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Temple de la Madeleine Church - Geneva, Switzerland
Temple de la Madeleine Church - Geneva, Switzerland
Madeleine Church, Geneva, Switzerland. The Temple de la Madeleine Madeleine Church is located in the foot of the Old Town of Geneva, Switzerland
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Columbus and the Templars
Was Columbus using old Templar maps when he crossed the Atlantic? At first blush, the navigator and the fighting monks seem like odd bedfellows. But once I began ferreting around in this dusty corner of history, I found some fascinating connections. Enough, in fact, to trigger the plot of my latest novel, The Swagger Sword.
To begin with, most history buffs know there are some obvious connections between Columbus and the Knights Templar. Most prominently, the sails on Columbus’ ships featured the unique splayed Templar cross known as the cross pattée (pictured here is the Santa Maria):
Additionally, in his later years Columbus featured a so-called “Hooked X” in his signature, a mark believed by researchers such as Scott Wolter to be a secret code used by remnants of the outlawed Templars (see two large X letters with barbs on upper right staves pictured below):
Other connections between Columbus and the Templars are less well-known. For example, Columbus grew up in Genoa, bordering the principality of Seborga, the location of the Templars’ original headquarters and the repository of many of the documents and maps brought by the Templars to Europe from the Middle East. Could Columbus have been privy to these maps? Later in life, Columbus married into a prominent Templar family. His father-in-law, Bartolomeu Perestrello (a nobleman and accomplished navigator in his own right), was a member of the Knights of Christ (the Portuguese successor order to the Templars). Perestrello was known to possess a rare and wide-ranging collection of maritime logs, maps and charts; it has been written that Columbus was given a key to Perestrello’s library as part of the marriage dowry. After marrying, Columbus moved to the remote Madeira Islands, where a fellow resident, John Drummond, had also married into the Perestrello family. Drummond was a grandson of Scottish explorer Prince Henry Sinclair, believed to have sailed to North America in 1398. It is, accordingly, likely that Columbus had access to extensive Templar maps and charts through his familial connections to both Perestrello and Drummond.
Another little-known incident in Columbus’ life sheds further light on the navigator’s possible ties to the Templars. In 1477, Columbus sailed to Galway, on the west coast of Ireland, from where the legendary Brendan the Navigator supposedly set sale in the 6th century on his journey to North America. While there, Columbus prayed at St. Nicholas’ Church, a structure built over an original Templar chapel dating back to around the year 1300. St. Nicholas’ Church has been compared by some historians to Scotland’s famous Roslyn Chapel, complete with Templar tomb, Apprentice Pillar, and hidden Templar crosses. (Recall that Roslyn Chapel was built by another grandson—not Drummond—of the aforementioned Prince Henry Sinclair.) According to his diary, Columbus also famously observed “Chinese” bodies floating into Galway harbor on driftwood, which may have been what first prompted him to turn his eyes westward. A granite monument along the Galway waterfront, topped by a dove (Columbus meaning ‘dove’ in Latin), commemorates this sighting, the marker reading: On these shores around 1477 the Genoese sailor Christoforo Colombo found sure signs of land beyond the Atlantic.
In fact, as the monument text hints, Columbus may have turned more than just his eyes westward. A growing body of evidence indicates he actually crossed the north Atlantic in 1477. Columbus wrote in a letter to his son: “In the year 1477, in the month of February, I navigated 100 leagues beyond Thule [to an] island which is as large as England. When I was there the sea was not frozen over, and the tide was so great as to rise and fall 26 braccias.” We will turn later to the mystery as to why any sailor would venture into the north Atlantic in February. First, let’s examine Columbus’ statement. Historically, ‘Thule’ is the name given to the westernmost edge of the known world. In 1477, that would have been the western settlements of Greenland (though abandoned by then, they were still known). A league is about three miles, so 100 leagues is approximately 300 miles. If we think of the word “beyond” as meaning “further than” rather than merely “from,” we then need to look for an island the size of England with massive tides (26 braccias equaling approximately 50 feet) located along a longitudinal line 300 miles west of the west coast of Greenland and far enough south so that the harbors were not frozen over. Nova Scotia, with its famous Bay of Fundy tides, matches the description almost perfectly. But, again, why would Columbus brave the north Atlantic in mid-winter? The answer comes from researcher Anne Molander, who in her book, The Horizons of Christopher Columbus, places Columbus in Nova Scotia on February 13, 1477. His motivation? To view and take measurements during a solar eclipse. Ms. Molander theorizes that the navigator, who was known to track celestial events such as eclipses, used the rare opportunity to view the eclipse elevation angle in order calculate the exact longitude of the eastern coastline of North America. Recall that, during this time period, trained navigators were adept at calculating latitude, but reliable methods for measuring longitude had not yet been invented. Columbus, apparently, was using the rare 1477 eclipse to gather date for future western exploration. Curiously, Ms. Molander places Columbus specifically in Nova Scotia’s Clark’s Bay, less than a day’s sail from the famous Oak Island, legendary repository of the Knights Templar missing treasure.
The Columbus-Templar connections detailed above were intriguing, but it wasn’t until I studied the names of the three ships which Columbus sailed to America that I became convinced the link was a reality. Before examining these ship names, let’s delve a bit deeper into some of the history referred to earlier in this analysis. I made a reference to Prince Henry Sinclair and his journey to North American in 1398. The Da Vinci Code made the Sinclair/St. Clair family famous by identifying it as the family most likely to be carrying the Jesus bloodline. As mentioned earlier, this is the same family which in the mid-1400s built Roslyn Chapel, an edifice some historians believe holds the key—through its elaborate and esoteric carvings and decorations—to locating the Holy Grail. Other historians believe the chapel houses (or housed) the hidden Knights Templar treasure. Whatever the case, the Sinclair/St. Clair family has a long and intimate historical connection to the Knights Templar. In fact, a growing number of researchers believe that the purpose of Prince Henry Sinclair’s 1398 expedition to North America was to hide the Templar treasure (whether it be a monetary treasure or something more esoteric such as religious artifacts or secret documents revealing the true teachings of the early Church). Researcher Scott Wolter, in studying the Hooked X mark found on many ancient artifacts in North American as well as on Columbus’ signature, makes a compelling argument that the Hooked X is in fact a secret symbol used by those who believed that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and produced children. (See The Hooked X, by Scott F. Wolter.) These believers adhered to a version of Christianity which recognized the importance of the female in both society and in religion, putting them at odds with the patriarchal Church. In this belief, they had returned to the ancient pre-Old Testament ways, where the female form was worshiped and deified as the primary giver of life.
