The Knights Templar and the Terrible Secret

Copyright 2000 by Aleta Boudreaux author of SONG OF THE WHITE SWAN, an epic adventure set in the New World

Perhaps it’s because my mother named me after Queen Aleta, a Viking princess and wife of a heroic medieval knight, Prince Valiant, that I’ve always been fascinated by the stories of the warrior knights, the Holy Grail, of Avalon and, Merlin and King Arthur, and all the stories of the "Grail Quest."

No medieval story is complete without a Templar being thrown in for good measure. Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, the King Arthur and Grail legends. The romance of chivalrous knights, honoring women, defending the poor and wielding justice with the sword.

I felt so strongly about this ideal that I discouraged my son from playing with GI Joes and Batman and taught him instead about honor, read to him of Camelot and the Grail mysteries, encouraged him to learn about swords instead of guns, to treat women honorable, and initiated him as a page into the Order of Knights of Isvara when he was twelve years old.

My Arthurian fascination grew with Marion Zimmer Bradley’s version of the Grail story with "The Mists of Avalon". I knew when I read "Mists", told not from Merlin’s POV or Authur’s but from Morgan le Fay, the priestess, that it was time to tell my own story of a young woman’s "quest."

I had a basic story that I wanted to tell. I had my own priestess of the Goddess, Antoinette Charboneau. I had the beginnings of an Arthurian type heroine, with the young Duchess and a nemisis, a Knights Templar, Antoinette’s brother.

Now all I needed was a plot to weave them all together.

I found my plot as I began to research the Knights Templar and discovered several mysteries surrounding the warrior monks best known for their heroic valor during the Crusades of the Middle ages.

Who were the Knights Templar?
Traditional history tells of the Knights Templar was an organization of warrior monks, knight mystics, clad in white mantles with splayed red crosses.

They have been portrayed many ways. In Scott’s Ivanhoe they are haughty arrogant bullies, shamelessly abusing their power. In the Robin Hood adventures they were King Richard’s attendants. In other 19^th century writings they are depicted as Devil worshipers and heretics.

More recent historians are inclined to view them as hapless victims, sacrificial pawns in high level political maneuvering of the Church and State.

And yet there are other writers, especially in the tradition of Freemasonry who regard the Templars as mystical adepts and initiates, custodians of an arcane wisdom that transcends Christianity itself.

Originally called the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ founded in 1118 AD, their political purpose was to escort the true believers in Christianity to the Holy Lands of Jerusalem. They were sworn to chastity, poverty and obedience and by 1139 they owed allegiance to no one but the Pope.

Over the next two decades, young sons of noble families flocked to join the Templars and since with admission to the Order, a man was compelled to sign over all his possessions, including his land, the Templar holdings proliferated.

The Order maintained their own hospitals and surgeons, sea-ports, shipyards and fleets, both military and commercial, with their major fleet in La Rochelle, France.

They established a system of banking and in effect became the bankers for every throne in Europe. By placing your riches in one Templar stronghold, one could travel to another and redeem the money by script. They enjoyed a monopoly on the best and most advanced technology of their age, stonemasonry, surveying, road building, map making and navigation.

By the mid thirteenth century they had become a powerful force in both Europe and the Holy Land and were involved in high level diplomacy between monarchs and nobles throughout the Western world.

Their links were not limited to Christendom, they had close ties to the Muslim world and garnered much respect from the Saracen leaders.

Through the Templars on-going relations with the Islamic and Judaic cultures, they absorbed a great many ideas alien to orthodox Roman Christianity. They came to learn and to accept new areas of knowledge and new sciences.

Ideally they wanted a state of their own where they could enjoy an unchallenged sovereignty out of the reach of both secular and ecclesiastical control, like the other chivalric, religious military order, the Teutonic Knights whose order encompassed the whole of the eastern Baltic region.

When the Templars last stronghold in the Holy Land came under Muslim control, they established their headquarters in southern France in an area now known as the Languedoc.

Languedoc was not officially part of France, it was an independent principality ruled by a handful of noble families.

The Languedoc had much in common with Byzantium. They held knowledge and learning in high esteem. The nobility was literate and literary. The Languedoc practiced a civilized, easygoing religious tolerance, unlike the fanatical zeal that spread though most of Europe.

