Abstract

Sifting the Cinders of the Cathars

© Dr M D Magee and Saviour Shirlie
Contents Updated:Thursday, 12 December 2002
Saturday, 27 May 2006

The Knights Templar

Wolfram von Eschenbach and Alfred von Scharfenberg wrote of a body of knights all in the family of the Grail who watched over the Grail in a magnificent temple built specially for it. They were called the Templars. The Knights Templar were a historical association of warrior monks formed in the century before these writers set pen to paper and a century later were accused of witchcraft, and the leaders tortured, and burnt alive for recanting their confessions made under torture.

The military order of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici) was formed in 1118 AD in Jerusalem by some crusaders, led by a Burgundian from Champagne called Hugo de Payens, to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land after the First Crusade. These nine knights agreed to combine the functions of monk and knight in a new order, dedicating themselves to poverty, chastity and obedience under the patronage of “Our Lady”, the “Sweet Mother of God”, and the rules of S Augustine. Their aim was to fight the Saracens as knights with the sword and the Holy Spirit in guaranteeing safe passage to Christian pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land.

The Templars began so poor they had to wear whatever clothes were given to them by the pious. They adopted a striped white and black banner, called the Beauseant, after their original piebald horse, and this word also became their battle cry. Two men had to share a horse, and their seal commemorated it, but they soon began to accumulate wealth from their supporters. Fulk, Count of Anjou, went to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage, and joined as a married member, gaving them an annual grant of thirty pounds of silver, only a year after their formation.

They vowed their swords, arms, strength and lives to the defence of the Christian faith, to pay complete and utter obedience to the commands of the Grand Master, to fight whenever ordered regardless of perils for the faith of Christ as they understood it. They vowed never to yield any ground to the enemy, and not to retreat even if outnumbered three to one. They recruited anyone prepared to accept their vows and strict discipline based on the Benedictine rules eventually approved for them. They were like the French Foreign Legion was to become. Excommunicated knights who had become effectively bandits joined to forget their errors and seek salvation.

King Baldwin II of Bourg, king of Jerusalem, initially sponsored them. They chose the name militia templi—soldiers of the Temple—after the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, where Baldwin had assigned them quarters as the knights’ headquarters, including the Al Aksa Mosque south of the Dome of the Rock, whence they came to be called Knights Templar. In 1127, Baldwin, wanting to secure them as allies, sent two Templars with his strong recommendation to the pope, applying for official recognition by the Holy See. They had an introduction to S Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, an admirer of theirs and who was a cousin of Hugo de Payens. S Bernard of Clairvaux called them rogues, robbers, perjurers and adulterers, as well as other derogatory names ( In Praise of the New Militia ), but transformed by the purity of their lives and vocation, not to kill but to kill evil! So, when the Grand Master himself arrived in Europe, the Abbot eulogized them:

They go not headlong into battle, but with care and foresight, peacefully, as true children of Israel. But as soon as the fight has begun, they rush without delay upon the foe… and know no fear… one has often put to flight a thousand, two, ten thousand… gentler than lambs, and grimmer than lions. Theirs is the mildness of monks and the valour of the knight.

They recruited a lot in Languedoc and S Bernard actually said they would be in the company of “perfect” men. Did he have his tongue in his cheek?—did he know they were recruiting Cathars? Many noble Cathar families provided Templar knights, who offered no help to the pope, though nominally under his direct command, in the Cathar crusade. The Cathar Lords Bertrand de Blanchefort and Raymond-Roger Trencovel made donations to the Templars, and Bernard even joined them though, like Fulk, he was married. Cathar Perfects could be married but were not to participate in sexual relations any more once they became Perfects. It seems that was accepted by the Templars. The Counts of Toulouse held Tripoli and the Templars provided its security, and, at the beginning of the Cathar crusade, the Preceptor of the Toulouse Temple was a Cathar of the Trencovel family (Baigent, Lincoln and Lee, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail). Templars of Champagne and of Albedure sheltered fleeing Cathars.

