Knights Templar Research Articles

Soldiers of Christ: The Knights Hospitaller and the Knights Templar in Medieval Ireland

Soldiers of Christ: The Knights Hospitaller and the Knights Templar in Medieval Ireland

Philip the Fair, Clement V, and the End of the Knights Templar: The Execution of Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charny in March 1314

This article revisits the generally accepted account of the execution of the Templar leaders Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charny in March 1314, which derives from the continuation of the Latin Universal Chronicle of Guillaume de Nangis. Other contemporary chronicles, non-narrative evidence, and papal pronouncements cast light on the proceedings conducted by the three cardinal legates Clement V appointed to judge four Templar leaders in Paris, and suggest that the executions occurred on 11 rather than 18 March (the date given in the continuation) and, rather than being ordered by King Philip the Fair (as the continuation alleges), were the direct result of the cardinal legates’ decisions and actions.

Weedley not Whitley: Repositioning a Preceptory of the Knights Templar in Yorkshire

It is widely believed that a preceptory (house and estate centre) of the Knights Templar was located in the township of Whitley, near Selby, only four miles from another preceptory at Temple Hirst. This article argues that documentary evidence, closely analysed, points to the site of the preceptory being 24 miles further east, at Weedley, near South Cave in the East Riding. The evidence includes references to lands at Wichele or Withele in the Templars’ inquest of 1185, and an inventory detailing possessions of the preceptory of Wythele in 1308. The location of the preceptory is examined alongside the changing organization of the Templars’ estates by the early-fourteenth century. Establishing the correct location of the preceptory is important in understanding more about the relationship between different Templar houses within the county, and highlights the potential for archaeological remains at the site of the preceptory.

On the Path of Election and Martyrdom: Some Psychic Mechanisms Involved in the Anders Behring Breivik's Determination as a Terrorist.

On 22 July 2011, the Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik carried out two attacks in Oslo that cost the lives of 77 people, injured many others, and plunged the entire Norwegian nation into mourning. When he was arrested, Breivik presented himself as a member of the Knights Templar, whose mission is to defend the Christian Western world. He considers that he has sacrificed himself by his actions for his people and says that he has prepared himself for martyrdom. In analysing Breivik's words and writings, this article attempts to identify the thought mechanisms involved in Breivik's idea of election (megalomania) and martyrology. It highlights the importance of a mechanism of "return to the sender," whereby Breivik returns the reproaches directed at him by an agency of judgment (ego ideal or superegoic object). It emphasizes the existence of a "burning desire" and yearning (Sehnsucht) for this same persecuting superegoic object, an object that Breivik constantly wants to find again, even if in death. Taking into consideration Searles's hypothesis that the sense of being persecuted is a defence against the impossibility of mourning, and also H. Blum's hypothesis that persecutory feelings are indicative of fears of a "regressive loss of object constancy," the different psychic mechanisms and modes of functioning underlying Breivik's terrorist determination are related here to what we know about his affective development and infantile relationships.

Embracing Death, Celebrating Life: Reflections on the Concept of Martyrdom in the Order of the Knights Templar

The Templars were the first religious military order dedicated to warfare, and, to them, the anticipation of a meritorious death in battle was a key characteristic that was unique to their profession. Not only the order’s Rule and early theological texts addressed to the Templar community, such as the writings of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, but also a wide range of external sources, including chronicles and trial records, suggest that the Templars were particularly associated with martyrdom as the most original form of Christian sanctity, namely in imitation of Christ’s own sacrifical death. This article aims at shedding light on this neglected aspect of Templar spirituality and discusses the implications of this concept’s manifestation throughout the order’s history.

