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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.freemasonry,alt.magick,talk.religion.misc,alt.conspiracy,alt.history
From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nigris (333))
Subject: Templar History, Lineage
Date: 23 Mar 1997 12:39:13 -0800

49970228 AA1  Hail Satan!  (a bit of adventure into Orderly history)

E6


paulhume@lan2wan.com (Paul Hume):
#> Templars: You asked about documentation on Templar survivors. The phrase
#> in Gerald's post (I think - I have lost track of who said what) "escaped
#> into Germany" is not quite accurate. The Order in France was thoroughly
#> destroyed by Phillip, and doubtless some members managed to get out of
#> the country - but we need to remember that the Templars were an
#> international organization (one basis of that "banker" label people seem
#> so fond of tossing around).
 
Tim Maroney :
# Is there some controversy as to whether Templars survived the suppression 
# of the Order? 

I'd thought the controversy lies less with the survival of the *people* 
and more with whether the ORDER survived.  this gets into issues of what
constitutes the beginning and ending of an Order, who has to survive 
such that an (esp. one centralized) Order may be 'legitimately' said to 
have had an uninterrupted lineage, etc.


# The Order itself was suppressed but not condemned. It was not a crime 
# to have been a Templar and most of those who had been jailed before 
# were released -- some with pensions. The few dozen burned by Philip 
# were only the tiniest part of the Order. The vast majority went on 
# to live normal agrarian lives.

however, what I hear/read more often (not being thoroughly studied in
this subject, btw) is that this "tiniest part" was the *administration*
of a fairly centralized structure.  the 'Grand Master' of the entire
Order (de Molay) and his Upper Echelon (whose titles are Seneschal, 
Marshal and Commanders of various sacred geographical regions) were 
those captured and presumably killed by King Philip IV (the Fair) of 
France in association with Pope Clement IV and his edict to the kings
of Europe of 1307.

 
#> Most of the nations of Christendom followed Innocent's dictum and purged
#> the Templars.

Pope Innocent?  or Clement?

 
# Perhaps we use different meanings of the word "purged". My understanding 
# from Malcolm Barber's books is that many nations did heed the papal 
# dictate to hold the Templars awaiting trial, but they did not have any 
# reason to continue to hold them after the Order was dissolved.

I'm very curious about the diversity of description on this point. I have
variously heard that the Templars were either all killed or run out of
town after or during the dessication of the Order's admin, or that it was
a moderate beheading which sprouted new roots elsewhere or underground,
or that de Molay was substituted and survived the escapade so as to prove
a healthy continuation of the fabled lineage.  I had presumed that the
truth lay somewhere in-between and have seen little to indicate that the
Order as a whole survived the assault, modern varieties being related only
'in spirit', not through unbroken historical continuation.  then again I 
haven't read any of the texts about which you and Paul are speaking, only
spoken with a few Orderlies. ;>
 

#> John Robinson (whose historical research is much better than Baigent 
#> and Leigh's....
 
# I would not believe one thing that John Robinson writes without 
# confirmation, ....

#> Peter Partner (The Knights Templar and Their Myth, also in an edition 
#> called The Murdered Magicians), and John Robinson (Dungeon, Fire, 
#> and Sword, as well as his Masonic speculation, Born In Blood).
 
# The two best current mainstream historical sources on the Templars are 
# both by Malcolm Barber, and both from Cambridge University Press. The 
# first is "The Trial of the Templars"; the second is "The New Knighthood". 
# again, I must caution all readers to shun John J. Robinson's inane books 
# on the subject.

hmm, as I said, there does appear to be a lack of uniformity on this
subject, at least in the popular forums.  I respect both Paul's and 
Tim the Wizard's sources generally, and so am intrigued to see if they
will be able to resolve this difference between them.

do either of you have a review (as a popular source, not a thorough study) 
of the book _The Templar Tradition_, by Gaetan Delaforge?  I found it an
interesting read, regardless of how well founded it may be.  the mystical
underpinnings of the tradition he presents (which I presume is modern) 
strike me as worthy of mention, if somewhat in need of fleshing out.

his contention as regards the survival of the Templars beyond the 1314
stake-burnings is followed by some other material I dug up from the 
KausHaus library (public, reference, by arrangement, San Jose, CA):

	Elsewhere in Europe [than in France], the Templars... went
	into decline.... In the British Isles there was much
	sympathy for the Templars, and in typically British
	fashion some sort of formula was initially worked out
	whereby the Templars were permitted to keep their property
	and allowed as private individuals to remain in the
	Catholic Church.  But eventually many of them suffered as
	their French brothers had done.

