"Four Myths About the Crusades" by Paul F. Crawford

An outstanding article by Paul F. Crawford, "Four Myths about the Crusades" appears in the Spring 2001 issue of the Intercollegiate Review.

The verdict seems unanimous. From presidential speeches to role-playing games, the crusades are depicted as a deplorably violent episode in which thuggish Westerners trundled off, unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous oppression that would be repeated throughout subsequent history. In many corners of the Western world today, this view is too commonplace and apparently obvious even to be challenged.

But unanimity is not a guarantee of accuracy. What everyone “knows” about the crusades may not, in fact, be true. From the many popular notions about the crusades, let us pick four and see if they bear close examination.

Myth #1: The crusades represented an unprovoked attack by Western Christians on the Muslim world.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and even a cursory chronological review makes that clear. In a.d. 632, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, North Africa, Spain, France, Italy, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were all Christian territories. Inside the boundaries of the Roman Empire, which was still fully functional in the eastern Mediterranean, orthodox Christianity was the official, and overwhelmingly majority, religion. Outside those boundaries were other large Christian communities—not necessarily orthodox and Catholic, but still Christian. Most of the Christian population of Persia, for example, was Nestorian. Certainly there were many Christian communities in Arabia.

By a.d. 732, a century later, Christians had lost Egypt, Palestine, Syria, North Africa, Spain, most of Asia Minor, and southern France. Italy and her associated islands were under threat, and the islands would come under Muslim rule in the next century. The Christian communities of Arabia were entirely destroyed in or shortly after 633, when Jews and Christians alike were expelled from the peninsula.6 Those in Persia were under severe pressure. Two-thirds of the formerly Roman Christian world was now ruled by Muslims.

What had happened? Most people actually know the answer, if pressed—though for some reason they do not usually connect the answer with the crusades. The answer is the rise of Islam. Every one of the listed regions was taken, within the space of a hundred years, from Christian control by violence, in the course of military campaigns deliberately designed to expand Muslim territory at the expense of Islam’s neighbors. Nor did this conclude Islam’s program of conquest...

Read the rest of the article here.

According to the California University of Pennsylvania website,

Dr. Paul F. Crawford is a specialist in the history of the crusades and of the military-religious orders (such as the Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller and Teutonic Knights). He has published a number of works on these subjects, including the first English-language translation of a 14th-century crusader chronicle known as The ‘Templar of Tyre'; several articles and book chapters; a number of encyclopedia entries on crusade-related subjects; and several popularly oriented essays. Along with Helen Nicholson (University of Wales) and Jochen Burgtorf (California State University-Fullerton), he has edited a collection of scholarly papers on the trial of the Templars, and he is currently working on general history of the Templars and Hospitallers.

He has assisted in the preparation of several television programs on the crusades and the military orders, and has appeared in three: "History's Mysteries: The Children's Crusade" (2000), "The Crusades: Crescent and the Cross" (2005) and "Lost Worlds: Knights Templar" (2006), all first aired on the History Channel.

H/T to Sir Knight Nathan Brindle

"Last Stand of the Templars" on NatGeo 4/4/2011

The National Geographic Channel will air "Last Stand of the Templars" beginning this Monday, April 4th, at 10PM.

From the website:

The Templars were considered the pope's private army, protecting Jerusalem for more than 50 years. But their legacy came to a sudden end casting them from the heights of wealth and power to the dark corners of history. Now, on the ruins of a 12th century castle near the border between what are now Israel and Syria, a team of archaeologists peel away centuries of sediment, uncovering signs of a six-day siege that could have led to the Templars' demise.

The program was created by Arcadia Productions from Nova Scotia. The company has released a story about the show here.

Unfortunately, the original show as produced for Canadian TV was 2 hours long, and the NatGeo airing has been hacked down to an hour, or more likely, 47 minutes, with commercials. I have a feeling that the scenes of Levant Preceptory, Indiana's medieval Masonic Templar group, wound up being cut out. The crew came to Indianapolis and spent two days shooting us in Indiana Freemasons' Hall and the Indianapolis Scottish Rite Cathedral. Hopefully, the entire program will be made available to the public for purchase, since more than half of it will be unseen on NatGeo.

Here we are in all of our helmeted and mailled glory.

"Knights Templar" Enter Mexican Drug Wars?