In 1128, the Master appeared before the Council of Troyes, presided over by the Cardinal of Albano, the papal legate, and comprisong the Archbishops of Rheims and Sens, ten bishops and various abbots, including S Bernard. They approved the request. Hugh de Payens now took his delegation through France and England recruiting, Richard I of England being a fan. Gifts and grants were showered upon them. Lands, rents and arms came from everyone. In 1129, the Master, with three hundred knights from the noblest houses of Europe, led a huge pilgrimage to Jerusalem. By 1133, King Alfonso of Aragon and Navarre, who had fought the Spanish Moors in twenty nine battles, had willed his country to them, although they never received it when Alfonso died. Through S Bernard’s influence on his protégé, pope Innocent II, they were ratified by the bull of 1139. Pope Honorius chose for them a completely plain, white mantle. A red cross was added by pope Eugenius III in 1146. In Perlesvaus, Perceval comes upon a castle in which there are 33 initiates ruled by two masters. “They were clad in white garments, and not one of them but had a Red Cross in the midst of his breast.” They are Knights Templar. In Parzival, Eschenbach, a Templar himself, says the guardians of the Grail are Templars. The Grail castle was named Munsalvaesche (the Mount of Salvation).

In 1162, the Templars consolidated their authority with the bull, Omne datum optimum. Pope Adrian IV had died, and two rival popes were elected, Alexander III and Victor III. The Templars supported Victor, but switched to Alexander in 1161. Alexander it was who issued the bull! The Templars were released from all ties except to the pope. They were granted their own burial grounds. They were allowed their own chaplains. They no longer paid tithes, but could receive them. Nobody who entered the order could leave it, except to join a stricter one.

Templars were equipped more lightly than other Crusaders, being issued with shield, sword, lance and mace. They were allocated three horses each, and an esquire, either a serving brother or a layman, perhaps a youth from a noble family anxious to become a knight in turn. The order, when fully developed, was composed of several classes, chiefly knights, chaplains, serving brothers, and affiliates who were attached to the order, worked for it, and received its protection without taking vows. Eventually the competition for admission was so great from eligible people that a high fee was exacted to join. Retired knights were looked after by the Order, became counsellors at meetings, and were eventually buried in coffins in their Templar habit, with their legs crossed. Many Templar gravestones show the knight with his feet upon a dog.

When a new knight was admitted to the order, the ceremony was held in secret, causing rumours that heretical practices were followed. Exhortations dwelt upon the trials and rigours of being a Templar. The novice had to reply that for the sake of God he was willing to undergo anything and remain in the order for life. They asked him if he had a wife or was betrothed. Had he made vows to any other order? Did he owe money more than he could pay? Was he of sound mind and body? Was he the servant of any person? After many more questions from the receptor, and satisfactory answers, the candidate was admitted. The Master placed the white mantle with its red cross over the shoulders of the candidate, and he firmly clasped it. The Chaplain recited Psalms 132 and the prayer of the Holy Ghost, and each brother repeated a paternoster. Then the Master and the Chaplain kissed the new entrant on the mouth. Finally, the Master exhorted him on his duties.

The Templars kept a central group of nine knights to match the number of founders, but they did have a convent of thirteen when they needed to elect a new Master of the Temple. The rule was:

All the Brothers of the Temple must obey the Master and the Master must obey his convent.

A special chapter was called to elect a “Commander of the Election” and a helper. These two sat in vigil praying until they felt inspired to announce another two to join them. This procedure then went on until the twelve had been chosen as the equivalent of the apostles. Finally a chaplain was selected to make up the extra figure to make the thirteen of the Last Supper. As noted elsewhere this is called a convent or coven. Chaplains were priests appointed to the order and following its rule. They owed their allegiance only to the Master of the Temple and the pope, a concession from 1163. The full coven then appointed the Master of the Temple.

The power Templars gained might soon have caused them to devote their efforts as much to welfare of their own order, as to Christianity, though no one doubts their bravery in the Christian cause. As various gnostic or otherwise heterodox sects, magic and superstition all existed in the Holy Land, the Templars might have been influenced by them. Lost or hidden lore and magical rites might have moulded their secret traditions and practices. Eventually, some Templars were of Palestinian birth, and must have been familiar with unorthodox and magical beliefs there. The Grand Master, Philip of Nablus (1167), was a Syrian, and many Crusaders camee to be lords in the Levant, speaking perfect Arabic. In 1184, the English knight, Robert of St Albans, left the Templars, became a Moslem and led an army for Saladin against Jerusalem, then in the hands of the Franks. The descendants of Templars who went over to the Saracens are said to be the Silibiyya (Crusader) tribe in north Arabia.