The incarnated icon of Ṣaydnāyā: light and shade

The shrine of the Virgin Mary in the Syrian town of Ṣaydnāyā is an important Levantine Christian centre and one of the principal Christian pilgrimage sites in the Middle East, second only to the holy city of Jerusalem during the Middle Ages. This study's intent is to examine in detail, and to provide a key for interpreting, the major incongruity emerging through a comparison of the two main textual traditions regarding the shrine: the Christian-Arabic and the Latin-Western. The dissimilarity is constituted by the significant divergences concerning the representation of the miracle of the incarnation traditionally ascribed to the icon of the Virgin venerated in Ṣaydnāyā, which is essentially omitted in the Christian-Arabic sources. I argue that a key to the understanding of this reticence can be provided by an analysis of the heretical character ascribed to this particular miracle in Islamic theological thought and of the consequent threat it posed to the survival of the shrine itself. That being the primary focus of the investigation, the article also explores some aspects of the cultural and historical vicissitudes and crises of the cult of the shrine in the West from the fourteenth century onwards which, despite the great number of academic works dedicated to this subject, have remained unclear to this day. More specifically, I argue that apparently aporematic elements on the textual level can be interpreted logically by examining the central role played by the Knights Templar in the cult's material and cultural diffusion and by taking into account the connection of the shrine's decay with the order's downfall. The present analysis focuses almost exclusively on the medieval period as being the most significant for the formation and development of the cult of the shrine.

Motivations and Implications of Community Service Provision by La Familia Michoacána / Knights Templar and other Mexican Drug Cartels

Research demonstrates that service provision by violent organizations can be an effective strategy for coercing the local community to accept and conceal a group’s violent activities, and for creating loyalty to these groups. This has been most frequently explored among political organizations such as terrorist groups, with organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas very visibly engaged in providing social welfare in addition to their violent activities. Recent reports indicate that criminal organizations in Mexico also are involved in instances of public service provision in local communities. This article explores the extent to which drug cartels operating in Mexico are involved in public service provision to members of communities where they operate, and considers possible motivations and implications for public service provision by these criminal organizations, with specific attention to the organization La Familia Michoacana/ Knights Templar. The article also gives attention to the consequences to citizenship and government of service provision by violent nonstate actors, and the ways such service provision may disrupt the social contract between the citizen and the state. This article is available in Journal of Strategic Security: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol7/iss3/5

“You don’t see any violence here but it leads to very ugly things”: forced solidarity and silent violence in Michoacán, Mexico

Mexico has become an ideal laboratory for anthropology interested in studying the transformations of drug trafficking, its economies, and its cultures. Certainly, the challenges are complex and difficult, since criminal violence affects fieldwork and its results. However, when one delves into regions where drug trafficking and organized crime are present, what we can grasp ethnographically are fundamental questions about the relationships that are being generated between the state, neoliberalism, and illegality. In this article, we will analyze the expansion of drug cartels in one of the states most affected by criminal violence: the state of Michoacan, with special reference to the Caballeros Templarios—the Knights Templar. Understanding the origins and structures of this organization can teach us how the transformations of the state and criminal economies are being redrawn in neoliberal spaces.

The new knighthood: Terrorism and the medieval

Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik describes himself as a member of a neomedieval, underground paramilitary group known as the Knights Templar. This essay addresses Breivik’s manifesto’s use of the medieval as a vehicle for understanding the continued importance of the Middle Ages to the formation of modern political ideas.

Dal Mandylion di Edessa alla Sindone di Torino: metamorfosi di una leggenda by Andrea Nicolotti, and: I Templari e la Sindone: storia di un falso by Andrea Nicolotti (review)