The western Mexican state of Michoacan has a new drug gang to deal with: a group calling itself the Knights Templar. I suppose it was only a matter of time, but irony can be woefully depressing in the hands of ignoramuses.

According to an Associated Press story today, a series of banners appeared across the state on Thursday announcing the group, less than a month after the La Familia drug cartel supposedly disbanded.

From the AP story:

The signs said the "Knights" will replace the cartel, which is considered Mexico's leading trafficker of methamphetamines, and fend off any other gangs looking to make inroads in Michoacan state.
"To the people of Michoacan, we inform you that starting today we will be carrying out here the altruistic activities previously realized by La Familia Michoacana," read one sign, hung on the fence of a school.

"We will be at the service of the people of Michoacan to attend to any situation that threatens the safety of Michoacanos," it continued. "Our commitment is to: keep order; avoid robberies, kidnappings, extortion; and protect the state from possible (interventions) by rival organizations. The Knights Templar."

There was no immediate comment from police, who quickly removed the banners hung from footbridges, in a public square, on a monument and elsewhere in cities including the state capital of Morelia, as well as in Zitacuaro and Apatzingan.

Such signs are commonly used by drug gangs to threaten rivals, to deny responsibility for crimes or to send messages to authorities.

It is the first public mention of a group by that name, and the authenticity of the banners could not immediately be confirmed. The name alludes to a Christian order of knights founded in 1118 in Jerusalem to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land after the First Crusade.

Somehow I suspect their "altruistic" motives will be anything but.

More than 35,000 people have died across Mexico in drug-related violence since December 2006.

"Ironclad" Opens Friday 3/4/11

Medieval seige fans, take note. Ironclad opens this Friday, March 4th. The story takes place in England in 1215 following King John's signing of the Magna Carta, and his first attempt to renege on those pesky rights he agreed to. The film features James Purefoy as a Knight Templar recruited by Baron William de Albany (Brian Cox) to lead a rag-tag group to defend Rochester Castle against the appropriate screaming tantrums of Paul Giamatti's King John.

Ancient Jerusalem Temple Road Excavated

A 1st century A.D. road for pilgrims ascending to Jerusalem's Second Temple was discovered by archeologists in the 1830s, but after being uncovered, recovered, and fought over by Muslim, Israeli and Orthodox Christians, a long section of the road has been excavated...carefully.

From a story on Bloomberg.com, "Archaeologists Discover Ancient Pilgrim Road Through Jerusalem's Old City":

Israeli archaeologists discovered an ancient road used by pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem’s Old City 2,000 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a press release e-mailed today.

The road was found during excavations on a water channel from the Second Temple period, the statement said. The road went from the ancient City of David, today the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, into the Old City and passes by the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site.

Neither the road nor the channel pass underneath the Temple Mount, known to Palestinians as Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, a compound that houses the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site, the statement said. The area is also the site of the ancient Jewish temple destroyed by the Romans.

Archaeological digs in the area of Jerusalem’s Old City and Temple Mount have set off riots in the past. Palestinians seek the eastern sector as the capital of a state. Israel captured the area from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war in a move never recognized internationally.

From Haaretz.com "Archeologists find main J'lem street from Second Temple period":

According to the dig director, Prof. Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa, this was Jerusalem's main street, by which pilgrims ascended from the southern part of the ancient town, where the Pool of Siloam was located.

"There is practically no doubt that this was the focus of pilgrim traffic. We know this both from Jewish and Christian sources. The Pool of Siloam provided water for hundreds of people simultaneously and could be used for purification before ascending to the Temple Mount.

From the Pool of Siloam, the road continued for 600 meters to the Temple Mount. Although only two meters of the street's width have so far been excavated, it is believed to have stretched eight meters across.

The excavation is taking place in a limited area, because the land on one side belongs to the Greek Orthodox Church, and on the other to the Waqf, the Muslim religious trust. Neither of these bodies permits excavation on their property. Another excavation of the same road system was halted by order of the High Court of Justice in January 2008 following a petition by Palestinian residents of Silwan, who claimed the dig was undermining the foundations of their homes.

The road now uncovered opens a window onto the Second Temple period, one of the most opulent in the city's history. Jerusalem in those days, with a population of some 25,000, was considered a regional metropolis. Reich says that number doubled during the pilgrimage festivals.

