about a subject without it turning into a dam you and your stupid mind debate. May you and yours have a blessed day.

Michael

[RinaseaofDs]

Jesus would never settle in France.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Right. Lord Acton took the position that Catholics should acknowledge the wrongs and evils of history as a matter of historical scholarship. I agree with that. Anyone murdered in the past by evil religious fanatics or political opportunists is a victim of terrible evil.

I just think it is very wrong for people to persist in attacking the church today or contemporary Catholics for stuff that happened hundreds of years ago they had nothing to do with. A lot of people have been murdered in religious controversies going back to Jericho and the battle for Canaan or in bizarre Aztec or Druid human sacrifices. It was all evil. No one alive today is responsible for that.

Spaniards and French Catholics of the medieval period hardly hold a monopoly on religious or political homicide. It's unfortunate that bigotry pushes that myth. That's a form of political opportunism with a definite agenda.

[Necrovore]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7029513.stm

and now they will apologize for the atrocities toward our Knights Templar

[Smokin' Joe]

The "Church" has perpetuated more atrocities on mankind than anything other than, maybe Communism.

Yeah, in two millemmia, there are bound to be a few bad apples.

Communism, on the other hand, has achieved so much more in so little time, and little, if any, good has come from it.

[Smokin' Joe]

bfl

[blam]

Vatican book on Templars' demise

The Knights Templar were disbanded in the 14th Century

The Vatican is to publish a book which is expected to shed light on the demise of the Knights Templar, a Christian military order from the Middle Ages.

The book is based on a document known as the Chinon Parchment, found in the Vatican Secret Archives six years ago after years of being incorrectly filed.

The document is a record of the heresy hearings of the Templars before Pope Clement V in the 14th Century.

The official who found the paper says it exonerates the knights entirely.

Prof Barbara Frale, who stumbled across the parchment by mistake, says that it lays bare the rituals and ceremonies over which the Templars were accused of heresy.

In the hearings before Clement V, the knights reportedly admitted spitting on the cross, denying Jesus and kissing the lower back of the man proposing them during initiation ceremonies.

However, many of the confessions were obtained under torture and knights later recanted or tried to claim that their initiation ceremony merely mimicked the humiliation the knights would suffer if they fell into the hands of the Muslim leader Saladin.

The leader of the order, Jacques de Moley, was one of those who confessed to heresy, but later recanted.

He was burned at the stake in Paris in 1314, the same year that the Pope dissolved the order.

However, according to Prof Frale, study of the document shows that the knights were not heretics as had been believed for 700 years.

In fact she says "the Pope was obliged to ask for pardons from the knights... the document we have found absolves them".

Details of the parchment will be published as part of Processus contra Templarios, a book that will be released by the Vatican's Secret Archive on 25 October.

[ByDesign]

“Speaking of the DaVinci Code I’ll toss in a plug for “Foucault’s Pendulum” by Umberto Eco.

If you really want to know a lot about the Templars and all of the famous esoteric groups of history, what is claimed about them, from a unique and skeptical perspective (don’t want to give away too much of the plot) it’s a great novel.

Problem is the first 50 pages or so are mind-numbingly boring. Then it gets good. It’s the DaVinci Code for non-morons.”

I heartily agree, this is a must-read if you’re curious at all about the Templars. It’s not a quick-read-at-the-beach kind of book, but well worth the journey. I fid myself not particularly liking the main character of the book, but the story keeps me in, every time.

It’s all the more amazing when you realize Ecco’s native tongue is Italian.

Also worth the read is The Name Of The Rose. The movie was okay, the book was much, much better.

Holy Blood, Holy Grail is utter nonsense, it’s poorly written, makes leaps in logic to make it’s points that boggle the mind, and often makes you reread page after page of the same material repeateded slightly differently. It has a cult status, much like Chariots of the Gods, but it should be looked at as pure fiction, much like that hack Brown’s DaVinci Code.

Ecco did his homework, the material he presents is based on historical documents that you can go read yourself. I don’t believe in the idea that there’s this woo woo mystical cult still operating, but he sets this fantasy in the middle of solidly researched and beautifully described historical facts.

Finding good, solid books on the Templars is hard, most of it is kooky conspiracy theory dreck, or dry as a bone research documents or the original (most often Latin) manuscripts and history books. Ecco’s book is a breath of fresh air in the genre.

The Templars existed, that much is known, and their works still remain. Do they exist still? Probably not. But their story is a fascinating one!