It is through the prism of this Jesus and Mary Magdalene marriage, and the Sinclair/St. Clair family connection to both the Jesus bloodline and Columbus, that we now, finally, turn to the names of Columbus’ three ships. Importantly, he renamed all three ships before his 1492 expedition. The largest vessel’s name, the Santa Maria, is the easiest to analyze: Saint Mary, the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. The Pinta is more of a mystery. In Spanish, the word means ‘the painted one.’ During the time of Columbus, this was a name attributed to prostitutes, who “painted” their faces with makeup. Also during this period, the Church had marginalized Mary Magdalene by referring to her as ‘the prostitute,’ even though there is nothing in the New Testament identifying her as such. So the Pinta could very well be a reference to Mary Magdalene. Last is the Nina, Spanish for ‘the girl.’ Could this be the daughter of Mary Magdalene, the carrier of the Jesus bloodline? If so, it would complete the set of women in Jesus’ life—his mother, his wife, his daughter—and be a nod to those who opposed the patriarchy of the medieval Church. It was only when I researched further that I realized I was on the right track: The name of the Pinta before Columbus changed it was the Santa Clara, Portuguese for ‘Saint Clair.’
So, to put a bow on it, Columbus named his three ships after the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and the carrier of their bloodline, the St. Clair girl. These namings occurred during the height of the Inquisition, when one needed to be extremely careful about doing anything which could be interpreted as heretical. But even given the danger, I find it hard to chalk these names up to coincidence, especially in light of all the other Columbus connections to the Templars. Columbus was intent on paying homage to the Templars and their beliefs, and found a subtle way of renaming his ships to do so.
Given all this, I have to wonder: Was Columbus using Templar maps when he made his Atlantic crossing? Is this why he stayed south, because the maps showed no passage to the north? If so, and especially in light of his 1477 journey to an area so close to Oak Island, what services had Columbus provided the Templars in exchange for these priceless charts?
It is this research, and these questions, which triggered my novel, The Swagger Sword. If you appreciate a good historical mystery as much as I, I think you’ll enjoy the story.
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Jean-Philippe Loys de Cheseaux
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Jean-Philippe Loys de Cheseaux
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Portrait by Jean-Pierre Henchoz, 1746
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| Born |
4 May 1718
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| Died |
30 November 1751 (aged 33)
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| Nationality |
Swiss |
| Scientific career |
| Fields |
Astronomy |
Jean-Philippe Loys de Cheseaux (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ filip lois də ʃezo]; 4 May 1718 – 30 November 1751) was a Swiss astronomer.
Loys de Cheseaux was born on 4 May 1718 in Lausanne, Vaud, to Paul-Etienne Loys de Cheseaux, a banneret, and Estienne-Judith de Crousaz.[1] His brother was Charles-Louis Loys de Cheseaux.[1] He was educated by his maternal grandfather, the mathematician and philosopher Jean-Pierre de Crousaz, and wrote his first essays, under the title Essais de Physique, in 1735, aged 17.[1]
In 1736, Loys de Cheseaux installed an observatory in his father's lands in Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne.[1][2] He acquired a reputation in Europe as an astronomer with the publication of his Traité de la Comète,[1] in 1744, a treatise on his observations of the comet C/1743 X1 in which he also became one of the first to state, in its modern form, what would later be known as Olbers' paradox (that, if the universe is infinite, the night sky should be bright).[2]
After his discovery of C/1743 (along with Dirk Klinkenberg),[3] Loys de Cheseaux discovered the comet C/1746 P1.[2] In 1746, he presented a list of nebulae, eight of which were his own new discoveries, to the French Academy of Sciences. The list was noted privately by Le Gentil in 1759, but only made public in 1892 by Guillaume Bigourdan.
From 1747, Loys de Cheseaux was a corresponding member of the science academies of Göttingen, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, as well as the Academy of Sciences of Paris and the Royal Society of London.[1][2] He was offered the post of director of the St. Petersburg observatory, but declined the invitation.[2] In 1751, Loys de Cheseaux travalled to Paris and was presented to the Academy of Sciences.[2] There he died, after a short illness, on 30 November 1751, aged 33.[2]
In addition to astronomy, Loys de Cheseaux researched Biblical chronology, calculating the movements of the Sun and Moon relative to descriptions in the Book of Daniel and the occurrence of solstices and equinoxes in Jerusalem at the time of the Old Testament story. In his Dissertation Chronologique (1748), Loys de Cheseaux tried to establish the date of the eclipse known as "crucifixion darkness" in order to determine the date of the crucifixion of Jesus.[2]
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https://victor-li.com/isabellaquarter/
Vindicated by History: The 1893 Queen Isabella Commemorative Quarter
1893 Queen Isabella Commemorative Quarter. (Image via me)
A few things I’ve picked up from researching early commemorative coins:
- The people behind them always hope they can raise a ton of money for a pet project or monument or expo. They rarely do.
- The designs usually get denigrated by the numismatic press – oftentimes with a venom critics reserve for Limp Bizkit albums or Michael Bay movies.
- The mint melts down the excess/unsold coins. As a result, the ones that did sell end up becoming valuable decades later – screwing over collectors on a budget like yours truly.
Those issues were all in play for the 1893 Isabella Quarter.
The Queen Isabella commemorative quarter traces its beginnings to the World’s Fair: Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. Congress had already authorized the minting of a commemorative half dollar featuring Christopher Columbus, but a group of women, led by Bertha Palmer, whose husband, Potter, owned the famed Palmer House hotel in Chicago, thought they could do better.
Spearheaded by renowned women’s rights activist, and future $1 coin subject, Susan B. Anthony, the Board of Lady Managers had been awarded $10,000 in federal funds to help manage the Columbian Expo. In early 1893, the Board went before the House Appropriations Committee to ask that the $10,000 could be paid to them in the form of 40,000 specially designed commemorative quarters, which they could then sell at a profit. Congress obliged and the Board set about becoming “the authors of the first really beautiful and artistic coin that has ever been issued by the government of the United States.”
Obviously, the Board wanted a female on the obverse and decided on Queen Isabella I of Castile, who had provided vital financial support for Columbus’s voyages. Putting a foreign monarch on U.S. currency was unprecedented (indeed, there had a been a revolution over it), but according to Coin Week, the main source of conflict was over design.
