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British News
March 30, 2002
Vatican file shows Pope pardoned massacred Knights
>From Richard Owen in Rome
VATICAN documents have come to light showing that the wholesale
massacre of
the Knights Templar in the Middle Ages for alleged "heresy, idolatry
and
sexual perversion" - an episode still shrouded in mystery - took
place even
though the Pope had exonerated them in a secret trial.
The revelation will put pressure on the present Pope, who has asked
the
Muslim world for forgiveness for the Crusades, to apologise for the
persecution of one of the main Crusading orders as well. The
Templars, whose
legendary power and wealth still exert a fascination, were disbanded
by Pope
Clement V at the Council of Vienne in France in 1312.
L'Avvenire, the Catholic daily, said that the record of the Pope's
investigation was thought to have been lost when Napoleon looted the
Vatican
during his invasion of Italy in the 18th century, and that its
rediscovery
was an exceptional event.
The Templar Grand Master, Jacques DeMolay, was burnt at the stake on
the
orders of Philip IV of France (known as Philip the Fair), who coveted
the
Templar order's land and treasure and began a campaign of dawn
arrests and
torture in 1307. At least 2,000 Knights were killed in an attempt to
obliterate the order altogether. It was revived in the 18th century
as part
of the Masonic movement, which is said to have inherited some of the
Templars' secret rituals.
Barbara Frale, a researcher at the Vatican School of Paleontology,
said that
the consensus among historians was that Clement V, who was himself
French
and a former Archbishop of Bordeaux, had been pliant and weak, and had
colluded in Philip the Fair's scheme to wipe out the Templars and
seize
their fortune. But documents found in the Vatican archives, including
a
long-lost parchment, proved that the Pope had in fact
maneuvered "with skill
and determination" to ensure that his own emissaries questioned
DeMolay and
other leading Templars in the dungeons of Chinon castle in the Loire
in
1308, in what amounted to a papal trial.
Signora Frale, who is writing a book based on the Chinon parchment,
told the
Italian monthly Hera, a journal of historical mysteries, that the
result was
the complete exoneration of the Knights.
The Pope had accepted the Knights' explanation that the charges
against them
of sodomy and blasphemy were due to a misunderstanding of arcane
rituals
behind closed doors which had their origins in the Crusaders' bitter
struggle against the Muslims, or Saracens. These included "denying
Christ
and spitting on the Cross three times", as well as "kissing other
men's
behinds". Adriano Forgione, editor of Hera, said that these were
intended to
simulate the kind of humiliation and torture that a Crusader might be
subjected to by the Saracens if captured. They were taught how to
abuse
their own religion "with the mind only and not with the heart".
The Knights Templar - properly called The Poor Knights of Christ and
the
Temple of Solomon - were founded during the early Crusades in the 12th
century, when they protected pilgrims to the Holy Land, together with
the
Hospitallers (or Knights of St. John). The Templars were so called
because
they were given part of the former Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem as
their
headquarters.
Noting that DeMolay and the Knights had asked his pardon, the Pope
wrote:
"We hereby decree that they are absolved by the church and may again
receive
Christian sacraments."
Signor Forgione said that the Pope had failed to make this absolution
public
because the scandal of the Templars had aroused extreme passions and
he
feared a church schism. Philip IV had DeMolay and other Templar
leaders put
to death before the Pope's verdict could be published, and it was
subsequently lost.
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