The Templars and the Shroud of Christ

by Barbara Frale

The identification of the idol with a portrait sacred to Islam is found in six testimonies, but it cannot be called certain or identical in all cases. Brother Sergeant Guillaume Collier from Buis-les-Baronnies said explicitly that the brothers called the strange head Magometum, while two monks questioned in Florence and in Clermont said they had seen an idol called, respectively, Maguineth and Mandaguorra; in the inquiry that took place in Carcassonne, the monks Gaucerand de Montpézat and Raymond Rubei stated that it was made in figura baffometi, and the latter specified that he was addressed by an Arabic word, Yalla.[43] In the inquest carried out in Tuscia, near Rome, the sergeant Gualtiero di Giovanni from Naples said that during his ceremony of admission to the Temple there had been a real theological discussion to deny the dogmas of Christianity, and the idol, a figure of Allah, was at the centre of the debate: he said that brother Alberto made him deny Christ and told him that he should not believe in him. Brother Gualtiero then asked: “And in whom should I believe then?” The same brother Alberto answered: “In that great and single God that the Saracens worship”.

  He then added that it was wrong to believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, because they amounted to no less than three different gods, and he ended by stating that the Grand Master of the Temple and the preceptors in charge of a province had an image which represented that same God, worshipped him as creator, and exhibited his portrait in general chapters and in the most important assemblies. This testimony may perhaps be connected with that of Pierre Segron, who was told by the preceptor that he should not believe in Jesus Christ, but only in the Almighty Father: this confession, however, contains no reference to Islam.[44]

  On the name of this supposed portrait, there is one clear testimony that calls it Magometum, a form very close to the genuine pronunciation; according to two brothers in Carcassonne it was called baffometum, a form that comes from the first but is distorted on account of the passage from Arabic to French. It is this form that has given rise to the fanciful etymologies once proposed by Hammer-Purgstall and accepted today only by readers of fantasy fiction. The other two variants, Maguineth and Mandaguorra, are also deformations of the original word, while the strange invocation to the idol supplied by another Templar, Yalla, seeks to replicate the Arabic form Allah with a strong initial; aspirations which the notary who had to write the minutes in Latin rendered with the letter Y. But is it conceivable that the Templars, maybe even a small part of them, had become Muslims? Their strange secret admission-ritual practised after the licit ceremony did indeed have a direct relationship with the Muslim world: in the East it was known that Saracens forced Christian prisoners to deny Jesus Christ and to spit on the Cross, on pain of death if they refused. This is described in the chronicle of the Franciscan Fidenzio da Padova, and the ritual of obedience invented by the Templars to test their recruits repeated these gestures in a kind of theatrical performance. The King of France’s lawyers had found out about it after years of secret investigations: to manage to confirm that the Templars had gone over to Islam en masse would have been vitally important to get the condemnation they were seeking, even better if they could have proved that the mysterious idols on which the King had gathered a few scraps of information was in fact Mohammed.