	In Portugal King Dinis refused to persecute the Templars
	but avoided a confrontation with the papacy by creating
	a new order and integrating the Templars into it.  In
	March 1319 Pope John XXII authorized the founding of the
	Order of Christ, the name given to the new Order.  The
	headquarters of the Order of Christ was established in
	Tomar in 1356.  The last true Grand Master of the Order
	was Don Lopo Dias de Sousa.  After him the sons of the
	king administered the Order.... The Order of Christ
	became a secular order in 1789, and its last chaplains
	left Tomar in 1834.  The Order still exists today but
	bestows purely honorary titles.

	In Spain the tradition of warrior monks found its
	expression through the Order of the Knights Templar
	and four national orders: the Orders of Calatrava,
	Santiago, Alcantara and Montesa.  The national orders
	were not controlled by the international Templar
	hierachy.  They were, however, with the exception of
	the Order of Santiago, linked with the Cistercian
	Rule of Citeaux in one way or another.  Santiago
	was given a Rule directly by Rome.

	The Order of Calatrava was the first military order
	established in Spain.  It observed the monastic Rule 
	of Citeaux and was accepted as an Order in 1164 by Pope
	Alexander III, but only in November 1187, after much
	effort by the Spanish, was it conformed as a Cistercian
	branch....  The last Grand Master of the Order, Don Garcia
	Lopez de Padilla, died in 1482.  The Order was taken over
	by the crown in 1485, and deteriorated gradually after
	first limiting membership only to candidates of noble
	origin and then, in 1540, authorized knights to marry.
	The remainder of the history of the Order is more or less
	the history of all the orders in Spain.  On 25 July 1835
	the Spanish Government suppressed the monasteries.  Around
	the middle of the nineteenth century a Concordat was
	signed between Rome and the ruling Spanish sovereign which
	decreed that all the military orders should be grouped in
	one territory within the province of Ciudad Real.  This
	arrangement was abolished under the Second Republic.  In
	1939 the orders were allowed to revive but only as purely
	formal institutions with the right to confer honorary titles.

	After the Order of the Knights Templar was abolished, King
	Jaime II of Aragon resisted the handing over of the property
	of the military orders to the then Hospitallers.  When 
	John XXII succeeded Clement V, he agreed to the solution of
	creating a new Order in Spain.  Thus the Order of Montesa
	was founded in June 1317, under the first Grand Master 
	Guillen de Eril.  A certain number of Knights Templar, as
	well as those belonging to the national orders, survived by
	attaching themselves to the new Order.  Like the Order of
	Christ in Portugal, the Order of Montesa was considered to
	be the legitimate successor of the Temple Tradition and 
	until it was tampered with by royalty, it remained linked
	to the Cistercian Rule through its close relationship with
	what survived of the Order of Calatrava.

	Certain specialists in the history of the Templars claim
	they have reason to believe that the secret documents and
	relics of the Templars were spirited away for safekeeping
	before they could be seized by Philip the Fair.  It is
	said, for example, that the treasure of the Templars was
	hidden in the Castle of Arginy by Jacques de Molay's
	nephew, Philippe, Comte de Beaujeu.  Many books have been
	written advancing various theories as to the hiding places
	of these treasures.  Fortune hunters of all kinds have
	sought these objects, but so far no one seems to have 
	found them.
	 
	As to the question of what happened to the Order in France
	after the death of Jacques de Molay, the situation has
	never been clarified.  There have been claims that while
	in prison, de Molay passed on his succession in due form,
	with orders to perpetuate the Tradition in secret while
	awaiting friendlier times.  This has led to the belief 
	that both Freemasonry and the Rosicrucian tradition were
	infiltrated early in their history by secret Templars.
	Those who support this view point to the existence of a
	degree in Masonry called the Degree of the Knights Templar.
	In more recent times the mother of the modern Western
	esoteric tradition -- the Order of the Golden Dawn -- is
	also said to have had Templar origins.

	_The Templar Tradition in the Age of Aquarius_, by Gaetan
	 Delaforge, Threshold Books, 1987; pp. 57-9.
	__________________________________________________________

other sources I find indicate the following (some concernign the
legend rather than the history):

	Masonic scholars have long sought to learn the origin and
	development of Masonry; many have seen in the Knights
	Templar, numerous parallels to suggest this Order practised
	the Masonry of the Middle Ages.  The Knights Templar were
	ordered to disband and relinquish all their possessions
	by Pope Clement V in 1307.  Many were imprisoned in France
	and executed or tortured at the order of Philip the Fair.
	These impoverished and persecuted Knights sought refuge in
	other countries, joining acceptable orders or changing
	their name.  In the *Legenda* we read the story that in
	Scotland they found protection and joined the army of
	King Robert Bruce.  Since the Templars' assistance was
	vital to the victory of Bruce over Edward II of England,
	this legend tells us Bruce created the Order of Saint
	Andrew of Scotland, thereby subsuming the Templars into
	the Scottish system of knighthood.
	----------------------------------
	_Bridge to Light_, by Rex R. Hutchens, 32' K.'.C.'.C.'.H.'.,
	  The Supreme Council (Mother Council of the World) of the
	  Inspectors General Knights Commander of the House of the
	  Temple of Solomon of the Thirty-third and last degree of
	  the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry of
	  the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States of America,
	  1988; commentary on the 28th', Council of Kadosh, p. 272.
	___________________________________________________________