Reviewed by: Dal Mandylion di Edessa alla Sindone di Torino: metamorfosi di una leggenda by Andrea Nicolotti, and: I Templari e la Sindone: storia di un falso by Andrea Nicolotti Andrew N. Palmer Dal Mandylion di Edessa alla Sindone di Torino: metamorfosi di una leggenda. By Andrea Nicolotti. [Bibliotheca Erik Peterson. Collana di Studi del Centro di Scienze Religiose, 3.] (Alessandria, Italy: Edizioni dell’Orso. 2011. Pp. viii, 236. €20,00 paperback. ISBN 978-88-6274-307-5.) I Templari e la Sindone: storia di un falso. By Andrea Nicolotti. [Aculei, 3.] (Rome: Salerno editrice. 2011. Pp. 188. €12,50 paperback. ISBN 978-88-8402-720-7.) The Shroud of Turin, a unique icon presenting itself as Christ’s burial-sheet, is now probably, thanks to the publicity so successfully sought by Ian Wilson, the best-known object of Christian devotion in the West; the icon of the Mandylion of Edessa, Christ’s “image not made by hand,” enjoys comparable fame among the Orthodox and has been identified with other towel-icons venerated in Genoa and Rome; the icon of Veronica’s Veil, a western mutation of the Mandylion, has become one of the Stations of the Cross. Carbon 14 tests have dated the Shroud to the fourteenth century. This is confirmed by the evolution of the loom and by the fact that the Shroud cannot be traced back beyond the second half of that century, when it is first signaled in the church of Lirey in Champagne. Yet the rumor persists that science and scholarship have conspired to discredit a genuine relic that may even be evidence of the Resurrection. Those who make this claim support it with pseudo-science and pseudo-scholarship. Andrea Nicolotti deplores the irresponsibility of the media and the gullibility of the literate public. He argues that serious historians ought not to ignore pseudo-history, but should take the pains to refute it; that they ought to disseminate more widely an understanding of the differences between hypothesis and certainty as well as between evidence, interpretation, conjecture, and speculation. If his books reach the public outside the “ivory tower” of university discourse, they will certainly supply arguments to those who have all along been unconvinced by the self-styled “sindonologists,” without feeling able to refute their supposed proofs. In this way the genre of these two books is somewhat similar to that of the catechisms that flourished among Christian communities in the Islamic Middle East, which taught Christians what to say in reply to the classic Muslim arguments against Christianity. Nicolotti does not, of course, simplify things as much as these question-and-answer tracts do. After all, he is not trying to reach the man in the medieval street, but the modern reader who borrows Wilson’s Shroud of Turin (Garden City, NY, 1978) from the public library and is all the more impressed by this book because it has all the trappings of scholarship. Confronted with the thirteen centuries in which no relic resembling the Shroud was known anywhere in the Christian world, Wilson suggests that it was there all [End Page 319] along but incognito. According to him, the Shroud was folded, leaving only the face visible. The rest, for some reason, was carefully concealed, so that the cloth appeared to be about the size of a towel. This gave rise to the legend that it was in fact a towel used by Jesus to dry his face, leaving the imprint of his features there—the Mandylion of Edessa, as described in the Greek Acts of Thaddaeus. This icon was translated from Edessa to Constantinople in 944 and probably taken in 1204 to Western Europe, where, according to Wilson, it was unfolded and so “emerged” as the Shroud in fourteenth-century France. Wilson’s book, simultaneously published in the United States and France, enjoyed a success and inspired several other sindonologists. A popular refinement of his theory—to which Nicolotti devotes the second book—identifies it with an “idol” allegedly venerated in secret by the Knights Templar in the thirteenth century. The hypothesis that the Shroud was folded rests on the use of the Greek word tetrádiplon to describe the towel on...

The Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Spain

The Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Balzac occulte: Alchimie, magnétisme, sociétés secrètes by Anne-Marie Baron (review)