  Two facts prove that this charge was utterly false: incoherent elements, incompatible with each other, yet liable to be brought together somehow by a 14th century European mind. To begin with, it is well known that the Islamic religion utterly forbids images of the Prophet, and all images of Mohammed are actually figures of his body with his face hidden by holy fire. The “idol” ascribed to the Templars, however, was clearly the portrait of a normal human being with a bearded face; that cannot in any way be considered an image of Mohammed. The same is true of the testimony of that Templar who claimed the idol was an image of Allah: the Koran forbids utterly any representation of God whatever, for this would be idolatry, and Islamic civilisation has always been most careful to respect this rule. The second feature is even more definite: according to one witness, the portrait of this supposed Machomet had horns![45] That proves beyond reasonable doubt that the tale has no relationship whatever with real Islam; it is the fruit of tortures carried out by inquisitors and goes exactly where the torturers wanted their witness to go, for their own reasons. No Christian who had anything actually to do with any Muslim group could ever have imagined them worshipping the Devil; in spite of all the strong religious differences, Muslims were highly devout and had a few essential points of faith in common with Christians – in particular, a single Creator God, who is a benevolent and just Father. Unarguable historical evidence tells us that a certain amount of inter-religious debate went on in Jerusalem, and it is at any rate well known that St. Francis of Assisi was received by the Sultan of Egypt and took part in a theological debate with him. In the Holy Land, Muslims were essentially political opponents, people who governed Jerusalem and Syria-Palestine alongside Christians; the whole history of the kingdom of Jerusalem is full of alliances between Christian rulers and various local emirs, alliances based on common interests and setting religious differences aside.[46] In a country such as France, where no Muslim communities existed among the population, the common people had the most vague and bizarre ideas on their religious usages: the largely illiterate commoners, used to the simplistic idea that one went to the Holy Land to kill enemies of the faith, could easily be led to believe that those enemies of the faith had something dark and devilish about them. It is probably not a chance occurrence that this kind of rumour found no fertile ground either in Spain or in Cyprus, where contacts with Muslims were frequent and Christians had a much clearer view of them. Not that it made any difference to Nogaret whether or not the brothers worshipped Mohammed or even the Devil, so long as they could be charged with an unforgivable crime that struck deep into the imagination of the popular masses.

  The shadow of Ridefort

  In the current state of research, I think that the Templars who said that the idol was a portrait of Mahomet may have seen a vaguely human image, but strange or at least unlike those of the saints seen everywhere in the churches. Pressed by torture, and having no understanding whatever of the identity of the man represented, they were forced to make statements of that kind. Without a doubt it was the portrait of a man; but since nobody could understand who it was, then it must inevitably be something illicit. The fact is that there was no power in the mediaeval world to interpret freely a work of art, because all images were rigidly controlled, and therefore every personage could be recognised on sight. Mediaeval sacred art has fixed iconographic forms, because its purpose is not just to guide but to educate souls; already Pope Gregory I the Great (590-604) had strongly recommended to respect this precept: the faithful were largely illiterate and did not have the ability to understand too elaborate a set of concepts, so the figures that illustrated sacred history on the walls of churches were a great treasure-store for the people, forming the doctrine of the common person.[47]

  There was an ancient, consolidated tradition, known to everyone and guiding them: St. Peter must always carry a large key in his hand, as the symbol of his power, St. Anthony the Abbot had to wear his monk’s hood and have a meek little pig sitting by his feet, so that the faithful could recognise them immediately. Artists had to follow fixed schemes; their interpretative liberty was limited to secondary details, and at any rate their work was evaluated by the relevant Church authorities. A representation of holy things that did not conform to Church tradition appeared suspicious and would be condemned, for it could create confusion in those who did not have enough culture to defend them from error. Had the Templar idol been a traditional image of any saint, the monks would have recognised him; instead, everyone who saw this portrait agreed that they could not tell who it was, that there were no elements to help identify him. Showings often took place at night: in the dark church, shaken by the irregular light of candles, the atmosphere became that of a mysterious and grim cult. Req
uired to worship the portrait of someone they did not recognise, and conscious that it was a secret cult, the monks were awestruck and experienced these liturgies as terrible things.