Medieval Manuscripts: Legend of Jesus' Great-Grandmother

Catherine Lawless, a history lecturer at Ireland's University of Limerick, has studied newly discovered manuscripts from 14th- and 15th-century Florence, Italy that tell a tale of Ismeria, reputed to be Jesus' great-grandmother. Lawless studied the St. Ismeria story in two manuscripts: the 14th century "MS Panciatichiano 40" of Florence's National Central Library and the 15th century "MS 1052" of the Riccardiana Library, also in Florence.The manuscripts assert that Ismeria was the mother of St. Anne, who later gave birth to Mary.

From her paper's abstract:

This article will examine an unusual legend contained in Florentine fifteenth-century manuscripts concerning St Ismeria, the ‘grandmother’ of the Virgin. Unlike more well-known versions of the Holy Kinship of Christ, where Ismeria is described as the sister of St Anne and grandmother of St John the Baptist, in this legend she is instead firmly described as St Anne’s mother and thus the grandmother of the Virgin and the great-grandmother of Christ. Most of the legend is concerned with Ismeria’s life of penitential piety as a wife and widow and has little in common with standard legends of the Virgin or of St Anne, but has strong resonances within the world of late medieval Florentine piety and the type of ‘new’ sanctity defined by Vauchez, where sanctity is earned by a life of penitence rather than with blood martyrdom. The contents of the codices which house the legends are typical of medieval vernacular writings and contain more traditional lives of the Virgin and accounts of the Holy Kinship. The way in which these legends lay side by side with such contradictory material suggests a fluidity in the way holy narratives were accepted.

From an article on AOL News by Theunis Bates:

There is no biblical-era evidence to support the manuscripts' assertion that Ismeria was the mother of St. Anne, who later gave birth to Mary. (Other medieval sources suggest Ismeria may have been Anne's sister). Instead, Lawless suspects that the story may have been created by a religious order as a "morality tale" intended to teach Florentine women how to be good wives, and later, widows.

The manuscripts, analyzed by Lawless in the latest issue of the Journal of Medieval History, tell how the lovely Ismeria -- "the daughter of Nabon of the people of Judaea, and of the tribe of King David" -- married St. Liseo, who is described as "a patriarch of the people of God."

As a sign of her piety, Ismeria asked Liseo to only call her to the matrimonial bed one night a month. (During the month of holy fasting, they'd avoid each other entirely). "They lived together for 12 years in great joy and in penitence," writes Lawless, "and then had a beautiful daughter whom they named Anne." Twelve years later, Liseo died and Ismeria willingly allowed her relatives to walk off with all of her riches.

Reduced to poverty, Ismeria sought sanctuary in a hospital, where she carried out two Jesus-esque miracles. First, she restored a deaf-mute man's hearing and speech, and then she filled a shell with enough fish to feed all of the clinic's patients. Satisfied with this act of spontaneous seafood generation, she returned to her room and prayed for God to release her from the "vainglory of this world." Angels promptly whisked her soul off to heaven. The story concludes with Mary, Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the 12 apostles and others heading to the hospital and honoring her body.

2,000-year-old Holy Thorn Tree of Glastonbury Cut Down By Vandals

Sticking up out of the English countryside like a big geological lump stands Glastonbury Tor, a high, oblong hill that can be seen for miles. At one time, it was an island, but the sea has receded, leaving this strange geographical sight. It has been identified over the centuries as the mythical Isle of Avalon of King Arthur’s time. What makes Glastonbury such a startling sight today is the ruined entryway of the abbey’s tower that sits at the top of the knoll.

The source of the belief that that Glastonbury could be the location of the Holy Grail is in the legend of Joseph of Arimathea. Christians in Britain have long told the legend that Joseph came to the island shortly after Christ’s ascension, and that he and his fellow travelers founded the monastery at Glastonbury. The tale goes that he was accompanied by the Bethany sisters Mary and Martha, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene and others followers. A variation of the tale is that Joseph even brought the teenaged Jesus to Britain even before he began his ministry. Of course, much of this legend may have had more to do with claiming that Christianity was alive in Britain long before the Roman Catholic Church was established, as part of the British feud between Catholics and Protestants, than it did with history.