The Christians, Templars among them, allied with the Assassins to take Damascus, but failed. Assassins were ready to become nominal Christianity if helped them in the power struggle, so did the Templars imitate the Assassin organization, as some have suggested? The two organizations had startling similarities. The Assassins existed before the Templars, and the Syrian branch of the Assassins paid three thousand gold pieces to the Templars, allegedly in tribute, but possibly for other reasons. Though Assassins were Moslems, they had split with the main branch of Moslems, and warred with the Caliph of Egypt and the Turks as well as the Crusaders. They saw them all as being just as bad as each other, all inferior to the Ismailis.

Templars obeyed their Master alone, just as the Assassins did, and for all their chivalrous reputation, in the year 1155, when Bertrand de Blanchefort (whom William of Tyre calls a “pious and Godfearing man”) was Grand Master, Sultan Abbas fled having murdered the Caliph of Egypt. Templars ambushed the fleeing Sultan and captured his son, Nasiredin, whom they sold to his father’s enemies for 60,000 pieces of gold, and let him be taken in an iron cage to Egypt, to be killed by slow torture.

Saladin decried the Templars in no uncertain terms, and promised to execute any of them he captured, as Qadi Yusuf, Saladin’s secretary, described in his Life of Saladin. At Hittin, in 1187, Saladin captured thirty thousand Crusaders, including the king of Jerusalem. Some Crusaders said they were Moslems and were spared. No Templar accepted conversion or asked for mercy to save their lives. All were beheaded, except for the Grand Master. Hittin was the end of western power in Palestine until the first World War.

As the military might of the Templars increased, they acquired property throughout Europe and ran a lucrative banking system. Their wealth in Europe comprised over seven thousand estates and foundations. Everywhere they had churches, chapels, tithes, farms, villages, mills, rights of pasturage, of fishing, of venery, of wood. They held annual fairs and received the tolls. They had nine thousand preceptories. Their annual income was vast, about six million pounds.

When Jerusalem fell to Muslim rule in 1244 and the Crusader kingdoms collapsed, they transferred their headquarters to Paris, to a building, like all their branch churches, known as the Temple. But, after they had left the Middle East, rumours surfaced of corruption and blasphemy. Their power and secretive ways aroused the fear of European rulers and sparked accusations that they were heretics who worshipped idols in a secret initiation ceremony.

The Templars were rumoured to have found either the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant at their home in Jerusalem. They were also documented as having a piece of the True Cross, which was captured by Saladin.

The Shroud of Turin was first publicly displayed by the grandson of Geoffrey de Charney, who was burned at the stake with Jacques de Molay. On the basis of its C-14 date, the shroud is just old enough to have been owned by the Templars, but the part dated is said to have contained medieval cotton as a repair, and that would have brought down the age its pure linen would have given. Even so, it could hardly have given a medieval date unless the sample was purely medieval.

The order survived for 200 years becoming remarkably wealthy as the bankers of the crowned heads of Europe, trusted for their personal honesty. Yet, in 1165, a mysterious letter had arrived addressed to the pope Alexander III, the king of France, Louis VII, and the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I, Barbarossa, as well as a copy to the Byzantine Emperor, Manuel I, Comnenius. It was from Prester John, a mighty Christian Shahanshah, king of 72 Christian kings east of Persia, of whom rumours had circulated for about fifty years. This wondrous empire was beyond a river called Ydonis. The author goes on at length—over twenty pages. It seems to have been a saracen forgery but started a whole mythology of its own. Later, the title Prester John was transfered to the Christian kings of Abyssinia, or perhaps they had always been Prester Johns, and the legend had mixed up Abyssinia with India, a common mistake in those ignorant times. In the end, Prester John simply wanted the western rulers to destroy the Templar knights and the Pagans, and to learn of Roman practice. Eventually the western leaders complied with the request of Prester John, and destroyed the Templars, and the Pagans, if the Cathars were meant.

