Knights Templar

The history, origin and especially the demise of the Knights Templar has been done to death. But I believe I have discovered some correspondences that are not usually connected to the life and times of the Templars. I have no patience for the occult crap about magical practices or links to rosicrucians, but I have found some historical links of a sort to the Courts of Love, the Cathars and to the origins of the Holy Grail literature. This is not speculation, but hard historical facts.

First I must digress into a history of Troyes and the County of Champagne which plays such a big part in so much that happened in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Troyes has been in existence since the Roman era, and through the centuries gained great importance as a medieval centre of commerce.

Louis the Stammerer in 878 received at Troyes the imperial crown from the hands of Pope John VIII. At the end of the ninth century, the counts of Champagne chose Troyes as their capital. In 1285, when Philip the Fair united Champagne to the royal domain, the town kept a number of privileges.

The cathedral of Troyes is a fine Gothic structure begun in the 12th, and completed in the 15th, century; the ancient collegiate Church of St. Urban is a Gothic building whose lightness of treatment reminds one of La Sainte-Chapelle at Paris. It was built by Urban IV at the close of the 13th century. He was a native of Troyes and on one of the stained-glass windows he caused his father to be depicted, working at his trade of tailor.

In the Champagne countryside is the Abbey of the Paraclete, founded by Abelard and in which the Abbess Heloise died in 1163, and where her body and that of Abelard were buried until 1792.

CISTERCIANS

The little community of reformed Benedictines at Cîteaux, which would have so profound an influence on Western monasticism, grew so rapidly that it was soon able to send out offshoots. One of these monasteries, Clairvaux, was founded in 1115, in a wild valley of a tributary of the Aube, on land given by Count Hugh of Troyes. There Bernard, a recent initiate, was appointed abbot.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (Fontaines, near Dijon, 1090 – August 21, 1153 in Clairvaux) was a French abbot and the primary builder of the reforming Cistercian monastic order. "The voice of conscience, the dominating figure in the Christian church from 1125 to 1153" (Cantor 1993), his authority helped to end the schism of 1130. Bernard was the main voice of conservatism during the intellectual revival of Western Europe called the Renaissance of the 12th century and the main opponent of rising scholastic theology. Devoted to promoting the veneration of the Virgin Mary, he was also the most influential advocate of the Second Crusade. He was canonized as a saint in 1174 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1830.

Before long the abbot, who had intended to devote his life to the work of his monastery, was drawn into the affairs of the outside world. When in 1124 Pope Honorius II was elected, Bernard was already reckoned among the greatest of French churchmen; he now shared in the most important ecclesiastical discussions, and papal legates sought his counsel.

Thus in 1128 he was invited by Cardinal Matthew of Albano to the synod of Troyes, where he was instrumental in obtaining the recognition of the new order of Knights Templar, the rules of which he is said to have drawn up; and in the following year, at the synod of Châlons-sur-Marne, he ended the crisis arising out of certain charges brought against Henry, Bishop of Verdun, by persuading the bishop to resign.

Council of Troyes: 1128 - convened by Pope Honorius II recognized and confirmed the Order of the Knights Templar

CHAMPAGNE

The Counts of Champagne ruled the region of Champagne from 950 to 1316. Champagne evolved from the county of Troyes in the late eleventh century and Hugh I was the first to officially use the title "Count of Champagne". When Louis X became King of France in 1314, upon the death of his father Philip IV, Champagne became part of the Crown's territories. The titular counts of Champagne also inherited the post of seneschal of France.

The Champagne fairs were a circuit of six cloth fairs in the towns of Champagne and Brie, changing location every two months and spanning the year from January to October. At their height, in the 13th century, the Champagne fairs linked the cloth-producing cities of the Low Countries with the Italian dyeing and exporting centers. The fairs, which were already well-organized at the start of the century, were one of the earliest manifestations of a linked European economy, a characteristic of the High Middle Ages.