The Cathars or Albigensians lived in the Languedoc and they were considered heretics posing a threat to Roman Christianity.

These heretics composed a multitude of diverse sects, from vegetarians to what we would now term "new agers". The Cathars believed in reincarnation, the recognition of the feminine principle in religion, and that knowledge or "gnosis" took precedence over all creeds and dogma. They formed their own church in opposition to Rome. They lived their lives in peace and harmony with nature. Women were held in high esteem, and allowed to preach.

The Cathars in the town of Albi were condemned by an ecclesiastical council. Thought the Templars remained neutral during the Albigensian Crusade, which lasted 40 years, they took in refugees and were sympathetic to the Cathar’s plight and possibly to their beliefs.

From their earliest years, the Templars had maintained a certain rapport with the Cathars. Many wealthy land owners had donated vast tracts of land to the Templars and many Cathar noblemen’s sons joined the Order.

Through the influx of the Cathar nobility into their ranks , the Templars were now exposed or re-exposed to "gnositism" and the ancient Hebrew traditions.

The Cathars beliefs were closer to ancient Christianity than to those of the Roman Church.

They believed that Jesus was a prophet, a priest king and Messiah, a fully human agent who was the anointed Son of God, a man, no different from any other mortal being who, on behalf of the principle of love, died on the cross.

There were rumors that the Cathars were extremely wealthy and that they had a great treasure in their stronghold at Montsegur. More rumors arouse during the Albigensian Crusade of a fantastic, mystical treasure far beyond material wealth.

During a time of truce it was rumored that 3 men escaped with a treasure. Could that treasure have been "THE HOLY GRAIL"? When the last of the Cathars were killed and the Albigensian Crusade ended, the treasure was never found.

By 1303 the Templars, with their wealth and their autonomy posed a particular threat to the French King, Phillip de Bel. He envied the Templars power and he owed the Templars money. He vowed to disband them, and set about to discredit them.

First he engineered the kidnapping and death of one Pope, then the murder of another, then secured the election of his own candidate, the archbishop of Bordeaux, to the Vatican papal throne.

Armed with a list of charges, among them denying Christ and worshipping the devil, Phillip ordered the Templars arrested.

At dawn on Friday October the 13^th, 1307 all the Templars in France were to be seized and placed under arrest, their preceptories to be given over to the king and their goods confiscated.

The Templars appeared to have been warned in advance because there was an organized flight of Templars, the treasure of the Temple in Paris and almost all their documents disappeared. Rumors were that the Templar treasure had been taken to their naval base at La Rochelle, loaded into galleys which were never heard from again. Some of them may have fled to Portugal, to Scotland and maybe even to America.

Could this treasure have been the Cathar’s treasure or the Templar’s wealth, or some other "treasure" they were guarding?

In France, Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, among others, was burned at the stake. (Jacques was also the godfather of one of Phillips children)

Many French Templars found a refuge in Scotland and are said to have fought at Robert the Bruce’s side at Brannockburn in 1314.

There is evidence that the Templars were a coherent body in Scotland for another four centuries.

The Templars also found refuge in Lorraine, which was then part of Germany, and in Germany with the Teutonic Knights and the Hospitalliers of Saint John.

In Portugal the order was cleared by inquiry and modified its name to become the Knights of Christ, devoting themselves to maritime activities. Vasco de Gama was a Knight of Christ.

Prince Henry the Navigator who founded the Navigational school at Sagre was a Grand Master. Christopher Colmubus was a member of the Order of the Crescent and sailed on Templar ships under the red cross patee and was married to the daughter of a Knight of Christ.

In 1522, the Templars’ Prussian progeny, the Teutonic Knights, secularized themselves, repudiated their allegiance to Rome and threw their support behind a rebel and heretic named Martin Luther.

There are groups today that relate themselves through some pedigree or another back to the Templars. The Rosicrucians, and some Freemasonry organizations.

Many myths and things we are familiar with today can also be traced back to the Templars. The symbol of the skull and crossbones, a rather morbid story of grave robbing and unholy weddings. The superstition of ill things happening on Friday the 13^th, (because of the October 13^th arresting of the Templars)

The Templars have been linked with the shroud of Turin, (supposed to be the Mandyleon that once belonged to the Templars), The Holy Grail, The Ark of the Covenant.