Caroline Peddle, a former student of famed artist and coin designer Augustus Saint-Gaudens, was hired by the Board to design the coin. However, her sketches, which included a seated Isabella on the obverse and the inscription “Commemorative coin issued for the Board of Lady Managers of the World’s Columbian Exposition by Act of Congress, 1492–1892” on the reverse, were deemed to look too token-like and rejected. Rather than be allowed to redesign the coin, the Mint took away the reverse side and gave it to one of their in-house artists, Charles Barber, to design.
After some more back-and-forth and additional restrictions imposed by the Mint, Peddle resigned. The Mint then cobbled together some portraits of Isabella and ultimately produced an image of a young Isabella wearing a crown on her head for the obverse. On the reverse, the Mint went with an image of a woman kneeling while holding a distaff and spindle- symbolizing her industry. The Board had suggested an image of the Woman’s Building at the Expo, and Palmer later stated that the Board disliked the Mint’s reverse image because “we did not consider [it] typical of the woman of the present day.” However, the Mint made the final decision and approved the coin design.
To say that the reception for the commemorative quarter was not warm is a bit like saying that the American public didn’t embrace Apple’s Newton. The American Journal of Numsimatics was particularly brutal:
[W]e do not know who designed it, but in this instance, as in the half dollar, the contrast between examples of the numismatic art of the nation, as displayed on the Columbian coins, on the one hand, and the spirited and admirable work of the architects of the buildings, for instance, on the other, is painful. If these coins really represent the highest achievements of our medalist and our mints, under the inspiration of an opportunity without restrictions, the like of which has never been presented hitherto in the history of our national coinage, we might as well despair of its future…
The American Journal of Numismatics in October 1893, quoted by PCGS.
The Journal also drew a “mournful” comparison between the reverse design of the kneeling woman holding the distaff and spindle and the well-known “Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?” anti-slavery Hard Times Token. Surely, the Board felt vindicated by that line – although there’s no evidence Palmer or anyone else affiliated with them ever wrote to the Mint to say: “See? I told you we should gone with the building on the reverse.”
 1838 HT-81 “Am I Not A Woman & A Sister?” (Image via me) Sales figures, meanwhile, were disappointing. Of the 40,000 coins minted, a little more than half (21,180) ended up selling. According to NGC, the quarter’s sales were cannibalized by the Columbian Expo half dollar, which sold for the same price and was more widely available at the fair (5 million Columbian Expo half dollars were minted – 125 times as many compared to the Isabella quarter). While it didn’t come close to selling out, Coin Week points out that the quarters, which sold for $1 each, ended up being profitable for the Board. A $20,000-plus stream of revenue may not have been much, but it was double the original federal appropriation awarded to the Board. Of the remaining 19,000-plus quarters, approximately 15,000 went back to the Mint for melting.
 1893 Columbian Expo Half Dollar. (Image via me) In recent years, the coin’s reputation has been rehabilitated and has become a highly sought-after collector’s item. Contemporary reviewers have praised its quaint design and its uniqueness among U.S. commemorative coins (until the modern commemoratives came around, it held the distinction as the only commemorative quarter in U.S. history – as well as the only one to depict a foreign monarch). Even the reverse of the coin has been somewhat vindicated. Art historian Cornelius Vermeule argued that the design wasn’t necessarily evocative of the anti-slavery token and even traced elements of it back to antiquities. “[S]ome details of drapery to a servant girl from the East Pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, work of about 460 B.C. with additions and revisions in the first or second centuries A.D.,” he wrote.
I love the design and how it distinguishes this coin from other early commemoratives. Too many coins from that era have a generic male bust on the obverse and either an eagle or state symbol on the reverse. Because of the relative scarcity of this coin, buying one wasn’t cheap (this one had been cleaned, which lowered its value, but it still ended up costing over $100). The price tag was worth it, as this has become one of my favorite coins.
So I guess the lesson here is that I should buy more modern commemoratives – even those that I think are ugly. After all, maybe they’ll skyrocket in value in 100 years…
See Also:
In "The Coin Blog"
In "Politics"
In "Law"
https://victor-li.com/isabellaquarter/
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GAINING TRUST FROM QUEEN ISABELLA
In 1485, Columbus presented his plans of crossing the Atlantic to John II, King of Portugal. He proposed that the king equip three sturdy ships and grant Columbus one year's time to sail out into the Atlantic, search for a western route to the Orient, and return.
Columbus also requested he be made "Great Admiral of the Ocean", appointed governor of any and all lands he discovered, and given one-tenth of all revenue from those lands.
The king submitted Columbus' proposal to his experts, who rejected it. It was their considered opinion that Columbus' estimation of a travel distance of 2,400 miles (3,860 km) was, in fact, far too low.
In 1488, Columbus appealed to the court of Portugal once again, and once again, John II invited him to an audience. That meeting also proved unsuccessful, in part because not long afterwards Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal with news of his successful rounding of the southern tip of Africa (near the Cape of Good Hope). With an eastern sea route to Asia apparently at hand, King John was no longer interested in Columbus's far-fetched project.
Columbus traveled from Portugal to both Genoa and Venice, but he received encouragement from neither. Columbus had also dispatched his brother Bartholomew to the court of Henry VII of England, to inquire whether the English crown might sponsor his expedition, but also without success.
Columbus had sought an audience from the monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, who had united many kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula by marrying, and were ruling together. On 1 May 1486, permission having been granted, Columbus presented his plans to Queen Isabella, who, in turn, referred it to a committee. After the passing of much time, the savants of Spain, like their counterparts in Portugal, replied that Columbus had grossly underestimated the distance to Asia. They pronounced the idea impractical and advised their Royal Highnesses to pass on the proposed venture.
However, to keep Columbus from taking his ideas elsewhere, and perhaps to keep their options open, the Catholic Monarchs gave him an annual allowance of 12,000 maravedis and, in 1489, furnished him with a letter ordering all cities and towns under their domain to provide him food and lodging at no cost.
After continually lobbying at the Spanish court and two years of negotiations, he finally had success in January 1492. Ferdinand and Isabella had just conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, and they received Columbus in Córdoba, in the Alcázar castle. Isabella turned Columbus down on the advice of her confessor, and he was leaving town by mule in despair, when Ferdinand intervened. Isabella then sent a royal guard to fetch him, and Ferdinand later claimed credit for being "the principal cause why those islands were discovered".