The towns provided huge warehouses, still to be seen at Provins. From the north came woolens and linen cloth. From the south came pepper and other spices, drugs, coinage and the new concepts of credit and bookkeeping. Goods converged from Spain, travelling along the well-established pilgrim route from Santiago de Compostela and from Germany. Once the cloth sales had been concluded, the reckoning of credit at the tables (banche) of Italian money-changers affected compensatory payments for goods, established future payments on credit, made loans to princes and lords, and settled bills of exchange (which were generally worded to expire at one of the Champagne fairs). Italian credit was able to exploit every exchange in the process, and Italian cloth merchants -- depending on the northern production for their trade in the Levant -- became the great bankers of the Late Middle Ages.

It was to the interest of the Count of Champagne, virtually independent of his nominal suzerain, the King of France, to extend the liberties and prerogatives of the towns. Traditional historians have dated the decline of the Champagne fairs to the conquest of Champagne by Philip the Bold in 1273 and Champagne's subsequent inclusion within the Crown of France by Philip IV in 1284. A sea route had been established, inaugurated by the first appearance of Genoese ships in Antwerp in 1277.

Hughes of Champagne (French: Hugues de Champagne, c.1074–?) was Count of Champagne from 1093 until 1125. The third son of Theobald I of Champagne, his older brother Eudes IV of Champagne died in 1092, leaving him master of Troyes, Vitry, and Bar-sur-Aube. In 1125 he went of to fight in a crusade, joining the Knights Templar transferring his titles to his nephew who became Theobald II of Champagne.

The Knights Templar trace their origin back to shortly after the First Crusade. In 1119, a French nobleman from the Champagne region, Hughes de Payens, collected eight of his knight relatives, and began the Order, their stated mission to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land. They approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem, and were allowed to set up headquarters on the southeastern side of the Temple Mount, inside the Al Aqsa Mosque.

De Payens approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem with eight knights, two of whom were brothers and all of whom were his relatives by either blood or marriage, in order to form the first of the Knights Templar.

The other knights were Geoffrey de St. Omer, Payen de Montdidier, Archambaud de St. Agnan, Andre de Montbard, Geoffrey Bison, and two men recorded only by the names of Rossal and Gondamer. The ninth knight remains unknown, although some have speculated that it was Hugh Comte de Champagne.

Theobald II of Champagne (1090-1151), also known as Theobald The Great, was Count of Champagne from 1125 to 1151, as well as count of Blois and of Chartres (from 1102). He held Auxerre, Maligny, Ervy, Troyes, and Châteauvillain as fiefs from Eudes II, Duke of Burgundy. He was the son of Stephen II, Count of Blois and Adela of Normandy, and the elder brother of King Stephen of England. Although he was the second son, Theobald was chosen as heir over his elder brother, Guillaume, who was weak mentally. In 1123 he married Matilda of Carinthia, daughter of Engelbert II of Carinthia. Their children were:

Henry I of Champagne, married Marie, oldest daughter of Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine
Theobald V of Blois
Adèle of Champagne, married King Louis VII of France (his 3rd wife)
Isabelle of Champagne, married 1. Roger of Apulia d. 1148 & 2. William Gouet IV d. 1170
Marie of Champagne, married Eudes II, Duke of Burgundy, later became Abbess of Fontevrault
William White Hands, 1135-1202, Archbishop of Reims 1176-1202, Cardinal 1179
Stephen I of Sancerre 1133-1191, Count of Sancerre and Crusader, died at the Siege of Acre
Agnes of Champagne (d. 1207), Dame de Ligny married Renaut II of Bar (d. 1170).
Margaret of Champagne nun at Fontevrault
Mathilde of Champagne married Rotrou III of Perche d. 1191

Remember that Henri I is the son-in-law of the King of France, the brother of a Cardinal, the brother of a queen of France, brother-in-law of the Duke of Burgundy.