The French King Philip Le Bel (the Fair) decided he wanted to rob them and in a plot with his puppet, the pope, Clement V, who recalled the leaders of the order to Paris, had them arrested, accusing them of heresy. Through the most pernicious tortures he got them to agree to incredible crimes and abuses. The Templars were accused of conspiring with the Assassins, a chivalrous and knightly order of the Ismaili sect of Islam, who had supposedly instructed the Templars in the secret teachings of the Essenes, handed down to them from John the Baptist through the Sabeans of Harran, also known as Johannites.

The Fall of the Knights Templar

The crushing of the Order of the Templars is one of the grossest single exploits of the Inquisition. The king of France wanted their wealth, and the pope felt obliged to him, because the French king had helped him buy the papal tiara. This was Clement V, “the one pope in whom there was a semblance of humanity”, and his name is the one most frequently quoted by apologists when they would illustrate the liberality of the popes. Yet he lived a life of royal sensuality in the papal palace at Avignon and had the Countess de Talleyrand-Perigord as a mistress. He died a billionaire in modern accounting. This was the good pope, the humane pope, who permitted the Templars to be robbed and murdered after one of the worst travesties of a trial in history. Large numbers of the knights died under the fearful torture rather than lie about their own order. Arkon Daraul, in Secret Societies, tells the story.

In 1306, The French King, Philip the Fair, took refuge in the Paris Temple to escape riots. He was bankrupt and was astonished by the wealth and fabulous treasures of the Templars. It gave him the idea of how to solve his financial problems. He would say they were heretics. In 1305, Philip had been instrumental in securing the papacy for Clement, so he had the pope in his pocket. He was ready to bring the power of Church and state against the Templars. Clement, six months after his enthronement, wrote asking the leaders of the Templars and the Hospitallers to visit him to make plans to help the kings of Armenia and Cyprus. The two knightly orders had been squabbling and the pope hoped to amalgamate them to strengthen his own position as their head. William de Villaret, Master of the Hospital, was battling the Saracens of Rhodes and would not come, but Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Temple, in Cyprus, accepted. He collected sixty knights, packed 150,000 gold florins and other treasures, and set off.

At Paris, the king welcomed de Molay with honours. At Poitiers, Clement met him and discussed a fresh crusade. De Molay advised that only the full power of a united Christendom could defeat the Moslems. He resisted any thought of merging the two orders. Rumours were circulating, and de Molay heard of them. He sought another audience with the pope to answer for the Templars. In the audience, about April 1307, the pope put the charges that had been made, but seemed satisfied by the replies. Two expelled Templars were said to have made the original charges to secure their release from prison where they had been languishing. But Cardinal Cantilupo, the Chamberlain to the pope, and brought up by the Templars from the age of eleven, also spoke of their alleged crimes.

Philip and his advisers plotted in secrecy for the night of the long knives. On 12 September 1307, sealed letters were sent to all governors in France, instructing them to arm themselves on the twelfth of the next month, open the sealed orders, and act upon them forthwith. All Templars were to be seized and interrogated by torture while being told pardon might be given if they confessed. All their goods were to be expropriated. By the morning of Friday, 13 October, almost every Templar in France was in the hands of the king’s men. The Chancellor declared that the knights had been proceeded against for heresy. Two days later the university met in the Temple and the Grand Master was interrogated. He and other leaders allegedly confessed.