Today, the Daily Mail reports that vandals have destroyed a site of pilgrimage at Glastonbury, one of the most important Christian sites in Britain—a tree that legendarily sprung from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, 2000 years ago:

The Holy Thorn Tree of Glastonbury, Somerset, is visited by thousands every year to pay homage and leave tokens of worship. Those visiting today were moved to tears on finding the tree cut to a stump.

The sacred tree is unique in that it blossoms twice a year - at Christmas and Easter - and sprigs taken from the thorn are sent to The Queen each year for the festive table.

[snip]

Christian legend dictates that Jesus's great uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, came to Britain after the crucifixion 2,000 years ago bearing the Holy Grail - the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper.

He visited Glastonbury and thrust his staff into Wearyall Hill, just below the Tor, planting a seed for the original thorn tree.
Roundheads felled the tree during the English Civil War, when forces led by Oliver Cromwell (pictured) waged a vicious battle against the Crown.

However, locals salvaged the roots of the original tree, hiding it in secret locations around Glastonbury.
It was then replanted on the hill in 1951. Other cuttings were also grown and placed around the town - including its famous Glastonbury Abbey.

Experts had verified that the tree - known as the Crategus Monogyna Bi Flora - originated from the Middle East.

A sprig of holy thorns was taken from the Thorn tree by Glastonbury's St Johns Church on Wednesday and sent to the Queen.
The 100-year-old tradition will see the thorns sit on Her Majesty's dinner table on Christmas Day.

In 1190 A.D., after a fire that consumed the abbey at Glastonbury, two massive oak coffins were discovered buried below the ruins, with the inscription Hic jacet sepultus inclitus rex Arthurus in insula Avalonia (“Here lies King Arthur in the island of Avalon”). Since that time, many have believed that the remains really were King Arthur and his wife Guinevere.

As you might expect, there is a Holy Grail associated with Glastonbury. Known as the Nanteos Cup, it is a bowl, said to have been made of olive wood. For many years it was in the care of the Nanteos family, but is now in a museum in the Welsh village of Aberystwyth. True believers have drunk healing water from the cup over the centuries, some going so far as to nibble bits of wood from its edge. As a result, little is left of it today.

The Welsh Commisioner of Monuments has said that the artifact is, in actuality, made of Witch Elm wood, and is actually a bowl from the 1400s. Others believe it to be the genuine grail brought to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea.

New Book by Stephen Dafoe: Illustrated History of the Knights Hospitaller

Author Stephen Dafoe has followed up his two recent Knight Templar books—Nobly Born (2007) and The Compasses and the Cross (2008)— with an equally beautifully illustrated third volume, on the Knights Hospitaller.

From the Lewis Masonic website:

AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE KNIGHTS HOSPITALLER
by Stephen Dafoe
Lewis Masonic, 2010. £19.99
ISBN: 9780711034976

This richly illustrated book recounts the entire history of the Knights Hospitaller, from their beginnings nine centuries ago to the present day. Founded during the medieval crusades ­their full name is the Knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalem -to run hospices. They grew in power and royal favour, conquering territories, including the island of Malta, with which they have long been associated, and Rhodes, building formidable castles such as Krak de Chevaliers in the Middle East. For a while they led the fight against the Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean but the increasing power of European nations meant that their territory and powers were gradually taken away in the ensuing centuries but they still survive today.

Templars Discover America!

Last week while I was traveling in the northeast, I drove through Newport, Rhode Island and visited one of the legendary —with a strong emphasis on the word "legend"—sites of the supposed presence of the Knights Templar in America, the Newport Tower.

There is absolutely no evidence that the Knights Templar had known about the Americas in the 13th and 14th centuries, but that hasn’t stopped the speculation that they did. Various researchers have claimed that the Templars had based much of their wealth on Aztec gold and silver. Aztec tales abounded of a “great white god” from the East who had come to bring civilization to them. But there is no archeological evidence of any European presence in the region prior to the Spanish conquistadors. And that “great white god” stuff was ancient history to the Aztecs by then. That they meant Templars is highly unlikely.

Authors Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins, and several others, have advanced the notion that, while the Order flourished, the Templars ventured across the North Atlantic, following a similar path as the Vikings, and traded with the Native American population of northeastern Canada. After the dissolution of the Order, the Templars moved to Scotland, so the legend goes, and the Saint-Clair (or Sinclair) family became their protectors. And this is where the tale of the Templars discovering America really kicks in.


