Posted on 10/05/2007 1:44:55 PM PDT by NYer
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.
You wrote:
“You and I both know that confessions were tortured out of people then by both the state and the Catholic Church. Lets not act like the Vatican was some innocent bystander in this.”
You don’t know the facts:
1) The first confession came BEFORE the arrest and BEFORE any torture.
2) The Templars were arrested and tortured without the pope being informed and he was not happy about it - as I already mentioned.
3) This happened in France, not in the Vatican, and at that time there was effectively no Vatican. The pope was living in Avignon.
“The Church especially then could have went to the extreme to protect its own order.”
Again, you don’t know the facts.
1) The Templars were a sovereign order of knighthood. I am sure some popes felt like the Templars were the Church’s “own” but that is a gross over-simplification to say the least.
2) In case you missed it, I already mentioned that King Philip had already kidnapped and abused a previous pope - Boniface VIII. The idea that a new pope, living in fear of French arms (and residing across the river from French territory unlike the kidnapped pope who had been far away near Rome and WAS STILL KIDNAPPED anyway) could go “to the extreme to protect its own order” when that pope already believed the order was guilty simply makes no sense.
Far too often people who know little about the history of the Church ascribe almost omnipotent status to the Church during the Middle Ages. If the pope or the Church was omnipotent then there would have been no kidnapping of Boniface VIII by King Philip.
Yes he held them and yes they were suppressed. That’s why religion and the world is in such a mess.
“Even THESE bishops?”
Was that necessary? There are RINO’s in the Republican party just as there are CINO’s in the Vatican. If Americans suffer betrayal by our own citizens, then realize Jesus suffered His own betrayal first—from Judas, and from ALL who commit sin.
The original Knights loved and honored the Sacraments. They were first holy in nature and then military by trade. Today’s un- (or rather), anti-Catholic Masons are wholly against the Sacraments and all Teachings of Christ. They wax of military heroics past, but refuse the discipline of our True Champion, the One Who Dies on the Cross for our shameful sin. What might shock our modern public is not the a possible restoration of the Order, but what the Pope may command the order to do such as be non-military, non-violent, and ever devoted to the Sacraments. The challenge may be so high: obedience, celibacy, poverty, loyalty to the Pope, devotion to the Sacraments (like daily Reconciliation, Daily Mass, etc.) that the anti-Catholic Masons may play yet another word game to falsely trap restored Knights into legal battle and real persecution. The restored Knights will be murdered again in the same manner that Jesus told St Peter that he was going to Rome to be Crucified again.
What uncovered books can help support your premise?
My suggestion is,
A Issue a formal apology.
B. Start a Recruiting Drive
W
I agree.
Here’s one to be counted...
Kentucky
York Rite Freemason
> Today’s un- (or rather), anti-Catholic Masons are wholly against the Sacraments and all Teachings of Christ.
What arrant nonsense!
> No doubt, there will be many Masons posting on this claiming their hero has been vindicated. Trouble is, you’ll never know they are Masons. Most of them won’t identify themselves as such.
What rubbish. I’m a Mason. In fact, most Masons are quite happy to identify themselves as such.
bump
> The problem is the earliest Scottish Lodges were started in the early 15th century (the UGLE in early 18th century) while the Templars themselves where eliminated in the early 1307, a century earlier.
For speculative Freemasonry, perhaps. The operative Freemasons and their guilds were around long before that: amongst other things they built the Cathedrals.
You are correct, I am referring to the speculative Blue Lodges. Guild Freemasonry have probably been around as long as the concepts of craft guilds existed.
Most Masons are quite happy to identify themselves as such.
Took you a while. You are quoting my Oct. 2007 post. Why didn’t you address this back when others who are inquisitive about Freemasonry might check out what Masons have to say about it, rather than now on a dead thread? The fact that you are just now posting this has nothing to do with you identifying yourself? Surely not.
Ok, then, on identification, please provide for me the names of Masons running for national office that identify themselves as such. Not just on the national level, I know of none on the state or even the city level that identify themselves as such...and I happen to have known some of these that in fact were, or are, Masons.
Not much of a secret archive if everyone knows about it. I had read that the library is NOT open to the public, so perhaps that’s why peeps call it secret.
Wasn’t this from around the time that the French King moved the Vatican to France for 100 or so years? The French Kings appointed the popes.
That can't be right. I've been told that the Popes controlled the entire world until Luther!
I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!
> Took you a while. You are quoting my Oct. 2007 post. Why didn’t you address this back when others who are inquisitive about Freemasonry might check out what Masons have to say about it, rather than now on a dead thread?
Sorry, the October thread was referenced yesterday on a thread concerning the Templars, here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2056401/posts
I took from that the thread to still be live.
> The fact that you are just now posting this has nothing to do with you identifying yourself? Surely not.
So far as identifying myself as a Mason goes, it’s even easier than that: it’s on my About page, always has been.
What I said is correct: most Masons, if asked politely, will acknowledge their membership.
> Ok, then, on identification, please provide for me the names of Masons running for national office that identify themselves as such.
To get this information, your best bet is to contact each of them and ask them. Belonging to the Masons is not a masonic secret, and most masons if asked politely will tell you that they belong.
But it is a private question, a bit like being asked your political or religious affiliations or which bank you do business with or which Doctor is your GP. But it certainly isn’t secret.
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