Reviewed by: Balzac occulte: Alchimie, magnétisme, sociétés secrètes by Anne-Marie Baron James Mileham Baron, Anne-Marie. Balzac occulte: Alchimie, magnétisme, sociétés secrètes. Lausanne, Suisse: Éditions L’Âge d’Homme, 2012. Pp. 326. isbn: 978-2-8251-4234-9 This is an extensive and insightful study of Balzac’s writings, his readings, and a vast range of secondary studies. Two of Anne-Marie Baron’s previous books, Balzac, ou les hiéroglyphes de l’imaginaire (2004) and Balzac et la Bible (2007), clearly helped prepare her for this demanding and informative study, written more for Balzacian specialists than for the general reader. In her introduction, Baron demonstrates the importance of the occult and of secret societies in Balzac’s world-view, his life, and his novels. Baron provides extensive background information on the many metaphysical and occult writers and thinkers who inspired Balzac; but rather than merely show the historical roots of the various schools of thought that inspired Balzac, she emphasizes what alchemy, secrets, and the occult bring to Balzac’s novels. Rencontres, Baron’s first chapter, begins by showing Balzac’s love of secrets: how often he uses the word secret in his correspondence, how many of his novels (and indeed their titles) are based on hidden facts (Une double famille, Une ténébreuse affaire). The secrecy necessitated by Balzac’s own family’s crimes (such as the murder committed by his uncle) and peccadillos made him aware of the ugly underside of a society committed to keeping up appearances, and this secret world fascinated him. In addition, his mother introduced him to the writings of the theosophists Swedenborg and Saint-Martin, whose precepts clearly inform Séraphîta and Louis Lambert and have a role in many other, more realistic novels, as well. Likewise, Balzac’s father was an active Freemason and introduced his son to certain influential Masons and to the social events of his local lodge. Freemasonry, which had its own variations of the metaphysics of the Catholic Church, shaped and inspired Balzac’s own preoccupation with secret societies. Balzac’s first intellectual contacts with the ideas of Gall (phrenology), Lavater (physiognomy), and especially with Mesmer (animal magnetism) are also discussed in this chapter. Baron begins her second chapter with an overview of the alchemical concepts Balzac was exposed to, in writings dating from the Middle Ages, but often reexamined in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries. Operative alchemy, similar to modern chemistry, dealt with techniques and formulas for treating physical matter, but, far more importantly for Balzac, symbolic alchemy treated all levels of reality, from physiological through cosmic and even evangelical, dealing with Christian doctrine. After addressing the influence of alchemical ideas in Balzac’s pre-Comédie humaine novels, Clotilde de Lusignan and L’Elixir de longue vie, Baron convincingly argues that, in La Recherche de l’absolu, Balzac saw himself as a literary alchemist who like Balthazar Claës confronts the mysteries of existence and seeks to discover their secrets. Baron then proposes an extensive if hypothetical interpretation of L’Auberge rouge. [End Page 266] In Sociétés secrètes, her third chapter, Baron describes Balzac’s France as exceptionally rich in secret societies, including the Freemasons, the Jansenists, the orders of Knights Templar and Hospitaller, the Charbonnerie, the Rosicrucians, and the Congregation, but she also shows the writer’s intensely personal attraction to the dreams of altruism, brotherhood, intimacy, and collective power evoked by his own fictional secret societies. Secret societies require initiations, and Baron finds these especially important in Balzac—“le roman balzacien est par essence initiatique” (177)—in that its protagonist undergoes a symbolic death and becomes transformed by it. Baron shows this to be true even in novels like L’Auberge rouge, where there is no induction into a secret society, as well as in the two Balzacian novels most explicitly dedicated to secret societies, L’Histoire des Treize and L’Envers de l’histoire contemporaine. The word spécialité, in Baron’s fourth chapter, La Sphère de la spécialité, refers to a supernatural ability to see the real and spiritual worlds evident in works like...

The Romance Population in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary

Medieval kingdom of Hungary was since its very begining founded on the basis of multiethnicity and openness to foreigners. Foreigners in Hungary, especially in the 11th and 12th century came from Western Europe. Great immigration waves of the romance population are documented mostly during the reign of king Géza II (1141 – 1162), when they managed to settle in peripheral regions of the country and increase the population and significance of weakly populated regions. Foreigners in the 12th recieved privileged status as the „guests“. In the 11th and 12th century these guests have settled in Srem, Spiš, Transylvania and Tokaj. Some information about Srem region are provided by crusades chronicles. In Srem there was a village called Francavilla, which belonged to the oldest and most important romanesque settlement in Hungary. The Guests in Transylvania had their own church organization and there were several bishops of Transylvania and Bihar/Oradea of western european origin. Other regions with Romanesque population – Spiš and Tokaj laid on international routes. The collegiate chapter of Spiš even owned vineyards in Tokaj – in Sárospátak, one of the oldest Hungarian cities with privileges. A large number of documented pilgrimage passing through Hungary could also stand behind the increase of new romance population in the country. Additional aspect of the Crusades was the creation of religious orders, the Knights Templar and the Hospitallers, who just few decades after their formation appeared in Hungary and were engaged in the life of Hungarian kingdom. The romance population appeared in Hungary already in 11th century, but the massively in 12th century, and was engaged in different spheres of political, religious, cultural and economic life of Hungary in the High Middle Ages, whether as wine producers, merchants or the dignitaries of church and also military orders. Tracking the development of romance population, however, calls for a broad research sources and all aspects of medieval life, taking into account the specificities of Hungary and its regions.

