Seven hundred years ago, the Knights Templar were convicted of blasphemy by the French and the leadership of the order was executed. Historians tend to believe that the real issue was the rich property belonging to the military order, which the French government was then able to claim.
Now, for the first time, the Papal inquiry into the trial is being revealed to the public. The Pope, it turns out, cleared the order of the charges against it. However, he went along with disbanding it for political reasons.
Interesting timing, publicly clearing the old Crusader order at an hour in which many in Europe seem to wish they had them back.
3 comments:
Now there's a great novel to write, if anyone wants it.
Technically, they need the Teutonic ones more and the Knights Hospitaller as well.
I don't know why the Templars tend to get the most face time in modern times. They were the ones who paid for and constructed those castles that they then got "rich off of".
Arresting people for something or other, then taking their land, was a pretty common tactic in claim wars.
The Templars get the most face time because they had the most goofy stories written up about them. I had a guy tell me straight that there still was a room at the Vatican "filled with the Templar Treasure".
And then there are those stories about Templars "escaping" to Scotland and eventually helping to found freemasonry, and maybe the Rosicrusians just about any other secret society.
The Teutonic knights just ended up doing the German thing and getting beat bt Slavs in Poland and Russia.
The Hospitallers ended up as pirates in the Mediterranean until Napoleon finally did away with them.
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