What is the Terrible Secret?

Terrible can also mean shocking, frightful, awful, appalling.

These shocking, frightful, awful, appalling things were called the Great Heresies.

One of the most widely spread was the heresy in the Middle Ages was that Jesus was not crucified but that another was put in his place. He was then married to Mary Magdeline, his first disciple.

Legend tells us that Joseph of Aramathea was a custodian of the Holy Grail, and with the Magdeline and certain others fled to Egypt. From there Mary Magdeline, Joseph, Martha and Lazarus fled with the Grail to the South of France.

There are hypothesis that the Grail could have been one of two things: The "Sang Rall" in Old French means the "Royal blood", the Royal lineage of David, or "The Sangrall" in the Provencal French means "cup" or "basin", an actual vessel that received and contained Jesus’ blood.

Could it have been the Magdalene herself who was the HOLY GRAIL carrying the child of Jesus? Could the Templars have been the guardian of the lineage of the House of David?

There are Old French legends that of the exiled Magdalene coming to Southern France.

In the Town of Les Santes Marie de la Mer in France, there is a Festival to honor Saint Sarah the Eqyptian, or Sara Kali, the "Black Queen." A 12 year old child, born in Egypt who accompanied Mary Magdeline, Martha and Lazarus to France in 42 A.D.

There are many more legends, there are Black Madonnas and the Cult of the Magdalene for whom many chapels in France were built.

Many paintings of the Middle Ages depict Mary Magdalene with an Alabastar jar, and with unicorns, the recognized symbol for Christ. Some portray the Magdeline as being with child.

According to the Nag Hammadi scrolls, or the Gnostic Gospels, a collection of scrolls discovered in Egypt in 1945, several of the Gospels make reference to Jesus of Nazareth escaping his death on the cross, a continuing dispute between Peter and the Magdalene, a marriage between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, the birth of a "son of the Son of man".

The Gospel of John clearly defines the woman who anointed Jesus feet with nard, the woman with the Alabastar Jar as the sister of Lazarus, Mary of Bethany. French tradition calls the Magdalen "the sister of Lazarus." (Some scholars believe that Mary Magdalene was a priestess not a prostitute.)

The anointing with nard was an ancient Judeaic tradition, a ceremony performed as an actual rite performed by a daughter of a royal house, or a priestess and this marriage rite itself conferred kingship.

In ancient times it was also a tradition for the widows of the kings to anoint the kings’ bodies with unguent before burial.

If there was a marriage between Mary of Bethany, a daughter of the tribe of Benjamin and Jesus, the messianic Son of David, it would have been a source of healing for the people of Israel, a sign of hope for Israel’s darkest times. And the fulfillment of many of the Hebrew prophecies. The Zealots would have been happy to have something of such magnitude to use against the Romans.

The term Magdalene may allude to the "Magdal-eder," found in the words of the Hebrew prophet Micah, and his prophecy of the restoration of Jerusalem when all nations shall beat their swords into plowshares and be reconciled under God. Magdal-eder means "the watchtower or tower of the Flock" in Hebrew.

Why would this particular heresy have flourished so widely in the Middle Ages, from the art and poetry of the time, to the legends and stories of the Grail? And what does it have to do with the Knights Templar?

The Knights Templar left Europe to escort pilgrims to the Holy Land. Could it be that they were SENT to the Holy Land to find something? Perhaps THE ARK OF THE COVENANT?

When they lived in Jerusalem in 1100 they supposedly excavated under the Temple of Jerusalem. Could they have been looking for something in the form of birth records, marriage records, anything that proved the bloodline of Jesus as the rightful king of Israel, Jesus’ lineage, or even perhaps Jesus’ body?

It appears that they found something and that they took it back to Europe and concealed in the vicinity of Rennes le Chateau, a Templar outpost in the Pyrenees, near Montseguer and the Cathar stronghold.

Why would this birthright or bloodline be so important to discover or protect?

Over 1000 years had passed since the death of Jesus. If he had descendents they would be scattered over Europe and of little importance if he were not after all the Son of the One true God.