Crusader Dreams: Oslo 22/7, Islamophobia, and the Quest for a Monocultural Europe

The synchronized terror attacks on July 22, 2011 was the worst politically motivated assault in post-WW2 Norway. To the perpetrator, Anders Behring Breivik, 22/7 was a “marketing operation,” designed to draw attention to his compendium, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence. While Breivik acted alone, his political philosophy is far from unique. Through a detailed analysis of the compendium's content, identifying the original authors whose texts Breivik used but did not always acknowledge, this essay discusses the political traditions that informed the assailant's worldview: Islamophobia (anti-Muslim racism), cultural conservative nationalism, antifeminism, and selected elements of White Power thought, far Right evangelical theology, and the Knights Templar tradition, all permeated by romantic male warrior ideals. The stunning violence of July 22 was a hyper-masculine performative act aimed at producing a heroic avant-garde of nationalist warriors who will rise to purge Europe from the corrupting influence of its internal enemies and defeat its external enemies. Through the cleansing fire of the civil war, he believes that a reborn Europe will arise to reclaim its ordained position of glory as the world's leading civilization. In the final analysis, Breivik's political philosophy may thus be recognized as a 21st-century articulation of the fascist legacy.

The Plantagenets: the warrior kings and queens who made England

The New York Times bestseller that tells the story of Britain's greatest and worst dynasty--a real-life Game of Thrones (The Wall Street Journal)--by the author of The Templars The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into an empire stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic history, Dan Jones vividly resurrects this fierce and seductive royal dynasty and its mythic world. We meet the captivating Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; her son, Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and King John, a tyrant who was forced to sign Magna Carta, which formed the basis of our own Bill of Rights. This is the era of chivalry, of Robin Hood and the Knights Templar, the Black Death, the founding of Parliament, the Black Prince, and the Hundred Year's War. It will appeal as much to readers of Tudor history as to fans of Game of Thrones.

Landed estates of the Knights Templar in England and Wales and their management in the early fourteenth century

The present paper looks at the main contours and strategies of agricultural management of landed estates of the Knights Templar on the eve of the suppression of the order in 1308 and managerial changes undertaken by royal keepers between 1308 and 1314. It appears that it was arguably the single largest estate in the entire country, and one of the most important producers of wool and dairy products. Sheer wealth, however, came at the expense of various managerial difficulties, which prevented the demesnes from being administered efficiency. When the Templar demesnes were confiscated by Edward II, their management was entrusted to his keepers. A close analysis of the available evidence suggests that while the new managers did their best to increase the immediate cash profits from the former Templar demesnes by adjusting their structures and patterns to the annually changing economic reality, they also committed a long-term waste of the estate. When the Knights Hospitallers received most ex-Templar demesnes in the 1320s and early 1330s, the former were undoubtedly in a ruinous state.

Spittal place-names in Menteith and Strathendrick: evidence of crusading endowments?

Much discussion on the place-name element spittal has focused on its use as an indication of the location of a medieval hospital, lands belonging to such a hospital, or, in remote places, to the location of an inn or hostel. This paper argues that there is an overlooked dimension to spittal place-names, namely that some of them are properties belonging to the Knights Hospitaller, one of the crusading orders founded to protect the crusade routes to Jerusalem in the twelfth century. There is a large cluster of spittal-names in the earldom of Lennox, particularly in Strathendrick, and the evidence points to their being properties of the Hospitallers or their fellow crusading order, the Knights Templar. The Templars were suppressed in 1312 and many of their possessions were transferred to the Hospitallers. It is likely that these spittal-names in the Lennox are in fact crusading endowments, given perhaps by the earls of Lennox or the bishops of Glasgow.