On 19 October, less than a week after they had been arrested, the Dominicans were torturing 140 prisoners in the Paris Temple. Thirty six of the victims died under torture. Clement seemed uncertain of the torturing, but Philip claimed he was doing God’s work, and accounted to God alone. But he offered to give all the Templar wealth to the service of the Holy Land. Clement hedged, then tried to escape to Bordeaux, but the king stopped him. He was really in Philip’s pocket! Five hundred and forty six Templars ready to defend the order in court were brought to Paris. Then their numbers rose to nine hundred, and they clamoured for their Grand Master. An Act of Accusation in the name of the pope was drawn up, and seventy five Templars drew up the Defence. (See Thomas Wright on the Templars.) The accusation was that:

At the time of their reception they were made to deny God, Christ, the Virgin, etc, and in particular, to declare that Christ was not the true God, but a false prophet, who had been crucified for his own crimes and not for the redemption of the world. They spat and trampled upon the cross, especially on Good Friday. They worshipped a cat, which sometimes appeared in their chapters. Their priests, when celebrating Mass, did not pronounce the words of consecration… They believed that their Master could absolve them from their sins. They were told at their reception that they might abandon themselves to all kinds of licentiousness. They had idols in all their provinces, some with three faces, some with one. They worshipped these idols in their chapters, believed that they could save them, regarded them as the givers of wealth to the order and of fertility to the earth, they touched them with cords which they afterwards tied around their own bodies. Those who at the time of their reception would not comply with these practices were put to death or imprisoned.

The Templars were believed to have worshipped the image of a head, about natural size, only shown in the more secret chapter meetings on particular occasions. Many templars denied ever hearing of this head. It was variously described, but some said it had a fierce looking face and a beard. That descriptions varied suggested there were more than one such image, or one copied in different forms. Those who saw it said it was terrifying. When it was introduced, all present threw themselves on the ground and adored it, presumably in the Moslem fashion.

Deodatus Jaffet said the image he saw had three faces. He had to say: “Blessed be he who shall save my soul!” Another said the head was of silver and had two faces, a terrible look, and a silver beard. Some said the head was that of a woman, or contained the skull of a woman concealed within it (though how would they know it?), the woman supposedly being one of the 11,000 virgins. Others said it was an embalmed head. Others saw a wooden idol of Baphomet, worshipped by kissing its feet, thereby adopting a Moslem style of worship, and exclaiming, “Yallah”, a Saracen word. Another Templar was told, “Adore this head—this head is your god and your Mahomet”. Mahomet commonly meant an idol or false god in Christendom.

In summary, the charges against the Templars were:

1. The Temple houses cover every possible crime and abomination.
2. Each Templar on his admission swore never to quit the order, and to further its interests by right or wrong.
3. Novices of the order, after taking the oath of obedience, were obliged to deny and otherwise blaspheme Christ, and to spit, and sometimes also to trample, upon the cross.
4. They then received the kiss of the templar, who officiated as receiver, on the mouth, and afterwards were obliged to kiss him on the anus, on the navel, and sometimes on the penis.
5. Many statutes of the order are unlawful, profane and contrary to Christianity. The members are forbidden under threat of imprisonment to reveal them.
6. The heads of the order ate in secret alliance with the Saracens, and they had more Mohammedan infidelity than Christian faith. The order works to deliver the Holy Land to the Saracens, and favours them more than Christians.
7. The heads of the order are addicted to debauchery, heretical, cruel and sacrilegious men. They kill any novice who discovers the iniquity of the order, and tries to leave it, and bury the body secretly by night. Anyone objecting to it is punished by perpetual captivity. They teach women who are pregnant by them how to procure abortion, and secretly murder new born children.
8. The Master is installed in secret with few younger brethren present. It is because he repudiates the Christian faith, or does some similar blasphemy.
9. They are infected with the errors of the Fratricelli. They despise the pope and the authority of the Church. They scorn the sacraments, especially those of penance, and confession. They pretend to comply with the rites of the Church simply to avoid detection.
10. They sometimes worshipped a cat, which appeared amongst them in their secret conclave.
11. They practised homosexual acts together, refusing normal sexual intercourse.
12. They had idols in their different provinces, in the form of a head, having sometimes three faces, sometimes two, or only one, and sometimes a bare skull, which they called their saviour, and believed its influence to be exerted in making them rich, and in making flowers grow and the earth germinate.
13. They always wore, bound about their bodies next to their skins or about their shirts, a cord which had been rubbed against the head, and which served for their protection.
14. No vice or crime committed for the honour or benefit of the order is held to be a sin.

