Posted on 11/29/2004 2:57:11 PM PST by 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.
Bump and print for night-time reading. [ It will be a nice change from reading catalogues for the mad dash to order stuff for Christmas. :( ]
There are many histories, and tomorrow I'll try to get you a list (if I don't, please Freepmail me). You can draw your own conclusions.
My sense is that some members were perfectly orthodox, and others were not, particularly in France. Politics definitely intervened (French politics, the worst of the worst), and I think this has got to be taken into consideration, too. However, one of the real reasons that religious orders were suppressed in the past is simply that they had outlived their usefulness and their mission was going astray or going nowhere. I think this had a lot to do with the suppression of the Templars.
One of the things that makes me feel they may have been unorthodox, however, is their large contemporary following among the New Age fruits and nuts of this world. If orthodox Christians can recognize orthodoxy, then fruits and nuts can recognize heterodoxy, and they seem to have been doing it abundantly in the case of the Templars.
Very interesting, thanks!
Thanks - the English lodges are no doubt the origin of US lodges. Continental lodges seem to have been quite different, but this wouldn't have affected most American Masons, I imagine.
It's an interesting topic whatever conclusions are drawn from the speculation and historical discussions.
Did you ever see the campy film The Minion which starts with an archaeological Templar discovery under New York at the very beginning?
Bump for later read.
Oh hell, I couldn't care less about their "mysticism".......what has always impressed me about the Knights Templar was their reknown for kicking serious Muslim ass.
These guys were shock troops / Special Forces of their day. Amazing warriors. The Muslim forces feared them; outright scared s**tless of them. They were every bit the equal or better of any force they ever met in combat, and they usually fought while vastly outnumbered.
Some here can take their catty little potshots, but you're talking about one of the best fighting forces in world history.
He then said:"They have accepted my apologies on behalf of Catholic men who had erred but interestingly,none have paused to even wonder if their ancestors may have trangressed against us". I really got a hearty laugh out of that,the Pope so understates things. Obviously the reporter caught on but I never heard another word about it. However,I have not heard the Pope apologise to anyone since. i really thought he was attempting to get people and nations to examine their own consciences or national consciences but had no clue on how averse folks are to accepting responsibility for their own sins and crimes.
BTW,I always thought the Monica affair was dusted up and thrown out to bring the TV coverage of the Pope's visit to Cuba to a halt. The media was worried lest people start thinking seriously about religion and Catholicism. If you recall the whole thing broke the evening before the official visit began. All of the big newsmen were down in Cuba and had to get toodling back to D.C. that night. The Pope arrived but few cameras and no notable newspersons were there.
Something less drastic but similar happened when the Pope came to Denver.CBS,at least in Phoenix,was set to do a 20 minute segment on the Pope,just as it started it was interrupted and we got 20 minutes of a scene in a CChicago police station. They were showing people storming the front desk of a Chicago precinct house,supposedly because they had just learned that the body of Micheal Jordon's father had been found. He had been murdered in the south,strangest thing,never could understand it except in terms of providing an exuse not to cover the Pope.
The debates on the speculative literature, esoterica, and other apocryphal legends certainly have their fair share of interest.
I don't think any of the Templars survived. But what did survive - and what was a threat to church and state - was their knowledge of the lost teachings of Jesus. Their use of his teachings on alchemy, personal Christhood and the science of the spoken word resulted in their manifesting material and spiritual wealth that was the envy of the powers that were.
Unfortunately those teachings exist in very few places today in pure form. They have been watered down into New Age mumbo-jumbo or hijacked by Satanists, and is thus rejected as a result of the poisoned well strategy.
True, over time the Templars were infiltrated by corrupt men which was partly the cause of their persecution. But ever since Christ died his Teachings have been distorted or suppressed by those who did not want this teaching to get to the masses: That Christ was an example of what we could do, not the exception. He gave teachings on how to contact the divine source within and true soul liberation, which has nothing to do with orthodox docrines empahsizing sin, guilt and vicarious atonement. The Templars found these teachings and put them to use. Unfortunately, Westerners, myself included, do not have the self-discipline to use the lost teachings.
I am not so much interested in the history of their politics but moreso the esoteric spiritual means they used to achieve their wealth. Only akasha holds the true record of their political history.
I would be in favor of some sort of apology - if only to give some recognition to the group that has influenced western civiization more than any other as we know it, yet has been ignored by orthodox historians, precisely for the reasons above.
read later bump
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What I described applies to most European lodges. Don't make the mistake of lumping them in with other groups like the imfamous P2 lodge or the Order of Orangemen. Believe me, there's a BIG difference.
can say that regional practice in that Cathar region during the 1st millenium established a special place for Mary Magdeline in local worship
St. Mary Magdalene was a very popular saint throughout Europe, not just in the south of France. There were no more chapels, churches or shrines dedicated in her honor in southern France than there were in Italy, England, Spain or Swabia.
And the Cathars rejected the cult of the saints entirely - one of the reasons why they were denounced as heretics and one of the reason why some modern Protestants like to pretend that the Cathars were somehow a proto-Protestant movement.
In point of fact, the Cathars believed that Jesus was a pure spirit, not a man, and that the physical world was evil - that all men are trapped in a prison of flesh by the devil. They believed that Jesus was a nonphysical apparition who came to point the way out of the physical world. To a Cathar, the concept of a Jesus who was a real man and who impregnated a real woman and trapped another spirit in a prison of flesh would be unthinkable.
And at least one local ruler believed himself to be "in the line of David." If memory serves, it was that regional leader who led the first Crusade to the Holy Land and became, for a while and with the support of the Templars, the "King of Jerusalem."
Which local ruler was that? Raymond IV the Count of Toulouse? Raymond IV was indeed the most prominent nobleman from southern France in the First Crusade and he helped conquer Jerusalem.
However, he was offered the crown as King of Jerusalem and he refused it. Baldwin I of Boulougne, from northwestern France, was the first King of Jerusalem.
The only primary source surviving that contains a detailed description of Raymond IV by one of his close associates and supporters makes no mention of any claim to be "of the line of David". If he truly believed this, wouldn't he have accepted the kingship of the City of David?
I think you're confusing Dan Brown's fictional novel with actual history.
In the collateral line, most likely.
"The chalice from the palace has the pellet with the poison
The flagon with the dragon has the brew that is true
or was it
The flagon with the dragon has the pellet with the poison
The chalice from the palace has the brew that is true
Choose wisely"
LOL Danny Kaye bump
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