Vatican file shows pope pardoned massacred Knights
      From Richard Owen in Rome
 

      VATICAN documents have come to light showing that the
      wholesale massacre of the Knights Templar in the Middle Ages for
      alleged “heresy, idolatry and sexual perversion” — an episode still
      shrouded in mystery — took place even though the Pope had
      exonerated them in a secret trial.

      The revelation will put pressure on the present Pope, who has
      asked the Muslim world for forgiveness for the Crusades, to
      apologise for the persecution of one of the main Crusading orders
      as well. The Templars, whose legendary power and wealth still
      exert a fascination, were disbanded by Pope Clement V at the
      Council of Vienne in France in 1312.

      L’Avvenire, the Catholic daily, said that the record of the
      Pope’s investigation was thought to have been lost when
      Napoleon looted the Vatican during his invasion of Italy in the
      18th century, and that its rediscovery was an exceptional
      event.

      The Templar Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was burnt at
      the stake on the orders of Philip IV of France (known as
      Philip the Fair), who coveted the Templar order’s land and
      treasure and began a campaign of dawn arrests and torture in
      1307. At least 2,000 Knights were killed in an attempt to
      obliterate the order altogether. It was revived in the 18th
      century as part of the masonic movement, which is said to
      have inherited some of the Templars’ secret rituals.

      Barbara Frale, a researcher at the Vatican School of
      Paleontology, said that the consensus among historians was
      that Clement V, who was himself French and a former
      Archbishop of Bordeaux, had been pliant and weak, and had
      colluded in Philip the Fair’s scheme to wipe out the Templars
      and seize their fortune. But documents found in the Vatican
      archives, including a long-lost parchment, proved that the
      Pope had in fact manoeuvred “with skill and determination”
      to ensure that his own emissaries questioned de Molay and
      other leading Templars in the dungeons of Chinon castle in
      the Loire in 1308, in what amounted to a papal trial.

      Signora Frale, who is writing a book based on the Chinon
      parchment, told the Italian monthly Hera, a journal of
      historical mysteries, that the result was the complete
      exoneration of the Knights.

      The Pope had accepted the Knights’ explanation that the
      charges against them of sodomy and blasphemy were due to a
      misunderstanding of arcane rituals behind closed doors which
      had their origins in the Crusaders’ bitter struggle against the
      Muslims, or Saracens. These included “denying Christ and
      spitting on the Cross three times”, as well as “kissing other
      men’s behinds”. Adriano Forgione, editor of Hera, said that
      these were intended to simulate the kind of humiliation and
      torture that a Crusader might be subjected to by the Saracens
      if captured. They were taught how to abuse their own religion
      “with the mind only and not with the heart”.

      The Knights Templar — properly called The Poor Knights of
      Christ and the Temple of Solomon — were founded during the
      early Crusades in the 12th century, when they protected
      pilgrims to the Holy Land, together with the Hospitallers (or
      Knights of St John). The Templars were so called because
      they were given part of the former Temple of Solomon in
      Jerusalem as their headquarters.

      Noting that de Molay and the Knights had asked his pardon,
      the Pope wrote: “We hereby decree that they are absolved by
      the church and may again receive Christian sacraments.”
      Signor Forgione said that the Pope had failed to make this
      absolution public because the scandal of the Templars had
      aroused extreme passions and he feared a church schism.
      Philip IV had de Molay and other Templar leaders put to
      death before the Pope’s verdict could be published, and it was
      subsequently lost.
 

The preceeding article originally appeared at  http://www.thetimes.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-2-252124,00.html
and is posted here in order to keep it available for future TEMPLAR researchers.