Henry Saint-Clair and the Zeno Narrative
In 1396, it is alleged that the Earl of Orkney, Henry Saint-Clair, went into partnership with a Venetian merchant family known as the Zenos. Saint-Clair is said by some to have made two trips across the North Atlantic almost a full century before Columbus. Based on a document called the Zeno Narrative, it has been speculated that the Sinclairs and the Zenos hoped to establish colonies in the Americas, away from the influence and reach of the Catholic Church.

The Zeno narrative is based on letters between real brothers from Venice, Antonio, Carlo and Nicolo Zeno, and was published anonymously in 1558. In it, a voyage is described by Nicolo Zeno in 1385 from Venice to England and Flanders, in which he claimed to have been shipwrecked on a large island called “Frislanda.” It is a mythical place, complete with a mythical prince. Referred to in the narrative as Prince Zichmni, Nicolo claims to have undertaken voyages to what is presumably Greenland for him over the space of two decades. At the end of the tale, after encountering strange and exotic people and places, Prince Zichmni remains in Greenland, starting a settlement called Trin.

True believers say that Prince Zichmni is in reality the Earl of Orkney, Henry Saint-Clair, and that the giant island nation of Frislanda is actually the smallish Orkney Island off the coast of Scotland – curious, since Nicolo described an island larger than Ireland. The Zeno Narrative comes complete with a map, but while portions of it and the narrative sort of match up with Iceland, Scotland and other North Sea and North Atlantic geography, the glaring flaw is the mythical “Frislanda” doesn’t.

A series of authors have made convoluted attempts to explain how Zichmni and Saint-Clair are one and the same, beginning in the late 1700s. In the 1870s, a geographer named Richard Henry Major took up the Sinclair cause and the Zeno narrative, and it is his fiddling that is the principal source of the nonsense. There had never been any suggestion in any record of the family history that Henry was an explorer of any kind, nor that he had ventured far from Orkney or Scotland at any time in his life, but that never kept a good myth down. Major took huge leaps of imagination, not to mention outright fabrication, in his mistranslation and interpretation of the narrative, forcing it to fit the Henry Saint-Clair mold.

Saint-Clairs and Sinclairs around the world were ecstatic. Here was “proof” that the Saint-Clairs, descended from the Knights Templar, builders of Rosslyn Chapel, founders of Freemasonry in Scotland, had also been the “discoverers” of America, a hundred years before that upstart Columbus. New Zealand resident Roland Saint-Clair wrote a glowing “biography” of Henry, calling him an “Orcadian Argonaut.” Thomas Sinclair in Chicago started a “Society of Sancto-Claro” and made announcements about Henry’s fame as the “Discoverer of America” as a counterpoint to the Columbian Exposition that was celebrating the 400th anniversary of Columbus. Never mind that, even if Henry really had sailed across the North Atlantic and established a colony at Tinn, it was Greenland, not America. Pesky details, we know. So, others have added further conjecture to the tale, claiming Saint-Clair explored into Nova Scotia, and as far south as what is now Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

The Zeno Narrative has been debunked as a hoax by scores of researchers, and it has been shown to have actually been copied from Columbus’ own descriptions, and others, of Mexico and the Caribbean islands, with some artful name changes. And the accompanying map was apparently copied from a chart made in 1539. Finally, Nicolo Zeno has been conclusively placed in Italy during the period he was supposed to have been sailing and exploring. Court records show that he was less than heroic, being convicted of embezzlement in 1396 and imprisoned for five years.

Author Andrew Sinclair today continues to cling to the story, and has claimed that the mythical expedition was a secret mission of Templars, Gnostics and Freemasons to establish a religious and military empire in the New World, with Venetian cooperation. Most historians, geologists and archeologists place little credence in the theory. Well, okay. None, really. But there are some curious items that have been linked to the tale: the Westford Knight and the Newport Tower. And, of course, Rosslyn Chapel.