Adèle de Champagne (c. 1140 – June 4, 1206) was the daughter of Theobald II of Champagne and Matilda of Carinthia. She was the third wife of Louis VII of France, with whom she had two children:

Dieudonné, the future Philippe Auguste (born August 21, 1165), only male heir of Louis VII
Agnes of France (1171 - after 1207)

Marie of France, or Marie Capet, Countess of Champagne (1145 – March 11, 1198), was the elder daughter of Louis VII of France and his first wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. So Henry didn't marry his own neice, only his step-neice.

MARIE CAPET

She was an older sister of Alix of France. She was an older paternal half-sister to Marguerite of France, Alys, Countess of the Vexin, Philip II of France and Agnes of France. She was also an older maternal half-sister to William, Count of Poitiers, Henry the Young King of France, Matilda of England, Richard I (Lion-Heart) of England, Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany, Leonora of England, Joan of England and John of England.

Her parents' marriage was annulled in 1152, and the custody of Marie and her sister Alix was awarded to their father, King Louis. Their mother Eleanor remarried to King Henry II of England, and so left France. In 1160, when her father King Louis married Adele of Champagne, he betrothed both Marie and Alix to Adele's brothers. After her betrothal, Marie was sent to the abbey of Avenay in Champagne for her education.

In 1164, Marie married Henry I, Count of Champagne. They had four children:

Scholastique of Champagne (died 1219), married William V of Macon
Henry II (1166–1197)
Marie of Champagne (died 1204), married Baldwin I of Constantinople
Theobald (1179–1201)

Henry I is the man who originated the Fairs of Champagne which brought wealth from all over Europe and the Mediterranean.

Marie was left as Regent for Champagne when Henry I left on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While her husband was gone, Marie's father died and her half-brother Philippe became king. He confiscated the dower lands of his mother Adele (also Marie's sister-in-law) and then married Isabelle of Hainaut, who had been previously betrothed to Marie's eldest son. This prompted Marie to join a party of disgruntled nobles -- including Queen Adele and the archbishop of Reims -- in plotting against Philippe. Eventually, relations between Marie and her royal brother improved. Her husband returned from the Holy Land, but died almost immediately. Now a widow with four young children, Marie considered marrying Philip of Flanders, but the engagement was broken off suddenly for unknown reasons.

After Henry I's death in 1181, Marie acted as regent from 1181 to 1187, when her son Henry came of age. However, Henry II left to go on Crusade, and so Marie once again served as regent in his absence from 1190 to Henry's death in 1197. She retired to the nunnery of Fontaines-les-Nones near Meaux, and died there in 1198.

A few words about Troyes: Troyes, Champagne (and Navarre) became part of the Crown of France when Jeanne de Navarre, the last countess of Champagne, married Philip the Fair, future king of France (This is the same Philip IV who plotted the destruction of the Knights Templar). Until this happened Troyes was the capital of a major French land and a prominent urban center with an important intellectual life. Count Henri I, the Liberal, married Marie de France, the daughter of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. Marie de France (or de Champagne) lived from 1145 to 1198 and introduced the courtly manners of her mother and the troubadour literature of her great grandfather, William IX of Poitou, to the court of Champagne. She wrote fables and lais (short narrative poems). Other major writers are Chretien de Troyes, 1135-1183, who wrote the poems about Percival and Lancelot, the historians Villehardouin (who wrote the History of the Conquest of Constantinople - the fourth crusade) and Joinville who wrote the History of Saint Louis (King Louis IX). Theology: Solomon Rachi, ca 1040-1105, interpreted and translated the Bible and the Talmud. There is now a Rachi Institute and Memorial.

In 1065 Rabbi Solomon bar Isaac (this same Solomon Rachi) founded a Kabala school in Troyes, the capital of Champagne, where he taught Jewish mysticism to the Court of Champagne. He also taught that there was a treasure buried beneath the temple mount in Jerusalem. One source says he taught that the Ark of the Covenant was buried there. This school continued for 200 years and was in place and influential during the reign of Marie de France and during the tenure of Chrétien de Troyes as minstrel to the Court of Champagne.