Where these are not plain denigration, they match the patterns of behaviour of the Cathar heretics. The evidence of ancient statuettes, cups, coffers and medals suggests the Templars had secretly adopted a form of the rites of Ophite Gnosticism, itself founded on ancient phallic worship. An English templar, Stephen de Staplebridge, acknowledged that “there were two professions in the order of the Temple, the first lawful and good, the second contrary to the faith”. Perhaps that too is denigration, all part of Philip’s intention, especially as other charges later augmented these, including their use of the Arabic, “Ya Allah” (Yallah, 0 Allah!), and the adoration of an idol called the Head of Baphomet.

Many Templars denied every charge, again the typical ones used by the Church against heretics, and stated that they had been subjected to every kind of illegality since their arrest. Aimery de Villiers de Duc, tortured by the king’s knights, Guillaume de Moreilly and Hugues de la Celle, said after the torture:

I would confess to anything. I would confess I had killed God, if they had asked me.

Some did not deny the accusations but pleaded extenuating circumstances such as that they did not deny Christ in their hearts but knew the denial had to be done as a test of their obedience. Thus, Etienne de Dijon refused to deny his Saviour, but the preceptor told him that he must do it because he had sworn to obey his orders. So, “he denied with his mouth”, he said, “but not with his heart, and he did this with great grief”. They claimed they deliberately spat beside the cross not on it, and so on. They thus confirmed the accusations as being true.

The Chinon Parchment

Desperately needing funds and owing money to the French Templars, in 1307, King Philip IV, the Fair, of France used the accusations to seize the order’s riches. He ordered the arrest of all Templars, aiming to extract confessions of heresy from its leaders under torture. The Templars were taken into royal custody in October, and hearings followed in the protracted period from 1307 to 1312. In June 1308, at Poitiers, Pope Clement V heard the confessions of 72 Templars whom he then absolved. However, the king held the leaders at Chinon castle and would not allow them to appear before the papal curia. In late August, 1308, a papal commission did hear the leaders, though the only evidence we had was a letter in the French Chancery.

In 2007, the Vatican announced that it would release a crucial document, not seen for 700 years, which restores the reputation of the Knights Templar whose leaders were burned as heretics when the order was dissolved in 1314, finding them to have been innocent of heresy. It had last been consulted at the start of the twentieth century, but whoever had read it had kept quiet. The Vatican has now published the entire documentation of the papal hearings, convened after King Philip IV of France arrested and tortured Templar leaders in 1307 on charges of heresy and immorality. It includes the Parchment of Chinon, the decision made by Clement through his legates in 1308 to save the Templars and their order. A reproduction of the large document (700x580mm) and written in ecclesiastical Latin, was originally provided with the hanging seals of the three papal legates in the case against the Knights Templar. In it, Pope Clement V absolved the knights of heresy, but the order was still disbanded for “the good of the church” in 1312, under pressure from King Philip IV of France.

The discovery of the papal documents recording the hearings puts them in a new light. Clement absolved the Templars, but could not stop Philip the Fair from destroying them for his own profit. After confessing various sins their leader, Jacques de Molay, was burnt at the stake. Pope Clement V then dissolved the order and issued arrest warrants for all remaining members. Ever since, the Templars have been thought of as heretics. Some of the Templars’ properties in London were rented to lawyers, leading to the names of Temple Bar gate and Temple Tube station.

Professor Barbara Frale reports on a parchment she discovered in the Vatican’s secret archives in 2001. The paper was put in the wrong archive or miscatalogued in 1628. Frale said she was intrigued by the entry which seemed to refer to a minor matter, yet reported that three top cardinals, the three papal legates who formed the special Apostolic Commission ad inquirendum appointed by Clement V—Bérengar Frédol, cardinal priest of the titular church of the Most Holy Nereus and Achilleus and nephew of the pope, Étienne de Suisy, cardinal priest of St Cyriac in Thermis, Landolfo Brancacci, cardinal deacon of St Angelo, had made a long journey to interrogate someone.

Going on with my research, it turned out that in reality it was an inquest of very great importance [on behalf of the pope]. [Bérengar] had gone to question the Great Master and other heads of the Templars who had been segregated, practically kidnapped, by the king of France and shut up in secret in his castle in Chinon on the Loire.