The Westford Knight
Located near the town square in Westford, Massachusetts is a slab of rock that is purported to have been carved with the image of a Knight Templar, holding a sword and a shield. Most who have examined the rock say it appears to have been a combination of natural erosion lines with a “punch-carving” of a sword hilt, while the shield has been painted on recently. True believers say it was placed along a popular path for tribal traffic in the late 1300s by Henry Saint-Clair’s expeditions. Archeologists say that’s nonsense. It was more than likely buried under a hillside at that time, and the sword carving was made in the 1800s by a pair of boys. The Templars themselves had not existed as an Order for almost 100 years at the time of Saint-Clair’s alleged expedition, so the question is obvious: why would anyone take the time to carve a 12th century image of a knight on a rock when there was no real connection to them to begin with?

The Newport Tower
A little bigger and a lot more enigmatic is a round, stone tower in Newport, Rhode Island. At first glance, it certainly looks like the ruins of a medieval European tower. And without a great leap of imagination, if you believe that post-trial Templars were stomping around the New England coast three centuries before it became New England, it might even look like a round Templar church.

Of course, it’s looked like other things to other researchers too, depending on their personal pet theory – everything from a Viking observatory, to a Portuguese or Irish signaling tower, to a 14th century Scottish church, which would place it right up Henry Saint-Clair’s bailiwick. Of course, like the Westford Knight, the Newport Tower is only “near” Saint-Clair’s mythical settlement in Greenland, in the same way that Miami is “near” Las Vegas, but who cares when trying to shore up a good myth? Naturally, the fable has been altered to suit the “evidence,” and claims have been made that Saint-Clair explored as far south as Nova Scotia, and, just so he could build this tower, Rhode Island.

Unfortunately, what it looks most like is exactly what local folklore has claimed for centuries: a windmill, patterned after an almost identical structure in Chesterton, England, and built in 1675 by Rhode Island’s first governor, Benedict Arnold (not the famous Revolutionary War turncoat of the same name). Arnold was originally from the area around Chesterton, and it has long been said that he patterned the Newport windmill after the one seen back home in his youth. Some researchers have discounted this theory, saying the Chesterton windmill hadn’t yet been constructed when Arnold was in the area, so controversy remains. But the tower is far too narrow to be anything even remotely resembling a church, even if there was once an outer wooden structure encircling it (of which there is no archeological evidence).

Carbon-14 dating made of mortar from the tower in 1992 placed the probable construction date between 1635 and 1698. But Scott Wolter in his book "The Hooked X" attempts to connect the tower to Templars, the Kensington Rune Stone in Minnesota, and more. Claims that findings from a 2008 excavation at the tower turned up shells with mortar on them dating to the 1400s have not been published for peer review, and there is speculation that the sea shells, and not the mortar, triggered the medieval period carbon date.


A-maize-ing Rosslyn Chapel “Evidence”
It is hard to pick up a book that talks about Scotland’s Rosslyn Chapel without encountering an almost breathless description of an archway decorated in carvings that “proves” the Sinclairs came to America and returned with knowledge no one else could have had when the chapel was built in 1446. The “proof” is a decorative band of carvings that are usually described as “corn” or “maize” plants, and aloe vera – vegetation that existed at the time only in the Americas. There’s only one way that they could have gotten there: Henry Saint-Clair and his Templar explorers had to have gone to America and seen them!

In Greenland? Forgive us, logic returned for a second. But again, the question arises, if you believe the Zeno narrative, what was corn or aloe vera doing in Greenland for Henry Saint-Clair to find it there, since any backyard gardener can tell you Greenland is a lousy place for a cornfield? Of course, no one can say when those particular carvings were made, apart from the certainty that they wouldn’t have been put in until the building itself was completed. And there’s also the possibility that they are just carvings of wheat, lilies and strawberries, in which case all of this is just huffing and puffing.

The Ongoing Battle Over Jerusalem's Temple Mount

On the list of history's top ten colossally stupid failures of international diplomacy has to be the 2000 Camp David Summit between Palestinian leaders and Israel, brokered by then US president Bill Clinton. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made the incredible concession to divide Jerusalem between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as long as Jews would still be allowed to continue visiting the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site. PA leader Yasser Arafat had the ultimate victory over Israel in the palm of his hand. And he turned it down. Because, you see, the Palestinians' position is that Solomon's Temple, and the later Temple rebuilt by Herod, never existed. At least, they never existed on the Temple Mount.