	Legend tells us that the possessions of the Knights Templar,
	seized under the Papal Bull of 1312, which ultimately
	resulted in the death of Jacques de Molay, were distributed
	to the Knights of Rhodes, formerly Knights of St. John,
	who later became the Knights of Malta.  Their acceptance of
	the Templar possessions generated hostility against the
	Knights of Malta.

	Ibid, p. 319. [most of this work is based on Pike's _Morals
	 and Dogma, it seems; 333]
	__________________________


	Finally, through the malice and greed of Philip the Fair
	of France and the weakness of Pope Clement V, the Templars
	were arrested in France on a single night in 1307.  (Philip
	had established a precedent for this by similarly arresting
	every French Jew eight years before).  The Pope, under
	Philip's direction, issued a European edict requiring all
	nations to arrest the Templars within their borders.  The
	edict was ignored or cursorily complied to by several
	nations, notably Germany, Scotland, Spain and Portugal.
	However, the French, Italian and English Temples were
	destroyed, thousands of knights killed over the next seven
	years and the vast wealth of the Order confiscated by civil
	and religious authorities....

	Templar survivors generally changed the name of the Order,
	joined fellow Orders like the Hospitallers, or went quietly
	underground.  It is our contention that they continued to
	teach the doctrines and techniques they had learned and
	developed in the East -- the "secret teaching" of the Order.
	We further posit that this closely guarded teaching gave
	rise to the flourishing of the occult arts in Europe.
	-----------------------------------------------------

	_An Introduction to the History of the O.T.O._, 
          by Fr. Ad Veritatem IX', GSGOTO, 1985; as contained 
	  within Equinox III:10, edited by O.T.O. (H.Beta),
	  Samuel Weiser, 1990; p. 91-2.
	_____________________________________________________ 

	
	When, in November 1307, the pope ordered the kings of
	Europe to arrest every Templar in their territories,
	all except Denys of Portugal took the opportunity of
	plundering such wealth.  Though the goods of the
	Templars were finally made over to the Hospitalers,
	precious little slipped out of the hands of the kings;
	and the Hospitalers were careful to refuse such
	possessions as might lead them into conflict with the
	secular power.

	Jacques de Molay, who, like Ridfort and the last Old 
	Man of the Assassins, had runed his sect by ordering
	it to surrender and confess, ended by retracting his
	confessions and enying all the evil he had spoken of
	of his order.  In 1314, when he was brought out onto
	the scaffold in front of Notres Dame to receive his
	sentence, he declared: "I confess that I am indeed
	guilty of the greatest infamy.  But the infamy is that
	I have lied.  I have lied in admitting the disgusting
	charges laid against my Order.  I declare, and I must
	declare, that the Order is innocent.  Its purity and
	saintliness have never been defiled.  In truth, I had
	testified otherwise, but I did so from fear of horrible
	tortures."  He was burned alive the following day.

	So ended the Templars, the victims of the greed of
	kings and their own pride and wealth.  The Assassins,
	curiously enough, survive to this day in India as part
	of the Ismaili sect whose spiritual head is the Aga
	Khan.  But the Templars have gone the way of all secret
	societies whose power seems to constitute a threat to
	the state.  As a 14th-century poet asked:

		The brethren, the Masters of the Temple,
		Who were well-stocked and ample,
		With gold and silver and riches,
		Where are they?  How have they done?
		They had such power once that none
		Dared take from them, none was so bold;
		Forever they bought and never sold....

	Until they were sold to satisfy the greed of kings,
	in whom the state was sovereign and indivisible.
	------------------------------------------------

	'The Assassins and the Knights Templar', by David Annan,
	  as contained with _Secret Societies_, edited by Norman
	  MacKenzie, Aldus Books, 1967; pp. 107-8.
	________________________________________________________

please quote from the books you cite whom you think authoritative,
and I'll add them all into an archived file at Hollyfeld.  I've
done this occasionally and there is quite a stash of Templar
material to be found there (one or more of the above may even be
duplicates).  to be posted to Usenet.  review and comment please.


E6/6/6
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_______________________________________________________________________________
nigris (333) -- tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com -- http://www.hollyfeld.org/~tyagi/