The paper, the Chinon Parchment, dated 17-20 August, 1308, is a record of the trial of the Templars before Pope Clement in the castle of Chinon in the diocese of Tours. Under inquisition were Brother Jacques de Molay, Grandmaster of the Order of Knights Templar, Brother Raymbaud de Caron, Preceptor of the commandaries of Templar Knights in Outremer, Brother Hugo de Pérraud, Preceptor of France, Brother Geoffroy de Gonneville, Preceptor of Aquitania and Poitou, and Geoffroy de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy. Among the accusations were sodomy, denouncing God, illicit kisses, spitting on the cross, and worshipping an idol.

It confirms that the Templars did have an initiation ceremony which involved “spitting on the cross”, “denying Jesus” and kissing the lower back, navel and mouth of the man proposing them. Three of the accused admitted to having been asked by their receptors during their initiation to do this. The Templars explained to pope Clement that the initiation mimicked the humiliation that knights could suffer if they fell into the hands of the Saracens, while the kissing ceremony was a sign of their total obedience. The cardinals on the authority of the pope found the entrance ritual was not truly blasphemous, as alleged by King Philip, and found each of the defendants not guilty, all in the same terms as Brother Raymbaud:

…After this oath, by the authority of lord Pope specifically granted to us for that purpose, we extended to this humbly asking Brother Raymbaud, in a form accepted by the Church the mercy of absolution from the verdict of excommunication that had been incurred by the aforementioned deeds, restoring him to unity with the Church and reinstating him for communion of the faithful and sacraments of the Church.

Wikipedia, sub voce, Chinon Parchment

Jacques de Molay was absolved, restored to unity with the church, and his excommunication was lifted:

After this, we concluded to extend the mercy of absolution for these acts to Brother Jacques de Molay, the Grandmaster of the said Order, who in the form and manner described above had denounced in our presence the described and any other heresy, and swore in person on the Lord’s Holy Gospel, and humbly asked for the mercy of absolution, restoring him to unity with the Church and reinstating him to communion of the faithful and sacraments of the Church.

Wikipedia, sub voce, Chinon Parchment

All denied the practice of sodomy or ever witnessing sodomy, but kisses were given as a sign of respect, but only during Templar initiation. All but Hugo de Pérraud denied being encouraged to “join” with other brothers, but Hugo said he had been told:

…to abstain from partnership with women, and, if they were unable to restrain their lust, to join themselves with brothers of the Order.

Wikipedia, sub voce, Chinon Parchment

He also admitted to having seen the “head of an idol” the Templars were accused of worshiping, in the possession of Brother Peter Alemandin, Preceptor of Montpellier. None of the others were asked about an idol. They all said that any transgressions of the Catholic faith were fully confessed to a priest or bishop, penances made, and absolutions granted, as with any Catholic. After the formal abjuration, which is compelling for all those who were even only suspected of heretical crimes, the leading members of the Templar Order were reinstated in the Catholic Communion and readmitted to receive the sacraments. The shame of excommunication of their previous denial of Jesus Christ when tortured by the French Inquisitor was removed from the friars. So Clement absolved the Templars of all heresies, though he did find them guilty of immorality and planned on radical reform, and the amalgamation of the Templars and the Hospitallers.

This is proof that the Templars were not heretics. The Pope was obliged to ask pardon from the knights. For 700 years we have believed that the Templars died as cursed men, and this absolves them.

Prof B Frale

However, unable to oppose the will of the King of France, who had ordered the elimination of the Templars, the Pope heard the opinion of the Council Fathers and decided to abolish the order on 22 March 1312. Even so, this decision was not a condemnation for heresy. For that, a formal trial would have been necessary, and that would have meant a statement for the defense of the order. The pope pleaded that a trial would have delayed the use of wealth Christians had given to the order to fight against enemies of the Faith in the Holy Land, and, in any case, that the shameful accusations of heresy, idolatry, homosexuality and obscenity would have dissuaded anyone from wearing the Templar habit. So, having absolved the Templars of guilt, he cynically abolished them.