About half of the financing was to come from private Italian investors, whom Columbus had already lined up.
https://hhscolumbus.weebly.com/queen-isabella.html |
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QUEST OF THE CARIBBEAN ™
For the entire 15th century, a prophecy had circulated that “the restorer of the House of Mt. Zion will come from Spain. ” For hundreds of years, the holy sites of Jerusalem had been held captive by the Muslims. But according to ancient prophecy, that day would soon end. And Columbus believed he would be part of making it happen. In his a pursuit, and beyond doubt, Columbus sailed to fulfill a religious quest. Columbus’s voyages were intense religious missions. He saw them as the fulfillment of a divine plan for his life—and for the soon-coming end of the world. As he put it in 1500, “God made me the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth of which he spoke in the Apocalypse of St. John [Rev. 21:1] after having spoken of it through the mouth of Isaiah; and he showed me the spot where to find it. ”
Columbus thought that Ferdinand and Isabella were God’s chosen instruments to recapture Jerusalem and place the Holy City under Christian control. This was not some sidelight in Columbus’s mind; it was a central passion. As scholar Pauline Moffitt Watts has written, “This was Columbus’s ultimate goal, the purpose of all his travels and discoveries—the liberation of the Holy Land. ” The Crusaders Book of Secrets, written in the early fourteenth century, said it would take 210,000 gold florins to mount a new crusade. If Columbus could find enough gold in the Indies especially if he could find the lost mines of Solomon, which were known to be in the East—he could pay for a Holy Land crusade. That is what started his quest...
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The Knights Templar by the end of the 14th century had established effectively an monarch, an international identity with its head, the Grand Master, exercising the role of sovereignty. Having established a system of banking from England to the Levant, vast agricultural holdings, and a military and naval force, the people of their communities enjoyed relative peace, better nutrition and ability to travel.
The King of France sought to plunder their wealth by an infamous inquistion that began on Friday the 13th, 1307. By 1312, a complicit Pope ordered the dissolution of the Order, and Europe plunged into strife and famine. The Black Death, also known as the Great Plague, was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia and peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351. People began looking for religous freedom, new lands, adventure, and food. The completed conquest of Granada was the context of the Spanish voyages of discovery and conquest (Columbus got royal support in Granada in 1492, months after its conquest), and the Americas—the "New World"—ushered in the era of the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires. The antillean isles would quickly follow...
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During the Age of Discovery, the conquistadors were Knights that sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, Oceania, Africa and Asia, claiming territory and opening trade routes. They colonized much of the world for Britain, Spain, the Dutch Republic, and Portugal in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. In what has become known as the Columbian Exchange, Columbus’ voyages enabled the exchange of plants, animals, cultures, ideas (and, yes, disease) between the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. Once the Europeans were able to reach nearly all parts of the globe, a new modern age would begin, transforming the world forever.
Much has been published of Columbus' connections with the Knights Templar. He was married to a daughter of a former Grand Master of the Knights of Christ, a Portuguese order that had emerged after the Templars had been driven underground. It's been noted as significant that Columbus navigated ships whose sails carried the distinctive Red Cross 'patte' of the Templars.
Christopher Columbus was looking for a western route to the Orient, and he carried with him letters of introduction to the Great Khan of China. His mission was to convince the Great Kahn to join forces and reclaim Jerusalem under the Christian Flag. All of the significant Caribbean islands were first discovered by Knights (and Conquistadors) from Europe. Most people think in terms of the “Crusades” having been conducted in the Holy Land of Jerusalem from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries. However, the Crusades actually continued throughout the sixteenth century into the New World.
Effectively, the crusades of the Americas were founded by the same religious, military Orders for the very reason of executing plans to explore the world, make contact with the Great Khan and mobilize an army to retake Jerusalem. Christopher Columbus and his voyages were backed and financed by the Brotherhood and the Church of Rome, with his ships' sails bearing Red Cross on a white background, the symbol of the Knights Templar.
The Hospitaller colonization of the Americas occurred during a 14-year period in which the Knights of St. John (Knights of Malta) possessed four Caribbean islands: Saint Christopher, Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy, and Saint Croix.
The Knights' presence in the Caribbean grew out of their order's close relationship with the French nobility and the presence of many members in the Americas as French administrators. The key figure in their brief colonization was Phillippe de Longvilliers de Poincy, who was both a Knight of St. John and governor of the French colonies in the Caribbean. Poincy convinced the Knights to purchase the islands of the Lesser Antilles from the bankrupt Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique in 1651 and remained to govern them until his death in 1660. During this time, the Order acted as proprietor of the islands, while the King of France continued to hold nominal sovereignty.
Poincy was not only a naval admiral, but also an agronomist. He established the successful cultivation of sugar cane and by the end of the 17th century, St. Christopher and Nevis' exports of 'white gold' would exceed the gross products of the entire continental america. Spain plundered only for gold, while the rest of Europe sought stabile colonization and establishment of the New Jerusalem. The world's most beautiful tree, the Royal Poinciana, would later be named after him. Sir Poincy established the most beautiful estate, La Fontaine, known in the Caribbean with least assistance from mother France. The colonists of France in Britian were largely left to fend on their own. Each island was left to create its own mini-monarch, and that would include Pirate Republics. This is a large part of the untold history of the Caribbean. Read these web pages for the corrected perspective...
http://aosj.org/quest.html
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QUEST OF THE CARIBBEAN ™
For the entire 15th century, a prophecy had circulated that “the restorer of the House of Mt. Zion will come from Spain. ” For hundreds of years, the holy sites of Jerusalem had been held captive by the Muslims. But according to ancient prophecy, that day would soon end. And Columbus believed he would be part of making it happen. In his a pursuit, and beyond doubt, Columbus sailed to fulfill a religious quest. Columbus’s voyages were intense religious missions. He saw them as the fulfillment of a divine plan for his life—and for the soon-coming end of the world. As he put it in 1500, “God made me the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth of which he spoke in the Apocalypse of St. John [Rev. 21:1] after having spoken of it through the mouth of Isaiah; and he showed me the spot where to find it. ”
Columbus thought that Ferdinand and Isabella were God’s chosen instruments to recapture Jerusalem and place the Holy City under Christian control. This was not some sidelight in Columbus’s mind; it was a central passion. As scholar Pauline Moffitt Watts has written, “This was Columbus’s ultimate goal, the purpose of all his travels and discoveries—the liberation of the Holy Land. ” The Crusaders Book of Secrets, written in the early fourteenth century, said it would take 210,000 gold florins to mount a new crusade. If Columbus could find enough gold in the Indies especially if he could find the lost mines of Solomon, which were known to be in the East—he could pay for a Holy Land crusade. That is what started his quest...
|
The Knights Templar by the end of the 14th century had established effectively an monarch, an international identity with its head, the Grand Master, exercising the role of sovereignty. Having established a system of banking from England to the Levant, vast agricultural holdings, and a military and naval force, the people of their communities enjoyed relative peace, better nutrition and ability to travel.