  The King of France’s agents took advantage of this fact and tied it to the charge that the Templars had gone over to Islam thanks to an easy (and unhistorical) syllogism: the Order of the Temple is friendly to Muslims, in its ceremonies a man of unknown identity is worshipped; therefore that mysterious man must be the prophet of Islam, that is Mahomet. The accusation obviously had no roots in reality, since Islamic religion forbids the portraiture of Mohammed, and therefore even if many Templars had indeed gone over to Islam, this cult described in the trial would have been utterly impossible. But Nogaret was not concerned for the charge to be true, so long as it could be believed by that western world which was being asked to condemn the Order. The King’s grand strategist had dusted off the shelf a rumour already over 100 years old, which had been popular for a while and had momentarily stained the Order’s good name. When, in 1187, Saladin had won his memorable triumph at the Horns of Hattin, and taken back Jerusalem for Islam, he had always behaved most generously to the local Christians, granting freedom not only to the rich who could pay their ransoms, but also to the poor, for the mere love of God; it was only to the Templars and Hospitallers, the true thorns in his military side, he had shown no mercy whatsoever, and had had them beheaded. In that context, the Templar Grand Master Gérard de Ridefort, captured by the enemy, had been seen to come back unhurt to his people when everyone already believed him dead. As everyone knew how the Sultan saw the Templars, this had immediately struck everyone as most suspicious. Besides, Ridefort was well known as an adventurer, an opportunist, a traitor of friends, who had risen in Templar ranks without gaining anything like a good reputation on his way up. His reputation grew even worse when it became known that he had bartered his freedom with the surrender of Templar fortresses. In a word, he had betrayed the Order in the vilest of manners.[48] The conditions agreed at the time between Ridefort and the Sultan had shocked Christian society so much that the echo of the scandal had been recorded in the Chronicle of St. Denis; besides, Christian society was appalled at the disaster just suffered, the military orders were being singled out by everyone as the main culprits in the failure, and a scapegoat hunt seemed inevitable. The cowardly, arrogant, unworthy Ridefort seemed born for the role.

  This was the source that Guillaume de Nogaret pulled out of the shelves to charge the Templars of having gone over to Islam. A few similar rumours had spread again towards the end of the 13th century, when certain diplomatic agreements made by Christian leaders in the Holy Land with the Muslim enemy had not been understood in the West and had caused intense polemics. During the trial, Guillaume de Nogaret suddenly turned up and resurrected the whole affair, to which Jacques de Molay had to give an answer:

  In the chronicles kept at the abbey of Saint-Denis, it was written that in the time of Saladin, sultan of Babylon, the Templar Grand Master of the time and the other heads of the order had paid homage to Saladin. Saladin in turn, having heard of the grave adversities being suffered by the Templars, said in public that they were meeting all that trouble because they had fallen into the vice of Sodom and prevaricated their faith and their laws. The Grand Master [Jacques de Molay] was astonished at those words, and he answered that he had never heard anything of the kind.

  On the other hand, he knew that once upon a time, Guillaume de Beaujeu, the master of the Temple, used to murmur against the Grand Master, that he had served the Sultan and kept him sweet.

  In the end, though, both he and the others were happy with that policy, because they understood that the Grand Master had had no choice. In those days, the Templar Order held several towns and fortresses, which he named, at the border of the Sultan’s land, which could not have been defended by the Christians had the King of England not sent supplies.[49]

  In the Holy Land, diplomacy was as much a weapon of war as weapons themselves, perhaps even more: the first decades of the Crusader kingdom had enjoyed comparative quiet just because the Muslim powers abutting on it often preferred to make alliances with the Christians and remain autonomous than fall under the sway of a much bigger Islamic power. The work of Grand Master Beaujeu, who later died heroically at Saracen hands while he protected the flight of civilians by the sea, had been dictated by political reasons, and his full good faith had been shown by the news of that odd alliance had certainly led the ill-disposed to suspect that the Templars were inept because in reality they had no intention of attacking Islam because it had covertly gained their sympathies. The context and dynamics of the trial were to turn this scrap of gossip into a black accusation.[50]

  Many faces

  The Templars who described the idol as though it were a portrait of the Devil were full of surreal detail: the monster has many faces, he is associated with a black cat who always appears mysteriously, he is worshipped during a witches’ Sabbath, he is even said to answer the monk who prays to him and promises hefty material advantages. Any historian would be immediately tempted to reject such descriptions, taking them for nothing but the sorry fruit of torture; however, it is better to avoid quick judgments, because experience shows that even the most absurd statements may sometimes conceal grains of truth in their depths, real facts that have to be brought to light by cleaning them from the many dark details added on by torture, by psychological violence, and by the awful suggestions raised by the atmosphere of the trial.