Baldwin I (July 1172 – 1205, Bulgaria), married to Marie de Champagne, daughter of Marie de France, the first emperor of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, as Baldwin IX Count of Flanders and as Baldwin VI Count of Hainaut, was one of the most prominent leaders of the Fourth Crusade, which resulted in the capture of Constantinople, the conquest of the greater part of the Byzantine Empire, and the foundation of the Latin Empire, also known as Romania (not to be confused with modern Romania).

This was the son-in-law of Marie de France, Countess of Champagne.

After Henry I's death in 1181, Marie acted as regent from 1181 to 1187, when her son Henry II came of age. However, Henry II left to go on Crusade, and so Marie once again served as regent in his absence from 1190 to Henry's death in 1197. She retired to the nunnery of Fontaines-les-Nones near Meaux, and died there in 1198.

"Marie is remembered today mainly for her role in the heresy that was the target of the Albigensian Crusade. She was also a patron of literature, including Andreas Capellanus, who served in her court, and Chrétien de Troyes. She was literate in French and Latin and maintained her own library." This quote comes from Wikipedia, but there is no source given for it. I have seen similar things written on a couple of web sites, but I cannot find any which give any historical basis for linking Marie's name with the Cathars. It is incontrovertible that Marie's great grandfather (William XI of Aquitaine) practiced religious freedom and gave the Cathars support in Aquitaine. It is unquestionable that Marie's mother, and to a large extent, Marie herself, originated the Courts of Love. Also both Marie and Eleanor, her mother, were strong women, ruling women in an era when such things were rare. This does not concretely link Marie to the Cathars.

Let me give you two quotes that link, however tenuously, Marie and the Cathars:

Eleanor of Aquitaine settled at Poitiers about 1170 after having influenced northern France as the wife of Louis VII and Britain as the wife of Henry II. Everywhere she went she took the courtly love of the troubadours along as a cultural force, redecorating the habits of the French and British courts as modern American Presidents' wives redecorate the White House. But it was in Poitiers that, along with her daughter, Marie de Champagne, Eleanor set up the institution of the Court of Love. It was at Poitiers that Marie urged Andreas Capellanus to produce the greatest source of information about the Provençal culture of that period, The Art of Courtly Love. Marie also set up Courts of Love "in which, just as feudal vassals brought their grievances to the assizes of their overlords for regulation litigants in love's thrall brought their problems for the judgment of the ladies" (Kelly 207). J.M. Rowbotham lists Love Courts at the various places discussed by Robert Briffault. Heer describes the Love Court of Eleanor as taking place "in the great hall.., before the scandalized gaze of old-fashioned feudal society. The judgments of the court, the arrests d'amour, concerned such matters as whether such and such a courtier loved his lady 'lawfully', that is, in conformity with the rules of courtly love.

The idea of a god of love or of love as an absolute ruler with power to enforce his will can be traced to the Greeks. From the fertility gods of the near East to the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine the idea persisted that sexual love, both physical and idealized, was meaningful and desirable, a human force not to be denied. It remained for the women of the troubadours to give the god of love a local habitation. C. S. Lewis points out that love permeated to the heart of Provençal culture, and took on many trappings of current philosophies and practices: "We find... conceptions of lovers as the members of an order of love, modeled upon the orders of religion; of an art of love, as in Ovid; and of a court of love, with solemn customs and usages, modeled upon the feudal courts of that period" (31).

Some scholars have seen courtly love as similar to the feelings that caused the Albigensian heresy. Other have traced its bases to the influence of Hispano-Arabic lyrics. Although its bases may have been eclectic, one can safely say that it was inclined to be heretical and was likely a carryover from paganism. Rowbotham suggests that luxury itself helped cause the heresy of romantic love: "Whether it were a secret unbelief or a spirit of social rebellion against the moral constraints of religion engendered by luxury and looseness of life, certain it is that the troubadours throughout their history will generally be found to constitute the anti-clerical party a natural position, some will say, for a race of men and poets who represented so strikingly the blithe, unfettered, and pagan conceptions of life" (48). However, pagan or not, the institutionalization of courtly love was couched in language and custom that was nominally Christian. It took on "the organizing structure of an imitated or assimilated Christian cosmos, with its worshipers, its martyrs and angels, its God of Love, and its Paradise" (Muscatine 17).