The King of France sought to plunder their wealth by an infamous inquistion that began on Friday the 13th, 1307. By 1312, a complicit Pope ordered the dissolution of the Order, and Europe plunged into strife and famine. The Black Death, also known as the Great Plague, was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia and peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351. People began looking for religous freedom, new lands, adventure, and food. The completed conquest of Granada was the context of the Spanish voyages of discovery and conquest (Columbus got royal support in Granada in 1492, months after its conquest), and the Americas—the "New World"—ushered in the era of the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires. The antillean isles would quickly follow...
|
During the Age of Discovery, the conquistadors were Knights that sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, Oceania, Africa and Asia, claiming territory and opening trade routes. They colonized much of the world for Britain, Spain, the Dutch Republic, and Portugal in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. In what has become known as the Columbian Exchange, Columbus’ voyages enabled the exchange of plants, animals, cultures, ideas (and, yes, disease) between the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. Once the Europeans were able to reach nearly all parts of the globe, a new modern age would begin, transforming the world forever.
Much has been published of Columbus' connections with the Knights Templar. He was married to a daughter of a former Grand Master of the Knights of Christ, a Portuguese order that had emerged after the Templars had been driven underground. It's been noted as significant that Columbus navigated ships whose sails carried the distinctive Red Cross 'patte' of the Templars.
Christopher Columbus was looking for a western route to the Orient, and he carried with him letters of introduction to the Great Khan of China. His mission was to convince the Great Kahn to join forces and reclaim Jerusalem under the Christian Flag. All of the significant Caribbean islands were first discovered by Knights (and Conquistadors) from Europe. Most people think in terms of the “Crusades” having been conducted in the Holy Land of Jerusalem from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries. However, the Crusades actually continued throughout the sixteenth century into the New World.
Effectively, the crusades of the Americas were founded by the same religious, military Orders for the very reason of executing plans to explore the world, make contact with the Great Khan and mobilize an army to retake Jerusalem. Christopher Columbus and his voyages were backed and financed by the Brotherhood and the Church of Rome, with his ships' sails bearing Red Cross on a white background, the symbol of the Knights Templar.
The Hospitaller colonization of the Americas occurred during a 14-year period in which the Knights of St. John (Knights of Malta) possessed four Caribbean islands: Saint Christopher, Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy, and Saint Croix.
The Knights' presence in the Caribbean grew out of their order's close relationship with the French nobility and the presence of many members in the Americas as French administrators. The key figure in their brief colonization was Phillippe de Longvilliers de Poincy, who was both a Knight of St. John and governor of the French colonies in the Caribbean. Poincy convinced the Knights to purchase the islands of the Lesser Antilles from the bankrupt Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique in 1651 and remained to govern them until his death in 1660. During this time, the Order acted as proprietor of the islands, while the King of France continued to hold nominal sovereignty.
Poincy was not only a naval admiral, but also an agronomist. He established the successful cultivation of sugar cane and by the end of the 17th century, St. Christopher and Nevis' exports of 'white gold' would exceed the gross products of the entire continental america. Spain plundered only for gold, while the rest of Europe sought stabile colonization and establishment of the New Jerusalem. The world's most beautiful tree, the Royal Poinciana, would later be named after him. Sir Poincy established the most beautiful estate, La Fontaine, known in the Caribbean with least assistance from mother France. The colonists of France in Britian were largely left to fend on their own. Each island was left to create its own mini-monarch, and that would include Pirate Republics. This is a large part of the untold history of the Caribbean. Read these web pages for the corrected perspective...
http://aosj.org/quest.html
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Actually, this is the Templar cross:
And this is the Swiss flag:
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It is very unlikely. The original Swiss confederation in the 13th century was made up of people from difficult to access mountain valleys within the Holy Roman Empire. They had a status that made them directly accountable to the emperor but were threatened by Habsburg “expansionism” within the empire. Their objective was to protect themselves against the Habsburg but also to ensure the peaceful management of the important trade routes through the Alps.
Although these regions are easy to access today both by train and by car, it doesn’t require much imagination to realise just how wild the place must have been before tunnels and bridges were built to make the Gotthard pass more accessible:
Even then it was rather scary in the best of weathers:
It is only round the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that it was made secure. Today the region is a paradise for hikers. So long as the weather is good!
It was a region inhabited by mountain farmers who made some money providing shelter to the merchants crossing the Alps with their wares.
Switzerland grew progressively over the centuries to become the country that we know today. It was to take hundreds of years before it became a rich country. In fact that happened in the last hundred to a hundred and fifty years with the rise of tourism, banking and the service industries that are the basis of the modern economy.
To earn money many Swiss worked as mercenaries in foreign armies including the Pope’s. This probably made them a well trained force with experience of real fighting. They would also have known the ground well and the very remoteness and wildness of the region would have made them a tough proposition to conquer!
There is no historical evidence of any Templar influence in the early history of Switzerland and no particular reason for them to want to go to a small region withing the Holy Roman Empire which had neither fortune, nor particular interest at the time.
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The Swiss 100 franc bill, note the giants and red planet Nibiru. Both Templar images.
Look at the flag, reversed red cross. The red cross is the symbol of the ‘crossing’ of Nibiru.
Switzerland has since come under the control of the jesuit vatican, however.
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Knights Templar and Switserland
"The current Knights Templar Headquarters are in Geneva. This country befits and holds similar many of the most common and closely guarded values of the original Knights Templar. The oldest abbey established in Switzerland is Sion, in the Valais Canton. There is a twin peaks overlooking the town, meaning new Jerusalem or holy place in the Alps. The twin mountains house the cathedral of Sion and the Castle Tourbillion. These date back to the beginning times of Swiss Confederation formation around 1291. A time when the Templars were known to be looking to establish a European mainland stronghold outside of the Holy Land as they were being pushed out of the Levant by the Muslims and the Christians had lost their stomach to fight on any longer.