But the bloodline would have been important because if Jesus’ heirs could prove by record that he was the rightful king of Israel, a mortal prophet, a priest-king and legitimate ruler of the line of David, his heir might well have become acceptable to both Muslims and Jews who held the same basic tenants back to the time of Soloman.

The King of Jerusalem would have taken precedence over all the monarchs of Europe, and the patriarch of Jerusalem would have supplanted the Pope. The center of Christendom would have moved from Rome to Jerusalem.

As king of Jerusalem, Jesus’ lineal descendant (which can supposedly be traced to the Merovengian monarchy of France during the Middle Ages), would then have been in a position to implement one of the primary tenants of Templar policy – the reconciliation of Christianity with Judaism and Islam.

But the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem never attained its strength and when Acre (AHH-CHER) fell in 1291, the Templars plan collapsed. They retreated back to Europe and began further plans to reclaim their rights.

When they were again deterred by Philip de Bel in 1307 they went further underground, but still moved forward with their plans.

Some believe that the village of Rennes Le Chateau in the Pyreness holds a primary key to the Templar treasure.

In the Middle Ages, Rennes Le Chateau, once called IRETTA, was a principle outpost for the Templars. Blanche de Montfort, the last descendant of the 4^th Grand Master to the Knights Templar built a watch tower across from Renned La Chateau and a commandery South of BEZU which was never taken by Rome.

In 1891, a priest, Father Sonnier, while renovating the Church found parchments written in Latin that hold secret messages written in French. When deciphered they read "This treasure belongs to Zion and to DAGOBERT" St. Dagobert was a 7^th century King of the Merovengian Franks.

Another parchment mentions Poussin. Study of the artist Poussin’s alegorical painting "The Shepherds of Arcadia" show a tomb and the same inscriptions on the monument of Marie de Blanchfort, a Merovengian princess, ET IN ARCADIA EGO, (I am in Arcadia).

The background of this painting is the image of the mountains of Cardou, just North of Rennes Le Chateau. A shepherdess that is possibly pregnant and other images that allude to the pregnant Magdalene and the tomb of Christ. Poissin was a Freemason.

It is also possible that Sonnier found a great treasure, something that the Church or someone was willing to pay money for because as a poor priest he was able to renovate the church and built a tower to Mary Magdalene, the Patron Saint of the Village.

If we follow the Merovengian bloodline, the closest that the French Merovengian family got to the Throne of the Holy Roman Empire was in the 18^th century when the house of Lorraine actually acquired the throne of Austria, the Holy Roman Empire. Some say that Princess Diana, a Spenser was a bloodline descendant.

The roots of the Templars beliefs have always been claimed to be the Bible, but only in part. To truly understand the Templars one must go deeper into the studies of the Gnostics, the esoteric followers of the TRUTH and farther back to the early Hebrew traditions to the time of Soloman when there was not only Yahweh but also the Goddess Ashtoreth or as she was know in Mesopotamia as Astarte.

Ashtoreth or Asherah is mentioned several times in the Old Testament was openly worshipped by the Israelites until 6^th century B.C. when she was replaced by the single supreme male god of Jehovah.

In one painting of the middle ages hanging in the Louvre, the Magdelene is shown in the pose so often seen in Sumerian sculptures of the Goddess Astarte with her hands cupped under her breasts.

The Templars were known for the high value they placed on women, their role as "knights in shining armor" from the middle ages. Some say they were followers of the ancient wisdom or Sophia, the Goddess of truth and wisdom.

The Templars relationship to the Grail stories of Wagner, of King Arthur and the Lady of the Lake, their place in the art, poetry and the expounding of courtly love of the middle ages surely places the Templars if not within the realm of Goddess worship at least within the realm of their acknowledgement of the Feminine Principle of divinity.

If they were the legendary guardians of the "Grail" they would have protected the matri-lineal heirs to the throne of Jerusalem.

Where does this leave the Templars in their quest and their secret? Why did they not cease to exist when their plans were squelched in the Holy Lands? And what happened to their Holy Treasure, whatever it was?

Remember after Philip de Bel disbanded the Templars that some of the Templars fled to Scotland and some of the Templars became Navigators.