Courtly love, whose beginnings lay in the social control of the culturally disruptive sexual urge, became an immensely powerful movement under the leadership of Eleanor of Aquitaine.

This is from "Courts of Love: Challenge to Feudalism" ,by Robert V. Graybill, Central Missouri State University Read it here. Notice he does not tell us which scholars "have seen courtly love as similar to the feelings that caused the Albigensian heresy". Also there is a problem with putting Marie in Poitiers in 1170 with Eleanor, while she was married to Henry I of Champagne. The reference is to Amy Kelly. "As scholars were well aware, this description of Marie's function at the court of Poitiers was in large measure a product of the fertile imagination of Amy Kelly." See Marie de Champagne and Eleanor of Aquitaine a Relationship Reexamined by June Hall Martin McCash. Personally, I have dificulty believing that two such women could stay away from each other. And there is evidence of connections through Walter Map and others which is being overlooked by some scholars.

The second quote is not from a thesis, but from the website SpiritBride, The Goddess in the Middle Ages

Romantic love, in its origins as courtly love, was conceived as a spiritual discipline. The cult of courtly love had it roots in the religion of the Cathars. Believers called themselves Cathars, meaning "pure". By the twelfth century entire towns and provinces in the south of France practiced Catharism. Many of the nobility in the courts of Europe were Cathars. In France the movement was called the Albigensian heresy because the movement centered in the city of Albi in France. One of their basic beliefs was that "true love" was not the ordinary love between husband and wife but rather the adoration of the feminine mediator between God and man. She waited in the sky to welcome the pure with a holy kiss and lead him or her into the Realm of Light. Cathars believed that the love of a man for a woman should be an earthly allegory of their love for the Queen of Heaven.

this is a continuation of the Judaic teachings on the Matronit.The Matronit is an aspect of Shekinah, the Sacred Feminine. She is the Queen of the Sabbath and Sacred Union rituals are done in Her honor every Sabbath within Orthodox Jewish homes. The tools of traditional Shabbat - the wine, the kiddush cup, the candles, the covered eyes, the spice box, the braided candle, the songs. She represents Compassion and Justice like Guvurah on the Tree of Life. Shekinah is the link between the Divine and the human. It is she who we see in visions and call it the Virgin Mary, if we are Catholic, but the Jews call her by name. She is Mother Zion to Jeremiah. The Gnostics call her "the Daughter of God." She is also called Malkuth, the Supernal Woman and the Discarded Cornerstone. There is a story in the Zohar where the Matronit is abused by evil and Lilith takes her place as the Consort of JHVH. In this passage, JHVH is stripped of His power because He has lost his Matronit. Thus the importance of She to the Godhead.

Many Christians saw Cartharism as a reform movement, a reaction against the corruption and politics within the religious hierarchy. The Cathars practices an exemplary morality and offered an experience of God that was at once personal, individual, and lyrical. They returned the feminine to religion.

The teachings and Ideals of the Cathars reappeared in the cult of courtly love, in songs and poems of the troubador and in the "romances". The ideal of courtly love swept through the feudal courts of medieval Europe and began a revolution the attitudes toward the feminine values of devotion and the pursuit of beauty. This revolution matured into what we call romanticism.

Within this court, the story of Lancelot and Guinevere was born. It has been attributed to Chrètien de Troyes but many think that Eleanor's daughter by Louis, Marie of France who had left her husband to set up shop writing in her mother's court may have actually penned the work. Basically, courtly love was the first celebration of an emotional relationship between a man and a woman. never before in Europe had the female been so highly prized within society. The women were equal for the first time since the Aryan attacks on the Sumerian Matriarchal communities of the 3000s BC. In 1174, after Eleanor supported an uprising by her sons against their father, Henry came into Poitier and took her back to England. There he locked her in a tower for a decade until he deemed her as not dangerous any more. In 1189, Henry died and Richard, who was a favorite in Eleanor's court of love, became King of England but left it to John to run while he ran off to crusade against Salladin. After Richard's death, Phillip, now King of France, tried to strip John of Eleanor and Henry's lands in France. Eleanor, who had retired to Fontevrault, came out of the convent and led an army against Phillip and won. She finally died in 1204, but the legends about her court of love never did.

Once again, no reference is provided for the contention that "The cult of courtly love had it roots in the religion of the Cathars". This site definately links the Grail, Courtly Love, the Cathars, and Marie, but without attribution.

TEMPLARS

ORIGIN OF TEMPLARS

In 1070 Hughes de Payens was born at the Chateau de Payns in Champagne, 10 kilometers from Troyes. Hughes was the vassal of Hughes, Count of Champagne who went with Hughes de Payens on the first crusade and was one of the knights who with de Payens founded the Knights Templar. Hughes de Payens was, of course the first Grand Master of the Knights Templar. Both Hughes de Payens and Hughes de Champagne would have been students of Rabbi Solomon.

In 1099 the first crusade was launched

Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine, led, or had a part in leading, the first crusade, was the commander who led the conquest of Jerusalem, and became the first Christian ruler of Jerusalem since the Arabic conquest. He wouldn't take the title of king, but called hemself "Princeps of Jerusalem". After his death his brother Baldwin became the first King of Jerusalem.

It was Baldwin I who gave Hughes de Payens and his eight companions permission to form the order known as the Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon.

Little was heard of the Order for their first nine years. In 1128 though, they started to become very well-known in Europe. They went on a fundraising campaign, asking for donations of money, land, or noble-born sons to join the Order, with the implication that donations would help both to defend Jerusalem, and to ensure the charitable giver of a place in Heaven. Their efforts were helped by leading churchman Bernard of Clairvaux (later Sainted), a nephew of one of the original nine, who became the Order's powerful patron.

De Payens and Bernard participated in the 1128 Council of Troyes, where the Order was officially recognized and confirmed, and the donations came pouring in. For example, in the 1130s, The King of Aragón, in Spain, left large tracts of land to the order upon his death. These generous donations became a common practice for new members. Since the order was first and foremost a monastic organization, new members were expected to donate land, horses and any other items of material wealth, including labor from serfs, as part of their vow of poverty.

In 1139, even more power was conferred upon the Order by Pope Innocent II, who issued an edict known as a Papal Bull. It stated that the Knights Templar could pass freely through any border, owed no taxes, and were subject to no one's authority except that of the Pope. It was a remarkable confirmation of power, which may have been brought about by the Order's patron, Bernard of Clairvaux, who had helped bring Pope Innocent to power.

When members joined the Order, they often donated large amounts of cash or property, since all had to take oaths of poverty. Combined with massive grants from the Pope, the Order's financial power was assured from the beginning. Since the Templars kept cash in all their chapter houses and temples, it was natural that in 1135 the Order started lending money to Spanish pilgrims who wanted to travel to the Holy Land.

By 1150, the Order's original mission of guarding pilgrims had changed into a mission of guarding their valuables through an innovative way of issuing letters of credit, an early precursor of modern banking. Pilgrims would visit a Templar house in their home country, depositing their deeds and valuables. The Templars would then give them an encrypted letter which would describe their holdings. While traveling, the pilgrims could present the letter to other Templars along the way, to "withdraw" funds from their account. This kept the pilgrims safe since they were not carrying valuables, and further increased the power of the Templars.

The Templars' political connections and awareness of the essentially urban and commercial nature of the Outremer communities naturally led the Order to a position of significant power, both in Europe and the Holy Land. They owned large tracts of land both in Europe and the Middle East, built churches and castles, bought farms and vineyards, were involved in manufacturing and import/export, had their own fleet of ships, and for a time even owned the entire island of Cyprus. The Knights Templar were literally part of the fabric of everyday society in Europe for nearly 200 years.

END OF TEMPLARS (from Wikipedia)

The final fall of the Templars may have started over the matter of a loan. The young Philip IV, King of France (also known as "Philip the Fair") had needed cash for his wars and asked the Templars for more money. They refused. The King assigned himself the right to tax the French clergy, and he tried to get the Pope to excommunicate the Templars, but Pope Boniface VIII refused, instead issuing a Papal Bull in 1302 to reinforce that the Pope had absolute supremacy over earthly power, even above a king, and excommunicated King Philip instead. The king responded by sending his councillor, Guillaume de Nogaret, in a plot to kidnap the Pope from his castle in Anagni in September 1303, charging him with dozens of trumped-up charges such as sodomy and heresy. This outrageous incident inspired Dante Aligheri in his Divine Comedy: the new Pilate has imprisoned the Vicar of Christ. The people of Anagni rose up and rescued the aged Boniface VIII, but he died only a month later from shock due to the ill treatment.

His successor, Benedict XI, lifted the excommunication of Philip IV but refused to absolve de Nogaret, excommunicating him and all the other Italian kidnap co-conspirators on June 7, 1304. However, Benedict died just eight months later in Perugia, perhaps from poisoning by an agent of Nogaret. There followed a year of dispute among the French and Italian cardinals as to the next Pope, before deciding on the non-Italian Bertrand de Goth (Clement V), a childhood friend of Philip, in June 1305. Clement withdrew the Papal Bulls of Boniface VIII which had conflicted with Philip IV's plans, created nine more French cardinals, and, after a failed attempt to unite the Templars and the Hospitallers, agreed to Philip IV's demands for an investigation of the Templars. Pope Clement also later moved the papacy from the Italian Anagni to the more palatable (and controllable) French Avignon, initiating the period called the Babylonian Captivity.

On Friday, October 13, 1307, hundreds of Knights Templar in France were simultaneously arrested by agents of King Philip, later to be tortured into admitting heresy in the Order. Over 100 charges were issued against them, the majority of them identical charges to what had been earlier issued against the inconvenient Pope Boniface VIII. The dominant view is that Philip, who seized the treasury and broke up the monastic banking system, was jealous of the Templars' wealth and power, frustrated by his debt to them, and sought to control their financial resources for himself, by bringing blatantly false information against them at the Tours assembly in 1308; it is also likely that, under the influence of his advisors, he actually believed many of the false charges to be true.

In 1312, after the Council of Vienne, and under extreme pressure from King Philip IV, Pope Clement V issued an edict officially dissolving the Order. Many kings and nobles who had been supporting the Knights up until that time, finally acquiesced and dissolved the orders in their fiefs in accordance with the Papal command. Most, however, were not so brutal as the French. In England many Knights were arrested and tried, but not found guilty. And a few Templars had a relative safehaven in Scotland, since Robert the Bruce, the King of Scots, had already been excommunicated for other reasons, and was therefore not disposed to pay heed to Papal commands. The order continued to exist in Portugal, its name was changed to the Order of Christ, and was believed to have contributed to the first naval discoveries of the Portuguese. Prince Henry the Navigator led the Portuguese order for 20 years until the time of his death. In Spain, where the king of Aragon was also against giving the heritage of the Templars to Hospitallers (as commanded by Clement V), the Order of Montesa took Templar assets.

Even with the absorption of Templars into other Orders, there are still questions as to what became of all of the tens of thousands of Templars across Europe. There had been 15,000 "Templar Houses", and an entire fleet of ships. Even in France where hundreds of Templars had been rounded up and arrested, this was only a small percentage of the estimated 3,000 Templars in the entire country. Also, the extensive archive of the Templars, with detailed records of all of their business holdings and financial transactions, was never found. It is unknown if it was destroyed, or moved to another location. Some scholars believe that some of the Templars fled into the Swiss Alps, as there are records of Swiss villagers around that time suddenly becoming very skilled military tacticians. It is also possible that the Templars' financial skills may have become the foundation for what is today the powerful and secretive Swiss banking sector.