Institutional weakness and organized crime in Mexico: the case of Michoacán

In the case of Mexico, the prevalence of organized crime and drug trafficking can be explained more as a consequence of the weak and insufficient institutional bureaucracy that impedes the application of the law than the demand for narcotics in the United States. In this context, a study was undertaken in the state of Michoacan, Mexico, the state where one of the most violent criminal groups, Los Caballeros Templarios (the Knights Templar), a splinter group of La Familia Michoacana (the family Michoacan), is located. This article, which draws upon LaFree’s ‘social control’ research, raises the question of the urgent need to strengthen state and municipal government within an integrated strategy to combat organized crime. Failure to reform bureaucracies and the continued lack of local and state institutions that guarantee a modicum of compliance with the law will result in an institutional environment which continues to favor impunity and delinquency.

The Crusader states

When the armies of the First Crusade wrested Jerusalem from control of the Fatimids of Egypt in 1099, they believed their victory was an evident sign of God's favor. It was, therefore, incumbent upon them to fulfill what they understood to be God's plan: to reestablish Christian control of Syria and Palestine. This book is devoted to the resulting settlements, the crusader states, that developed around the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and survived until Richard the Lionheart's departure in 1192. Focusing on Jerusalem, Antioch, Tripoli, and Edessa, Malcolm Barber vividly reconstructs the crusaders' arduous process of establishing and protecting their settlements, and the simultaneous struggle of vanquished inhabitants to adapt to life alongside their conquerors. Rich with colorful accounts of major military campaigns, the book goes much deeper, exploring in detail the culture of the crusader states-the complex indigenous inheritance; the architecture; the political, legal, and economic institutions; the ecclesiastical framework through which the crusaders perceived the world; the origins of the Knights Templar and the Hospitallers; and more. With the zest of a scholar pursuing a lifelong interest, Barber presents a complete narrative and cultural history of the crusader states while setting a new standard for the term total history.

The case of the incorrigible canon: Dublin's first heresy conviction, 1310, and the rivalry between its cathedral chapters

Dublin's atypical arrangement of two neighbouring cathedral chapters, St Patrick's and Holy Trinity, was a source of ongoing conflict. The conflict became more sinister in the early fourteenth century after Thomas de Chaddesworth, the dean of St Patrick's and the vicar of the archbishop-elect of Dublin, served as the primary inquisitor in the trial of the Templars and in 1310 initiated heresy proceedings against Philip de Braybrook, a canon of Holy Trinity. This article explores the conflict between the two chapters and how it shaped Philip's trial; it also examines the exceptionally irregular circumstances in which he became Dublin's first convicted heretic. Introduction In 1310, Dublin experienced its first heresy trial, part of the international proceedings against the Knights Templar, instigated primarily by Philip IV of France.1 Before the year was out it saw its second, or some semblance thereof. Shortly after becoming inquisitor in the Templar trial, Thomas de Chaddesworth, the dean of St Patrick's, brought an old rival, Philip de Braybrook, a canon of Holy Trinity (now Christ Church) to the notice of Richard de Haverings for a relapse of heresy.2 Haverings, after three years still the ever-absent archbishop-elect of Dublin, replied to his vicar Chaddesworth on 4 September 1310, informing him that, after examining the letter's report, he had found Philip guilty, apparently for refusing to accept the sacrament in both * Author's e-mail: maeve.callan@simpson.edu doi: 10.331 8/PRI AC.20 13.113.05 1 See Malcolm Barber, The trial of the Templars (1978; reprint, Cambridge, 2006); Helen Nicholson (ed.), The proceedings against the Templars in the British Isles, 2 vols (Burlington, VT, 2011), and Maeve Callan, The Templars, the witch, and the wild Irish: heresy trials in medieval Ireland (forthcoming). 2 Medieval names often take a range of forms. Chaddesworth is also rendered as Chedworth and Cheddisworth, and Braybrook as Braydock and Braibrook, among other forms. Chaddesworth and Braybrook are here preferred as the most common forms among authoritative sources. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Vol. 113C, 163-191 © 2013 Royal Irish Academy This content downloaded from 207.46.13.85 on Sat, 28 May 2016 06:47:15 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms