Sailing and Grailing Across the Atlantic

The most bizarre chapter in the story of Rennes-le-Chateau may have to do with the Money Pit mystery on Oak Island just off Nova Scotia. According to Michael Bradley, some of the keepers of the Grail may have come to the New World long before Columbus. He believes that some of the Templars may have fled to Canada after the dissolution of their order, carrying the Grail. The Money Pit has more often been associated with pirates' buried treasure, but as many know, the "Jolly Roger" flag's skull-and-crossbones icon has long been associated with Masonic and Templar legend.

The so-called Venetian "Zeno Map" of the 15th century shows a knight with a sword standing where Nova Scotia is. (The Sinclairs of Scotland are "hereditary lords of Rosslyn Chapel" and are said to be descended from the Scots Guards, a clique loyal to the Stuart dynasty, which in turn are thought to have contained converted members of the Templar Order who fought with Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn, and to have provided the basis of Freemasonry.)

The Zeno map refers to a map of the North Atlantic first published in 1558 in Venice by Nicolo Zeno, a descendant of a person by the same name, Nicolo Zeno, of the Zeno brothers.
The younger Zeno published the map, along with a series of letters, with the claim that he had discovered them in a storeroom in his family's house in Venice. According to his claim, the map and letters were made around the year 1400 and purport to describe a voyage by the Zeno brothers made in the 1390s under the direction of a prince named Zichmni. The voyage supposedly traversed the North Atlantic and, according to some interpretations, reached North America.

Most historians today regard the map and accompanying narrative as a hoax, perpetrated by the younger Zeno to retroactively put forth a claim for Venice as having discovered the New World prior to Christopher Columbus.

The evidence against the authenticity of the map is based largely on the appearance of many non-existent islands in the North Atlantic and off the coast of Iceland. One of these islands was Frisland.