Not all of the world’s churchmen had supported Clement in his craven subordination to Philip of France. At a congress of 114 bishops called by Clement four years after the first arrests, the bishops of Spain, England, Germany, Denmark, Ireland and Scotland wanted the Templars to be allowed to defend themselves. Only one Italian prelate and three French ones voted against. The pope closed the session. In 1312, 54 Templars, knights who had volunteered to defend the order were declared relapsed heretics and burnt alive on a “slow” fire before the trials had even started. They died professing to love Christ. Perhaps the question is “Which Christ?”.

Clement seems to have been trying to mitigate the hatred of Philip, but was a weak pope and a hostage in France just as Avignon became the center of the Catholic Church instead of Rome, and abandoned them to him in the end. On 2 May, 1313, Clement published a bull abolishing the Templars. Most of the knights still alive were released to live and die in poverty. The Master of the Temple, Jacques de Molay, and one of his chiefs, Guy of Auvergne, were to have their sentence announced in public on 19 May, 1314, but took the chance of publicly proclaiming their innocence by recanting their forced confessions. The king ordered them to be burnt at the stake before they could say more.

Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Templars, was burned at the stake in 1314 along with his aides. They were roasted on the Island of the Seine at sunset. Was this significant? The setting sun is the dark sun, Shalim or Solomon, the life giving winter sun of the ancient near east, but the wicked winter sun of the northern climates. Jesus was a title of the dark sun in the ancient near east, but Christians in the north, in Europe, took him to be the bright summer sun, born at the winter solstice and becoming the burning wicked sun of the ancient near east. Did the Templars realize that the Christ of the Church was the wrong one, and the Catholics were worshipping the Devil, just as the Cathars believed?

Surviving monks fled, some to be absorbed by other orders. In later centuries, various groups claimed to have descended from the Templars, and the Templars’ initiation ritual was widely copied, notably by the Freemasons, who have a degree called “Order of the Knights Templar”.

Edward II and the English Templars

In connexion with the trial of the Templars, the Inquisition had its one experience on English soil. Not that there was religious toleration in medieval England. The fearful persecution of the followers of Wyclif and the later hanging, burning, beheading and quartering of Protestant and Catholic rivals are well known. The death sentence was decreed in 1400.

But England dealt with its own heretics. Edward II (1307-1327) was the son in law of Philip, and a priest was sent to him to invite him to act at once against the Templars in Britain. He bluntly refused to believe the charges, declaring them to be incredible, but pope Clement wrote on 22 November assuring him that the knights had confessed these things—omitting to describe the tortures—that de Molay had freely confessed that his knights denied Christ, while others had admitted idolatry. The king of England was to arrest all Templars within his domains, and to place their lands and goods in custody until their guilt or innocence should be ascertained.

Edward was troubled by the allegations. He wrote, on 26 November, to the Seneschal of Agen, asking about the charges. On the 4 December, he wrote to the kings of Portugal, Castile, Aragon and Sicily, asking what they had heard, and that he could not credit it. He wrote to the pope himself, on 1O December, expressing disbelief of what the French king said, and begging for an enquiry. By 15 December, the papal bull arrived and Edward felt obliged to act upon it. On 26 December, he wrote to the pope that he would comply. Edward sent to Wales, Scotland and Ireland that the Templars were to be seized, as in England, but were to be treated with kindness. The Templars of Garway, examined without the assitance of torture, freely confessed to some of the practices such as the use of the cord next to their skin.

In 1309 two inquisitors were admitted into England to conduct a trial. They were refused the right to torture, and, as they could find no proof of guilt without it, they complained to the pope. Clement the Humane angrily demanded that the king should permit torture. When King Edward II protested that torture was opposed to English law, pope Clement told the king that Church law was higher than English civil law:

We hear that you forbid torture as contrary to the laws of your land… I command you at once to submit those men to torture.

In the end he bribed the king, in the customary papal manner, and the Templars were tortured and destroyed. The pope gave orders to the king of England, and the king obeyed. The nation of England took a giant step backwards and started torturing people again. This is Clement “checking the zeal of the inquisitors”.

Further Reading

• More on heretical beliefs
• More on chivalry and solar belief, and sun gods as atoning saviours
• More on Mithras, and something about Zoroastrianism

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