These are suggestions that certain historians and conspiracists alike deem to be true that suggest that the Knights Templar did in fact form Switzerland. The evidence and likelihood seem pretty plausible to me. The county of Valais in the city of Sion has a particular Templar tie in the founding history. Rumors have always floated that this is where the Templars originally set up shop after their flight from France.
- In the history of the first Swiss Cantons there are tales of white coated knights mysteriously appearing and helping the locals to gain their independence against foreign domination.
- The founding of the early Switzerland pinpoints exactly to the period when the Templars were being persecuted in France by King Philip IV of France.
- Switzerland is directly to the east of France and would have been particularly easy for fleeing Templar brothers from the whole region of France to get to.
- The Templars were one of the earliest known banking systems in early day Europe. King Phillip in fact was deeply in debt to the Templars.
- Not only were the Templars big into banking, but also in farming, engineering, and clock making (of an early type). These same aspects can be seen as importance to the commencement and gradual forming of the separate states that would eventually be Switzerland.
- The Swiss don’t really know the ins and outs of their earliest history (or suggest that they don’t.)
- They are famous for being secretive and independent as were the Templars.
- The famous Templar Cross is incorporated into the flags of many of the Swiss Cantons. As are other emblems, such as keys and lambs, that were particularly important to the Knights Templar.
- The Swiss were and are famous for their religious tolerance – and so were the Templars"
https://www.templarsnow.com/2015/01/knights-templar-and-switserland.html |
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Good Templar Park was purchased in 1925 in Geneva, Illinois by Good Templars who immigrated to Chicago from Sweden. Swedish Day was established to celebrate Midsummer (Swedish Day in Sweden) without the use of alcohol. This symbolized the temperance movement throughout the United States. Protestants led the temperance movement. In 1851 in Utica, New York, the International Organization of Good Templars (IOGT) was born.
By the turn of the century, the IOGT numbered in the hundreds of thousands. This group had its most obvious impact on the Scandinavian countries, and in time, Scandinavian Templars moved to the U.S. The Scandinavians set up lodges where they could associate with others of the same ethnic group, and eventually they began to dominate the organization, which gave it its Scandinavian character. The Scandinavian settlers brought with them many traditions, the biggest that was the Festival of Midsummer, celebrated on June 21st in Sweden. The day before, Midsummer Eve, was as big as Christmas Eve is in the U.S. The festival included dancing, singing and eating good food.
To preserve these traditions, Carl Ramstedt of the Svea Lodge proposed a large picnic area for all the lodges. A few of the Good Templar lodges on the north side of Chicago decided to sponsor a large Swedish festival at Linden Park in Evanston. The picnic was so well received that in September 1911, the Grand Lodges voted to hold a festival called “Svenskarnas Dag” (Swedish Day) In later years the festival was held at Ravinia Park and eventually the Illinois Scandinavian Grand Lodge became a cosponsor.
By 1924 the festival had grown immensely to about 10,000. Some of the Good Templars thought they needed a place of their own to celebrate the holiday. A suitable piece of land was found near the Fox River on the east side of Geneva and the 66 acres were purchased in September 1924. June 30, 1925 Swedish Day in Good Templar Park had 14,000 in attendance!
https://www.goodtemplarpark.org/history |
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As we have argued in an earlier post, certain historians and conspiracists alike suggest that the Knights Templar did in fact form Switzerland. The evidence and likelihood seem pretty plausible. At the same time hard evidence is scarce and circumstantial at best. Historical fact is that the Order of the Temple counted on the current Swiss territory only two commanderies: La Chaux and Geneva.
La Chaux in Cossonay is attested in 1223 and Geneva (district of Rive) is quoted in 1277. These had other dependent houses, particularly in Cologny, Bénex (commune of Prangins) and Entremont (commune of Yvonand). All these establishments belonged to the baillie (or preceptory) of Burgundy, subdivision of the Templar province of France.
La Chaux Commanderie was given by the lords of Cossonay to the Knights Templar before 1223. This commandery does not seem to have been particularly profitable, because in 1277 part of the possessions was sold to the Franciscan order to pay debts. After the dissolution of the Order, it passed in 1315 to the Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. The commandery depended the hospices of Orbe, Villars-Sainte-Croix and Montbrelloz.
After the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century, the commandery was secularized, subordinated to the last commander, then in 1539 to the brothers of the reformer Guillaume Farel, finally sold in 1540 to Robert du Gard.
In Geneva there is a Ruelle de Templiers. This name comes from a house and a chapel of the Knights Templar who were there. At the suppression of this order, in 1312, they passed, as everywhere, to the Hospitallers of Saint John. This establishment was destroyed in 1534 with the suburbs of the left bank.
Modern Swiss Knights Templar (probably part of the OSMTH.net branch, though this Order is not referred to directly on the website) are organized in the Commandery Bertrand de Blanquefort, situated in the hart of Geneva, and the Commandery André de Montbard at Kanton Vaud (no town mentioned).
https://templarsnow.wordpress.com/tag/switserland/ |
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Investigating the Priory of Sion and the Knights Templar
SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: THE PRIORY OF SION
One of the great mysteries and contentious discussion points about the Knights Templar is whether the order was established by an already existing secret society called the Priory of Sion. This, as you will know, underlies the plot behind Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.
The story goes that the Priory of Sion was formed to protect the sacred bloodline of Jesus Christ from the Catholic church, which feared the threat to its power and the terrible truth that would fatally undermine the papacy’s authority and fabulous wealth.
The Messiah had conceived at least one child with Mary Magdalene, who had fled to France after the crucifixion. Her descendants were the Merovingian kings overthrown in the eighth century CE who ruled over a large part of modern France, Germany and Switzerland.
The priory’s aim was to reinstate the dynasty and establish a Christian theocracy over Europe ruled by the descendants of Jesus. The Knights Templar had been formed by the priory to achieve this objective, whatever the official reasons given for their creation.
Subsequent centuries had seen a secret battle played out between different forces including the priory, the Templars, the church and Freemasons. They were fighting and scheming for control of the Holy Grail. But what exactly was the Grail? A physical object like a cup used at the Last Supper or the bloodline of Jesus Christ? The so-called Sang Real?