The Crusaders who came to Jerusalem and found the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, both standing on the Temple Mount, assumed that what they were seeing was actually the King Solomon’s Palace and the Solomon’s Temple described in the Bible, and not more recent buildings constructed by the Muslims. Whether the Templars believed this or not, no one can say.
The place called Solomon’s Stables is actually below the upper level of the Mount itself, and is a large area made up of arched passageways that acted as sort of a supporting sub-basement for the area of the Temple above, probably constructed when King Herod rebuilt the Temple. The Mount itself is a wild combination of natural rock, monumental stonework and clever engineering, and the “stables” were part of an extensive attempt to make the top of the plateau level. During the period of the Crusades, they were actually used as stables, with room, it was said, for 2,000 horses, or 1,500 camels. Humps take up more space.

Today there is little visible evidence of the Templars’ presence on the Mount – and Muslims today deny that the Temple of Solomon was ever on the Mount to begin with. Such is the battle between politics and archeology. If they admit the Temple existed here before the arrival of Islam, then it would mean that Jews could claim “first dibs” on the Mount, yank down the mosques, rebuild the Temple and trigger Armageddon, as prophesized in Revelation 16. And, politically, whoever controls the top of the Mount has psychological and spiritual control over Jerusalem, regardless of what the U.N. may say. It’s sort of an ecclesiastical game of “king of the hill,” and they take it very seriously.

The Islamic authorities that have control of the Mount, called the Waqf, absolutely forbid any messing about in the foundation of the site, while engaging in a feverish building program themselves up top (Nuances aside, Waqf, in Arabic, literally means hold, confinement or prohibition). In 1996, Israeli archeologists opened a subterranean tunnel’s entrance, which erupted into riots by enraged Muslims. Eighty-five Palestinians and 16 Israelis were killed, and more than 1,200 Palestinians and 87 Israelis were wounded. The Palestinian press frequently reports that the Israelis are attempting to weaken the structure of the Mount, in order to cause the collapse of the mosques and the Dome of the Rock, and therefore, start a new war.

As for Solomon’s Stables, they were converted into a mosque in 1996, capable of holding 7,000 people. Hamfisted excavation was carried out hastily by the Waqf, and many critics say that much archeological material was destroyed by the Arabs, further obscuring evidence of the original Temple. Others day that the Waqf has done a credible job, only removing material that was in the area after the Crusader period.

The latest salvo in this rewriting of history happened this past week, as the Palestinians once again alleged that the Mount is not the previous location of Solomon's Temple. Or Herod's Temple. Or that it was ever even Jewish. Really.

It's sort of the archeological version of "These aren't the droids you're looking for."

From a Reuters article, Israel angered by Palestinian report on Western Wall:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the Palestinian leadership on Thursday to renounce an official Palestinian report asserting the Western Wall, one of Judaism's holiest sites, is not Jewish.

Al-Mutawakil Taha, deputy information minister in the Palestinian Authority, published a five-page study on Wednesday disputing Jews' reverence of the shrine as a retaining wall of the compound of Biblical Jewish Temples destroyed centuries ago.

The wall is adjacent to a politically sensitive holy complex in a part of Jerusalem that Israel captured in a 1967 war. The area, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, is home to al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock.

"Denial of the connection between the Jewish people and the Western Wall by the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Information is baseless and scandalous," Netanyahu said in a statement issued by the prime minister's office.

"The Israeli government expects the leaders of the Palestinian Authority to renounce the document and condemn it, and to stop twisting historical facts," he said.

In the report, Taha wrote the Western wall is a "Muslim wall and an integral part of al-Aqsa mosque and Haram al-Sharif," a position echoing past statements by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Taha issued the document after Israel approved on Sunday a five-year renovation plan for the Western Wall area.

Israel annexed East Jerusalem, where the Western Wall is located, after the 1967 conflict and claimed all of Jerusalem as its capital in a move that has not won international recognition.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of the state they want to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

U.S.-brokered peace talks are supposed to address the issue of Jerusalem, but the negotiations were put on hold by the Palestinians shortly after they began in September when Netanyahu refused to extend a partial building freeze in West Bank settlements.

Netanyahu said the Palestinian position paper on the Western Wall "raises a very serious question" as to whether the Palestinian Authority truly intends to reach a peace agreement with Israel "based on co-existence and mutual recognition."

