The Telegraph.co.uk is reporting today that the Knights Templar in Spain have decided to sue the Vatican to get their stuff back:The Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ, whose members claim to be descended from the legendary crusaders, have filed a lawsuit against Benedict XVI calling for him to recognise the seizure of assets worth €100 billion (US$150 billion).
They claim that when the order was dissolved by his predecessor Pope Clement V in 1307, more than 9,000 properties as well as countless pastures, mills and other commercial ventures belonging to the knights were appropriated by the church.
But their motive is not to reclaim damages only to restore the "good name" of the Knights Templar.
"We are not trying to cause the economic collapse of the Roman Catholic Church, but to illustrate to the court the magnitude of the plot against our Order," said a statement issued by the self-proclaimed modern day knights.
And I am the real Anastasia.
If the Templars were indeed dissolved by the RC Church, and the various knights not rounded up in France went on to join different orders, then doesn't that make any group trying to ask for reparations a "clandestine" order?
ReplyDelete;-)
This is making me think that perhaps the various books and authors, from Umberto Eco to Michael Baigent to Dan Brown have all been part of a... conspiracy to bring the Templars back into the public eye in order that they might ask for such reparations.
Aren't you too young and possess extra "junk" to be Anastasia?
ReplyDelete:)-
To call a Templar Order "clandestine" under the terms defined above is just far too simplistic of an approach to such a complicated matter. Firstly, regularity is not defined in the same terms as Masonry in the realm of Chivalric Orders. There are sanctuaries of protection given to Orders by various Metropolitan Bishops of the Eastern the Western and other variants of the Orthodox Church, as well as various Independent, Old Catholic, Universal Anglican and French Gnostic obediences just as the Pope does for the Roman Catholic Orders. There are Sovereigns who grant their support, and there are complicated tracings of heritage, titles of Nobility as well as the succession of ruling class distinctions of knighthood that have at times been preserved by families when either the Order or the family or both were in exile.
ReplyDeleteSpain has some very high ranking Catholics involved in Templar styled Orders, some of which are quite legitimate and whose ranks are swollen with Aristocrats in much the same fashion that the more commonplace SMOTJ OSMTH pools are filled with Leaders of State, diplomats, Generals and Admirals. Both Spain and Portugal have preserved some very old Orders...some of them related directly to the Templars. One should travel overseas and witness it for themselves. It is quite a serious circle, and it is far removed from the dress up and play & pretend antics associated with some of the groups within the American Masonic genre which tend to attract commoners looking to engage in the frivolous.
I don't disagree or discount the makeup and heritage of the templar-styled orders. In Spain, the Order of Montesa was created out of the Templars and absorbed the KT property there, until they were combined with other Spanish chivalric orders in 1739 and officially dissolved. And in Portugal particularly where the Templars simply changed their name to the Knights of Christ and went right on after the Templar's catastrophe in France, undoubtedly somebody could attempt to make a claim for an unbroken line of pedigree for the order.
ReplyDeleteExcept.
The Templars, like the Hospitallars and the Teutonic Knights and a handful of others were creatures of papal authority. They were created by papal edict, operated at the will and pleasure of the popes, and upon his orders, could be disbanded at his whim. Whether Clement V was a pawn of Phillipe IV or not; whether the Avignon papacy was corrupt or not; whether the trials were held illegally by secular courts to try the Order for ecclesiastical crimes or not; whether Clement 'secretly' absolved the order of wrongdoing (and I'm not convinced that he did-only those knights he specifically investigated at Chinon) or not—all of that is irrelevant.
The pope was the legal authority by which the Order operated. Clement was the duly elected pontiff. When he shut the Templars down, for any reason including a bad mitre hair day, he was the sole authority for doing so. And 700 years later attempting to claim direct line of descent from the order is little short of idiotic. It makes a fun press release. And an anti-Catholic civil judge might even have a heyday with it, just for the pest factor.
Who you callin' a commoner, Bub?