  We know for instance that mediaeval Christian tradition used to represent the dogma of the Trinity by means of three separate but identical figures, or even by one body with three faces. It was the vultus trifrons, an arrangement thought up in the 1200s to somehow give a visual account of the complex concept of a single God in three Persons. During the Council of Trent (1545-1563) many features of popular religion that had previously been accepted by everyone were weighed and discussed, and among them the three-faced head: it was seen that this image was too much like certain ancient representations of pagan gods, such as the Roman Diana, whom Virgil calls in the Aeneid (IV, 511) “Virgin with three faces”, or the Greek Hekate, goddess of the lower world, associated with the moon and represented with three faces to allude to its three phases – crescent, full, decreasing. Hekate was the queen of the otherworld, and in some pagan magical texts she was called upon by magicians and sorcerers; in the Roman imagination and in that of early Christianity she was seen as an image of the Devil, even though the divinity did not originally have anything evil about her, and in the tradition of mediaeval art three-headed demonic monsters can sometimes be found (as for instance in the front of the church of St. Peter in Tuscania). In 1628, Pope Urbanus VIII forbade any further representation of the Trinity under that pagan-originated and, all things considered, monstrous scheme, and in 1745 Benedict XIV ordered that the three Persons should be only represented according to images found in Holy Scripture: the Father as a venerable elder, the “Ancient of Days” of the book of the prophet Daniel; the Son as a young man, and the Spirit in the shape of a dove. We know that the Order of the Temple was originally dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and the text approved in Troyes the founder and his followers are called, exactly, Knights of the Holy Trinity; we cannot in the least exclude that the churches of the Order included some sculptures of this very peculiar kind, little used in Gothic art but absolutely licit, used as late as the Renaissance in Donatello’s decorations of the tabernacle of St. Thomas the Apostle in Orsanmichele, Florence.[51]

  A magnificent manuscript from the Vatican Library, painted in Naples by Matteo Planisio in 1362, features a cycle of miniatures representing the creation of the world: God is represented as the Three Persons of the Trinity, that is a venerable elder with a two-faced head, one as an old man (the Father) and the other as a beardless teenaged boy (the Son), while the dove that represents the Holy Spirit rests on his shoulder.[52] If we exclude the dove, who is not e
qually visible in all the miniatures, one must admit that the Creator appears as a strange being with one head and two faces: the smooth-featured boy’s face, with no facial hair, does in effect seem like a woman’s. Mediaeval art does from time to time come up with this kind of invention, it does not find it so important to represent things realistically so much as to bring out symbolic and spiritual meanings. Certainly such images must have seemed monstrous to anyone who saw them without adequate preparation.

  It’s hard to tell what these simulacra described by some questioned Templars, with two, three or even four faces, ever stood for. Some testimonies certainly spoke of real things, sacred goods used for liturgy and cult, while others are no more than the deformed birth of terror and violence. For this purpose it can be very useful to consider the geographical areas where the various questionings took place. The trial took place practically all over Christendom, with inquiries in France, England, Scotland, Italy, Germany, the Spanish peninsula and Cyprus. And yet all the scary and filthy testimonies concentrate in France, especially in the historical region of Midi, which was the headquarters of the dreaded Inquisition. From this region comes an unfortunately incomplete document, which can only be called “Languedoc Enquiry” since it lacks any reference to place and date of questioning. However, many clues suggest that the well-known inquisitor Bernard Gui was involved at least in the information-gathering stage. This document is an absolute mine of information about the factors that affected the trial, and does much to explain why scholars such as Nicolai, Hammer-Purgstall and many more could get such a grim picture of the ceremonies that took place in the Temple.[53]