From Israel Today Magazine:

On Monday, the Palestinian Ministry of Information in Ramallah published a “study” claiming that the Western Wall is an integral part of the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Haram al-Sharif (the Islamic term for the Temple Mount).

According to the study, what the Jews call the Western Wall of the Temple compound originally built King Solomon and expanded by King Herod is a wholly Islamic site with no connection to the Jews whatsoever.

“This wall was never part of the so-called Temple Mount, but Muslim tolerance allowed the Jews to stand in front of it and weep over its destruction,” wrote the study’s author, Al-Mutawakel Taha. “During the British mandate in Palestine, the number of Jews who visited the wall increased to a point where the Muslims felt threatened.”

Taha ignored the mountains of archeological and written evidence that affirm ancient Jewish life and temple worship in Jerusalem, and insisted that the Jews have utterly failed to prove their connection to the holy site.

The study concludes that “no Muslim or Arab or Palestinian had the right to give up one stone” of the Western Wall, signaling once again that peace between Israel and the current Palestinian leadership will be impossible without the Jews surrendering not only their land, but their faith and identity.

Raymond Khoury's Newest: The Templar Salvation

The Last Templar author Raymond Khoury has just released (October 19th) the sequel, The Templar Salvation.

From the publisher's description:

In 1310, Templar knight Conrad of Tripoli stumbled on a trove of writings documenting the early days and divisions of Christianity. The Catholic Church has kept this material hidden since the fall of Constantinople in 1453, fearful that its release would undermine the church's authority and rock the foundations of Christian belief. In the present, Mansoor Zahed, an Iranian motivated by revenge for the CIA killing of his family in the 1950s, is bent on finding the trove and releasing it to undermine Western religion and stability. Meanwhile, FBI special agent Sean Reilly visits the Vatican on a quest to find a document that may help in his effort to rescue his love interest, Tess Chaykin, who's been kidnapped.

When Templars Were Down On Their Luck

"Lucerne" by Stanko Abadzic

H/T to Frog Blog.

Rennes-le-Château, Corjan de Raaf, and the Masonic Magician

If all you know about France's Rennes-le-Château, the Priory of Sion and Father Bérenger Saunière came out of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, spend some time on Dutch researcher Corjan de Raaf's huge and expanding website Rennes-le-Château Research and Resource.

Corjan de Raaf is also a musician, and he has just released a song and music video, titled "Masonic Magician."

Last year, Philippa Faulks and W:.B:. Robert Cooper published The Masonic Magician: The Life and Death of Count Cagliostro and His Egyptian Rite, the story of the fascinating life of occultist Giuseppe Balsamo, better known to history as Count Alessandro di Cagliostro. After an amazing life of adventures, crimes, intrigues, and inventive tall tales, he was arrested in 1789 by the Inquisition and sentenced to death for the crime of being a Freemason. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by Pope Pius VI, and he died in the Fortress of San Leo in 1795.

De Raaf's song and video were inspired by the book. In fact, Philippa and her husband Martin Faulks of Lewis Masonic publishing both make cameo appearances in the video's photos.

Of Sheep and Medieval Books

Alan Butler and my friend Stephen Dafoe collaborated on two books about the Knights Templar over the years: The Warriors and Bankers and The Knights Templar Revealed. Eventually they parted company, and Butler went on to pen several books that curiously seem to include mildly obsessive chapters about sheep. How they are raised, sheep population, and how they are barometers of civilization. As the sheep go, so goes Man, apparently.

Insert your favorite amorous shepherd joke here.

So, today I stumbled into Carl Pyrdum's blog, "Got Medieval?" and his article "Why are books so big?"

The answer, as Alan Butler already knows, is, of course, sheep.

H/T to Jonah Goldberg

London Templar Program on Tuesday

This Thursday Sept. 9th, the South East London Folklore Society presents Robert Stephenson speaking on "The Knights Templar in London." His illustrated talk will discuss places in London that were either occupied, owned or had some connection with the Knights Templar and their dramatic downfall, including the sites of their imprisonment and interrogation.

Stephenson is the chairman and lecture organiser of RILKO - the Research Into Lost Knowledge Organisation.

The talk will take place at 8PM at The Old King's Head Pub, 45-49 Borough High Street, London SE1 1NA (near the London Bridge tube station and Guy's Hospital, on the South Bank).