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The last crusade of the Templars

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« on: January 03, 2008, 03:29:17 am »

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.

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« Reply #1 on: January 03, 2008, 03:29:48 am »

 
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   posted 02-17-2005 11:09 PM                       
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Are The Holy Grail And Ark
Of The Covenant Hidden
On Baltic Sea Island?
By Peter Starck
12-25-00

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - The Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant may have been hidden by a secretive religious order of crusaders, the Knights Templar, on the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm some 830 years ago, according to a new book.

The whereabouts of the grail and the ark -- legendary religious relics of immeasurable value to Christian and Jewish believers -- have intrigued historians and archaeologists for centuries and films about quests to locate them, notably the ''Indiana Jones'' series, have thrilled movie audiences worldwide.

No one knows exactly what the relics actually are but the ark is believed a box-type container that held the stone tablets inscribed with the 10 commandments which Moses received from God on Mount Sinai.

Legends differ about the Holy Grail but it is most widely thought to be the chalice which Jesus and his apostles drank from at last supper before he was crucified.

Some scholars speculate that treasures amassed by the Knights Templar ended up in Rosslyn chapel in Scotland. Others have hinted at locations in Ethiopia, Spain and Canada.

In a 194-page book ``The Templars' Secret Island,'' Denmark's Erling Haagensen and Henry Lincoln of Britain say medieval round churches were built at sites on Bornholm based on the sacred geometry used by the Knights Templar elsewhere in Europe, most famously at Rennes-le-Chateau in southern France.

The book, studded with graphs, plots the churches' geometric layout with mathematical precision and the authors suggest the design may be a map to hidden treasures.

The Danish archbishop Eskil visited Knights Templar Grand Master Bertrand de Blanchefort in France in 1162, nine years after the death of his predecessor Bernard of Clairvaux.

The historically recorded purpose of Eskil's visit -- coming at a time when the Knights Templar may have feared becoming vulnerable because of the influential Bernard's demise -- was to prepare a crusade against pagans inhabiting the Baltic Sea's northeastern coast in what is today Estonia and Latvia.

The book suggests that Knights Templar who joined the Baltic crusade built Bornholm's churches and may have taken the opportunity to stash some treasures there.

``The need for a secure hiding place would have been paramount...It would make sense to conceal whatever may have been the Order's treasures in more than one place.

``Better still to provide a hiding place which was remote and had no apparent connection with the Order. Bertrand's involvement in the planning for the Baltic Mission would have offered him the perfect opportunity. Bornholm...now becomes a trump card,'' says the book.

``It was small and easily controlled and protected. Above all, it was remote, unknown, unlikely to be disturbed, not big enough or rich enough to attract an errant warrior intent on carving out a kingdom,'' it continues.

Unique Churches Lasting Heritage

The European Templar Heritage Research Network (ETHRN), a non-profit making association of scholars not affiliated to any religious or political group, says it has been historically documented that the order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon -- the full name of the Knights Templar -- was founded by aristocrats from the French region of Burgundy early in the 12th century.

The order's classic round churches founded on octagonal geometry, supposedly based on the design of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, are a lasting heritage of the Knights Templar era, the ETHRN says.

Historical records and 20th century archaeological digs indicate that a group of Knights Templar were searching for something under Jerusalem's Temple Mount between 1118 and 1127.

Haagensen and Lincoln say that on returning to France in 1127 the crusaders reported to Bernard of Clairvaux that their ''mission'' had been accomplished.

A carving on a pillar at the cathedral in Chartres, France, suggests the mission had been to find the Ark of the Covenant.

Legends say Mary Magdalen, to this day the village saint of Rennes-le-Chateau, and Joseph of Arimathea, who according to the Bible buried Jesus, took the Holy Grail to France.

Evidence of the belief in this tale is found in historical records about the Nazis searching for the Holy Grail at Rennes-le-Chateau during World War Two.

Backing up the theory that Knights Templar treasures may have been hidden on Bornholm, the book says ancestors of the noblemen who founded the order lived on this rocky 587 square km (226.7 square miles) island, now part of Denmark and home to some 45,000 people.

Burgundians Came From Bornholm

The authors point to a find of nearly 3,000 tiny, intricately carved golden figures unearthed in a 1985-86 excavation of a Bornholm field as lending credibility to their claim of a Bornholm connection.

The golden figures have been dated to AD 400-600 when the Merovingians -- a clan of Frankish kings who claimed to be, like Jesus, of the house and lineage of the Bible's King David -- were at the height of their power. Descendants of the Merovingians later settled in Burgundy.

The book also quotes a AD 417 work by Spanish historian Orosius, which says the Burgundians came from Bornholm.

The Knights Templar viewed the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant as their rightful possessions because of their bloodline to the House of David, scholars say.

The equilateral six-sided shape which forms the star of David is part of the geometric design formed by Bornholm's medieval churches, the book by Haagensen and Lincoln shows.

``It is undeniable that those who planned and built the churches of Bornholm knew exactly what they were doing and why they did it,'' the authors say, adding the design ``indicated a sure hiding place.''

An excavation in 1995 to install heating ducts under the floor of Oesterlars church, the biggest of Bornholm's round churches, found ``unusual and unexpected stone features...which might be explained by the presence of an undiscovered crypt,'' the book says, quoting the official renovation report.

Olsker, another church in the geometric pattern, also features a ``curious indication of a possible underground structure beneath a staircase,'' the authors say.

``Neither of these subterranean anomalies has, thus far, been investigated.''
http://www.rense.com/general6/baltic.htm



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