This is all of course discounted by mainstream medieval historians as hokum. The history of the Knights Templar, in their view, does not require additional layers of fantasy to be fascinating. The Priory of Sion is utter nonsense invented by con artists and spread by the credulous. Well, below, we’re going to examine the case for the existence of the Priory of Sion and the case for the prosecution.
First – let’s hear from the defence – those who believe the Priory of Sion was very real.
Case for the Defence
- The Priory of Sion was founded in Jerusalem after the First Crusade resulted in the capture of the city by Christian forces in 1099. It was based on the site of the Byzantine Hagia Sion, which subsequently housed a monastic order called the Abbey of Our Lady of Mount Zion. The Priory and Abbey were one and the same thing. This church was the site of the bodily and spiritual “assumption” of the Virgin Mary into heaven (in Catholic dogma). It’s now under the control of the Benedictines.
- The Priory of Sion founded the Knights Templar to achieve its hidden objectives. This was to protect the bloodline of Jesus – the real Holy Grail. The term Holy Grail means “Sang Real” or Royal Blood. The Templars were the Grail Knights spoken of in legend. It was their role and destiny to defend the Grail, the bloodline, at all costs. This they would do until the time came to make the bloodline known to humanity.
- A 19th century French priest François-Bérenger Saunière (pictured above) discovered the truth about the Priory of Sion after being sent to run a church in the French village of Rennes-le-Chteau. The church was dedicated to Mary Magdalene, wife of Jesus Christ, who had fled to France after the crucifixion. While in this role, Saunière installed the statue of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes, the hugely popular pilgrimage site. He was a pious cleric who believed he had stumbled on a great truth.
- Saunière seemed to become very rich, very quickly. He built a large estate between 1898 and 1905 that included the Rococo-style edifice, Villa Bethania and the Tour Magdala with an orangery. The 1998 novel Menorah conjectures that Saunière had found the seven-branched candelabra of the Temple of Jerusalem, destroyed and sacked by the Romans.
- In the 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail it was pointed out that Rennes-le-Chateau was located close to the ancestral home of Bertrand de Blanchefort, fourth Grand Master of the Knights Templar. The three authors of the book wondered if Blanchefort had buried Templar treasure in the vicinity. They believed that during the second world war, German soldiers had very likely excavated the area. Why? Because the Nazis, obsessed with the occult, were aware that their favourite composer Richard Wagner had visited Rennes-le-Chteau and shortly afterwards written his opera Parsifal, based on a medieval Grail quest story of the same name. Wagner knew that Rennes-le-Chteau was concealing a Grail mystery.
- The book detailed how in 1891, Saunière had the altar stone removed in his church and inside one of two Visigothic pillars supporting it, discovered four parchments in sealed wooden tubes dating from between 1244 to the 1780s.
- The 1780s parchments were the most interesting authored by a priest called Antoine Bigou who was the chaplain to the Blanchefort family just before the 1789 French Revolution. They appeared to be texts from the New Testament in Latin but were written rather oddly and clearly contained coded messages. They became the subject of three documentaries made for the BBC in the 1970s by one of the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Henry Lincoln. It referred to the last Merovingian king, Dagobert II, as follows once decoded: “To Dagobert II, king, and to Sion belongs this treasure and he is there dead.”
- Another parchment contained the enigmatic message: “Shepherdess, no temptation. That Poussin, Teniers hold the key. Peace 681. By the cross and this horse of God. I complete this daemon of the guardian at noon. Blue apples.”
- Saunière made the discovery of the parchments known to the bishop of Carcassonne who, realising their importance, sent him to Paris straight away. While there, visiting clerics and mixing with society people, he went to the Louvre to acquaint himself with the Poussin painting The Shepherds of Arcadia, long believed to include a Templar related secret message.
- Saunière returned to Rennes-le-Chteau and embarked on a bizarre redecoration of his church that included a representation of the demon Asmodeus who, in Talmudic legends, built the Temple of Solomon. In Kabbalistic circles, Asmodeus was the offspring of King David and the queen of the demons, Agrat bat Mahlat.
- On 22 January, 1917, Saunière suffered a stroke and died. The huge estate he had built was passed to his long serving housekeeper Marie Denarnaud. Gradually sliding in to genteel poverty after the second world war, Denarnaud sold the estate to a businessman called Noël Corbu (1912-1968). She promised to confide a secret to Corbu that would make him rich and powerful but tantalisingly died before she could impart this knowledge.
- The author Dan Brown took the story of these hidden parchments and brought the story of the Priory of Sion back to public prominence with his book The Da Vinci Code. The adventure starts with the murder of a curator at the Louvre called Jacques Saunière (same name as the priest who served at Rennes-le-Chteau) , who also happens to be the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion. His killer is a Catholic monk under the direction of a “teacher” who wants to use the secret of the Holy Grail to destroy the Vatican. The real meaning of the Holy Grail is the bloodline of Christ and it leads the book’s hero to the sarcophagus of Mary Magdalene, located under the Louvre.
- Dan Brown has asserted strongly that the Priory of Sion is fact and not fiction.
Case for the Prosecution
- The Prioriy of Sion was an invention of a French convicted fraudster called Pierre Athanase Marie Plantard (1920-2000 and pictured above). In 1953, he served a six-month prison sentence for fraud. This was revealed in a BBC2 programme called The History of a Mystery, part of the “Timewatch” documentary series. Timewatch was the successor to an earlier documentary strand called “Chronicles”, which in the 1970s had promoted the whole Priory of Sion thesis.
- Three years after his prison sentence, with an accomplice called André Bonhomme, Plantard created an organisation called The Priory of Sion in 1956. Bonhomme was president and Plantard was secretary general. Initially, it was not intended to be viewed as an ancient sect pre-dating the Templars, but just a pressure group campaigning for better local housing. It also took a traditionalist Catholic line and wanted to work with the local church on things like running a school bus service. Sion refers to a hill near the town of Annemasse where Plantard lived in the Auvergne region of France. The priory folded later the same year.