In 1392, a Templar Navigator named Prince Henry Saint Clair (Sinclair), reportedly sailed west from Scotland, headed for the New World or the New Jerusalem. He took with him two Italian mapmakers, the Zeno brothers who charted his trip. Evidence shows that the voyage took Saint Clair to Nova Scotia.

SOME QUESTIONS

Did Sinclair take the Templar Treasure to the New World? Was it the Holy Grail? Did Saint Claire go to the New World to try to establish a new Templar stronghold? Incidently, the Sinclair’s also claim lineage to the Holy Bloodline of the House of David.

Micmac legends tell of a great warrior-king, Kluscap who came from a distant land. Could Saint Clair have been their Kluscap?

In his book, THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR IN THE NEW WORLD (Previous published as THE LABYRINTH OF THE GRAIL), William Mann goes into detail about Sinclair and his voyage to the New World.

When he was a boy, he was shown a Masonic ring by his uncle who was a Grand Master of the Knights Templar in Canada. But this ring held a secret chamber and a symbol of two intertwined circles centered on a line that ran through an amethest jewel. His uncle told him stories and legends and became his mentor.

Over the years Bill studied many things, eventually becoming a landscape architect and town planner. He has used his knowledge of the archane wisdom, his knowledge of history and has come to the conclusion that the image his uncle showed him was a map.

A map that eventually lead him to a place where he believes he has found evidence of a Templar stronghold in Nova Scotia.

In THE LABYRINTH OF THE GRAIL, Bill interlaces the legends of the Templars with the Tarot, Ancient Secrets, ancient wisdom, alchemy, numerology, and Freemasonry. He follows Henry Sinclair’s voyage and the possible reasoning behind his search for the "New Jerusalem" and his mission to Nova Scotia and the New World.

He uses maps and topographical surveys, allegorical paintings and legends of the Sinclair family to further is research. He touches on the discoveries at Oak Island of the "Money Pit" and reveals why he believes that this is not the place of the Templar’s treasure.

Most of all he places emphasis on a body of work called the Dossiers Secret,

The Secret Dossiers, and a body of work titled LE SERPENT ROUGE. It contains a Merovengian genealogy, two maps of France in Merovendian times, and a ground plan for the Church of St. Suplice in Paris. Le SERPENT ROUGE also contains thirteen short prose poems which scholars say points the pathway through the Zodial signs to the HOLY GRAIL.

Bill uses all these legends, signs and pathways to weave together a trail that leads to the "hidden history" of the Knights Templar.

My book, Song of the White Swan, is set in 1491. A time when Brittany was becoming France, when the French King was attempting to regain the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. The Knights of Christ in Portugal were providing ships for navigators like Christopher Columbus to find the New World.

Although Henry Sinclair is not a character in my book, his voyage and the Templar mission are predominant themes.

My heroine, a Druid priestess, a worshipper of the Goddess, gets involved with a Templar Secret Mission to the New World. She meets a Micmac Shaman and she becomes influential in their eventual meeting with the European settlers.

I’m working on a sequel which will take the Templars into central Nova Scotia in further search for the HOLY GRAIL.

RECOMMENDED BOOKS

The Knights Templar in the New World* by William F. Mann - ISBN 0-89281185-0-4 - Destiny Books, 2004

    Previously released as The Labyrinth of the Grail by William F. Mann –ISBN 0-9659701-8-3 - Laughing Owl Publishing 1999

Holy Blood/Holy Grail by Michael Bradley

The Woman with the Alabaster Jar by Margaret Starbird – 1-879181-03-7

Bloodline of the Holy Grail by Laurence Gardner ISBN 1-86204-111-3

When God was a Woman by Merlin Stone ISBN 0-15-696158

Archeologically documented history of the religion of the Goddess.

The Sword and the Grail by Andrew Sinclair ISBN 0-0-517-58618-5

The Rose Cross and the Goddess by Gareth Knight ISBN 0-89281-104-8 (Destiny Books) [Text from the back cover] "How the feminine "spirit of the rose" has been brought to bloom in the past with examples from ancient Greece, the Graeco-Roman world, seventeenth century Rosicrucian spiritual alchemy and Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism."

The Templars: Knights of God by Edward Burman ISBN 0-89281-221-4 -A history of the Knights Templar until 1312.

Song of the White Swan by Aleta Boudreaux ISBN 0-9659701-6-7