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.
Even THESE bishops?
Keeping my eye on the woodwork to see what comes out of it ...
You are correct. And the vatican went along with it because the great wealth of the Knights had made them a threat to the Church.
Jacques de Molay, Thou art avenged.
Sounds like a Mel Gibson Production.
The Phillip the Fair on the Discovery looked just like John Edwards .
They aren't so secret - Vatican Secret Archives
It was all over money. The Templars were the defacto bankers of the European royalty. When the King of France couldn’t pay back his loans, he decided to have them trumped up on heresy charges...............
Clerical error.......pun intended..........
This is why separation of church and state is such a great idea.
The fraud worked so well for the king o f France, other monarchs across Europe decided they didn’t want to pay back their loans either.............
I see two Europes.........
Ditto.
Next week marks the 700th anniversary of the Infamous Friday the 13th purge. I wonder what occultic Masonic rituals will be in store for us all?????
Oxymoron.
That’s their story, anyway.
It was the King of France that wanted the Templars gone.
The Pope here, appears to have a sin of omission.
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