- Enter Robert Charroux, a man who believed that aliens had visited humanity in ancient history and imparted wondrous knowledge. A very similar theory was popularised in the 60s and 70s by the Swiss author Erich Von Däniken with his book Chariot of the Gods. In 1962, Charroux wrote a book Trésors du monde. It gave details of hidden treasures all over the world. Charroux had come across the aforementioned Noël Corbu who had bought the estate built by the priest Saunière. Corbu had serialised a story in the local paper claiming that the priest Saunière had discovered all or part of a 28.5 million gold pieces fortune gathered by Blanche of Castile to pay the ransom on King Louis of France during the Crusades, when he was being held prisoner by the Saracens in Egypt. This was detailed, he claimed, in the parchments found in the pillar of the altar in his church by Saunière. Cynics countered that Corbu was just trying to drum up business at his restaurant.
- A great deal is made of the sudden wealth acquired by Saunière as proof that he had indeed found part of the wealth of Blanche of Castile and possibly other treasure. The reality, as evidenced by several church disciplinary hearings and the stripping of his priesthood, is that he was utterly corrupt, selling masses which was against church law. This view was corroborated by a local historian, René Descadeillas, in 1974 as well as a Channel 4 documentary in the UK called The Real Da Vinci Code broadcast in 2005 and a CBS 60 Minutes investigation, Priory of Sion, aired the following year. All came to the conclusion that Saunière’s wealth did not derive from discovering secret treasure but by exploiting his gullible parishioners.
- CBS also questioned the veracity of the discovered parchments and revealed that Plantard had been investigated by the French secret services during the second world war and described as a “fantasist”. He had come to their attention as an extreme right-wing activist.
- Plantard seems to have latched on to the Corbu story and developed it. In fact, all the protagonists in this conspiracy theory grabbed the Priory of Sion story baton and ran with it awhile – developing new angles before handing it on to another author.
- Plantard and others then developed a lineage for the Priory of Sion transporting it back way beyond 1956 into the mists of history. It was linked by Plantard to an abbey in Jerusalem, the Hagia Sion or Church of Zion. This was originally built in the early 5th century, then destroyed by invading Persians and later occupied by a monastic order called the Abbey of Our Lady of Mount Zion. As Plantard rightly pointed out, they were absorbed into the Jesuits in 1617. But experts say that order had nothing to do with Plantard’s Priory of Sion.
- Plantard hooked up with an author called Gérard de Sède (1921-2004) who was the Baron de Lieoux and a man heavily influenced by surrealism. The result was a tome called L’Or de Rennes, the gold of Rennes, published in 1967. The two of them concocted the yarn that the last Merovingian king was buried at Rennes-le-Chteau in the eighth century and that the Priory of Sion had been working clandestinely ever since to bring the Merovingians back to power.
- Plantard had taken his Priory of Sion organisation from a defunct housing pressure group to an ancient brotherhood protecting the Merovingian line of which he now decided he was a descendant. The central proposition was that a Merovingian monarch would rule France, and possible Europe, fulfilling a prophecy of Nostradamus. Plantard styled himself “Chyren”, a pseudonym referring to “Chren Selin”, an anagram used by Nostradamus to refer to this future king.
- Enter Philippe de Chérisey, another aristocrat influenced by surrealism, who became buddies with Plantard in the early 1960s. He undoubtedly forged medieval parchments, allegedly found by Saunière, to back up the idea of the Priory of Sion being an ancient organisation. With Plantard, he created a load of allegedly secret documents, which they placed in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (bit like the Library of Congress or the British Library) De Cherisey seems to have viewed these forgeries as a bit of a hoot. In later confessions, he conceded that he enjoyed setting false trails.
- Henry Lincoln, author of Holy Blood Holy Grail, admitted that Plantard had told him De Cherisey had created the documents on which the whole Priory of Sion hoax rests.
- The Italian author and academic Umberto Eco was fascinated by the Knights Templar and the fantasy that surrounds them. He satirised people like Plantard in his book Foucault’s Pendulum where three publishers develop a fraudulent conspiracy theory only to be sucked in to a real one. This is surely a post-modern chuckle at the fantasists and hucksters.
- What we have with the Priory of Sion is a total fabrication half-believed by all those involved.
It sounds pretty damning for Plantard and his Priory of Sion. But then there’s another hypothesis put forward by Templar historian and fantasy writer Graeme Davis in his book Knights Templar A Secret History. Should mention that he also co-designed Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Davis argues that the whole point of the Plantard hoax was to throw people off the scent of the real location of the Holy Grail.
In 2007 Davis met an academic who had taught at the University of Toulouse called Dr Émile Fouchet. They were at the International Congress on Medieval Studies. Fouchet shared his notes on the foundation of the Knights Templar with Davis three days before he was killed in a car accident in 2012 just outside Troyes, a town in France with strong Templar connections. Accident? Suicide? Murder? Who knows.
Fouchet developed a complicated account of the Holy Grail being fought over down the centuries by Freemasons, the Inquisition and a secret continuation of the Knights Templar in various guises. One of the Templar tools was none other than Napoleon Bonaparte who they allowed to demolish the Paris Temple to cover his tracks.
The Holy Grail was hidden by the Templars at Rennes-le-Chteau where Saunière, an Inquisition agent, set about trying to find it. The Templars created false trails to confuse both the Inquisition and Freemasons who desperately tried to locate the Grail in Rennes-le-Chteau even though it had already gone. The Templars had whisked it out of the country. Eventually, the Inquisition realised Saunière’s efforts had come to nothing and they hung him out to dry with charges of corruption.
Fast forward to the Second World War and the Templars had got an ultra-right-wing nationalist called Plantard to start writing a load of baloney about secret documents and his connection to the Merovingian dynasty and Mary Magdalene. All of which, Fouchet asserted, was another false trail created by the Templars. They wanted the Inquisition and Freemasons to believe the Grail was still in Rennes-le-Chteau when it had left in around 1897. Where was it now? A town called Sion in Switzerland is one possibility.
One nagging problem I have with this hypothesis is that I can’t find anything about Emile Fouchet except in this book. And there’s a reason for that – he is entirely fictional!! The author Graeme Davis has contacted me since this blog post first went live to say that Fouchet was his own invention and he is not a scholar but a master of fantasy. See his comment below.
So back to the drawing board again when it comes to proving the Priory of Sion!
I hope you have enjoyed this investigation of the Priory of Sion!
To find out more about the Knights Templar – read my very comprehensive history of the Templars: The Knights Templar – History & Mystery – published by Pen & Sword. It’s available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, WHSmith, Waterstones, and other online bookstores.
https://thetemplarknight.com/2017/09/29/priory-of-sion/ |
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