Little is known about what became of the Templar's fleet of ships, either. There is record of 18 Templar ships being in port at La Rochelle, France on October 12, 1307 (the day before Friday the 13th). But the next day, they were all gone.

The accusation of venerating Baphomet (which was and still is widely-interpreted as an Old French bastardization of the name Mohammed) is more problematic. Some scholars, such as Hugh J. Schonfield, argue that the chaplains Templar created the term Baphomet through the Atbash cipher to encrypt the gnostic term Sophia (Greek for "wisdom") due to Essene influence rather than subscribing to the dominant opinion that a select few Templars secretly converted to Hashshashin Islam. Regardless which hypothesis is correct, the Baphomet mystery is seen as possibly the only legitimate evidence of isolated heresy within the ranks of the Knights Templar.

What this Wikipedia article leaves out is that the Templar treasury was empty when Philip siezed it, the money having been spirited out of France two days earlier. There is Old French documentation that "Baphomet" is in fact a French spelling of Mohammed. There is also documentary evidence that the French believed that Mohammed was an idol. The Chanson de Roland written somewhere around 1100 clearly states that Moslems are idoloters who worship three idols named "Mahomet, Termaget, and Isis". This appears to be a common European misconception of the era. Schonfield's thesis of the cypher for Sophia requires the Essenes to have survived for 1200 years after the burying of their documentation at Qumran, without, however, ever remembering where they buried the documents. Which the Templars then had no trouble at all locating, or at least finding the treasure the documents talk about.

There is no question that the Templars were in the tunnels under the Jerusalem temple mount. Templar weapons and equipment were found there in the 20th century. Remember that the founders of the Templars were educated by Rabbi Solomon to believe that there was a treasure (possibly the Ark of the Covenant) buried there. It is irrefutable that documentation could have survived from the first century until the 12th. It is also unquestionable that the Templar leadership had access to close friends and mentors who could read Hebrew and Aramaic and were familiar with the Talmud and the Kabala.

Fact: the Templar leadership had unrestricted access to the temple mount.
Fact: the Templars spent some time digging under the temple mount.
Fact: the Templar leadership had been educated to believe that a treasure was buried there.

This doesn't make Holy Blood, Holy Grail either right or even likely. Documentation "proving" the lineage of Jesus' decendents strikes me as sort of ho-hum irrelevent, and of interest to only academics. These men originated at the Courts of Love, would Jesus being married shatter their faith? Would casual heresy bother them? I doubt it. More likely they found original copies of Josephus or Tacitus proving that Jesus never existed at all. That might shatter their faith, or at least give them pause.

Actually that's impossible because the "treasure of the Essenes" was most probably buried in AD 69, and Josephus wasn't written until AD 110, Tacitus until AD 115. What is much more likely is Nazarite or Ebionite documentation linking James the Just with those who did not believe in Jesus' divinity and condemning Paul. Possibly even defining James' role of "brother of the Lord" as similar to the Bab of Bahai or the Shah of the Shi'ites, the spokesman for the invisible prophet, who might or might not have actually existed in the real world.

SHROUD

On 20 June, 1353, Geoffroy de Charny, Lord of Savoisy and Lirey, founded at Lirey in honour of the Annunciation a collegiate church with six canonries, and in this church he exposed for veneration the Holy Winding Sheet. Opposition arose on the part of the Bishop of Troyes, who declared after due inquiry that the relic was nothing but a painting, and opposed its exposition. Clement VI by four Bulls, 6 January, 1390, approved the exposition as lawful. In 1418 during the civil wars, the canons entrusted the Winding Sheet to Humbert, Count de La Roche, Lord of Lirey. Margaret, widow of Humbert, never returned it but gave it in 1452 to the Duke of Savoy. The requests of the canons of Lirey were unavailing, and the Lirey Winding Sheet is the same that is now exposed and honoured at Turin. In the book Second Messiah, authors Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas theorize that the Turin Shroud is actually the image of Jaques deMolay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Tamplar.