The Templars and the Shroud of Christ
Page 20
Curiously and surely not by chance, the area of Catharism’s highest popularity agrees with that where we find the most numerous testimonies of these simulacra of the Face of Christ among the Templars.
Between Provence and Languedoc
We know that at the time of the sack of Constantinople, when the Shroud vanished from the imperial collection, a small group of Templars were present in the Byzantine capital. Their leader was called Jacopo Barozzi, a knight from one of Venice’s most prominent families, who at the time held the important office of Preceptor of the Temple for the province of Lombardy (meaning most of northern Italy). What they were doing there is not quite clear, and the only certain thing is that they were there under orders from the Grand Master. In fact, these Templars took no part in the sacking of the city, nor would they have been allowed to; for on the one hand Innocent III had excommunicated all those who had been guilty of aggression against other Christians, and on the other the Templar regulations themselves ordered that anyone who had been guilty of violence against other Christians was to be expelled from the Order, immediately and irrevocably.[56]
The Temple units were in fact already in the Holy Land, and had already committed themselves to the military operations which, according to the agreed plans, were to precede the re-taking of Jerusalem; that is, strengthening the Christian positions in northern Syria. This little group, led by the Preceptor of Lombardy, left Venice together with the remaining Crusader army because, in all likelihood, the Venetian Templar house had given the French barons a massive cash loan to help them at last to leave, since the debt they had made with the Republic prevented the host from moving out. Immediately after the conquest of Constantinople, the new Latin Emperor, Baudouin de Courtenay, was to charge Barozzi with the most delicate and serious of diplomatic missions: go to the Pope and beg him to remove the sentence of excommunication from the leaders of the Crusade. On this occasion the new Emperor gifted the Temple with a small fortune in money, precious objects shining with gems, and even two fragments of the True Cross: wealth that was to repay the Order for the expenditure it had previously suffered.[57]
Was it Preceptor Jacopo Barozzi who passed the shroud from the imperial Byzantine collection to the Temple? The idea does not seem acceptable, because known sources do not support it; if anything, the horror of the sack and the indignity of the trade in relics that followed were what allowed the Templars to see the relic from close up and assess its awe-inspiring peculiarities. The evidence that has come down to us does not place the Holy Face in the hands of the Order any earlier than several decades later, in 1266, near the tower of Saphed in Palestine, when the Sultan Baibars snatched it from the order and was greatly astonished to find a bas-relief of a man’s face in the grand hall of the mansion, where the knights had used to hold their chapter, and obviously could not guess at the man’s identity.[58] More or less at the same time, these simulacra started appearing in the mansions of southern France, especially in Provence; for some particular reason, the cult there spread sooner and faster than anywhere else.[59] The following decades witnessed a kind of explosion of copies, which meant that by the last quarter of the 13th century they could be found practically in every country where the Temple was present.[60] In Paris, the presence of the “idol” is continuously documented from 1298 to 1307, during the last general chapter that the Templars were able to hold only a few months before their arrest. In Cyprus, too, it seems to appear somewhat late.[61]
Provence may have been early, as compared with the rest of France, in the spread of the cult, on account of its strategic position, since Marseille was the main port of embarkation to Outremer; but there may also have been other reasons, issues connected with specific persons. A rumour that went around the order said that the unworthy acts practised in the Order’s rituals (errores) had been introduced in the days when Thomas Bérard was Grand Master and Roncelin de Fos was Preceptor of Provence.[62] The Masters of this province seem to have had a privileged role in the spread of the cult; there are in fact no less than 19 witness statements that tie the idol continuously to the Preceptors of Provence and to their lieutenants[63] in the second half of the XIII century: Roncelin de Fos,[64] Pons de Brozet,[65] Guy Audémar,[66] and Bernard de La Roche.[67]
The sources ascribe the introduction to the cult precisely to Roncelin de Fos, and in a significant date: it is 1266, the year when the fortress of Saphed was taken from the Templars, and when the Sultan found that curious image of the Face carved into the chapterhouse wall. It is not hard to imagine that that same hall might also have kept another simulacrum of that same Face, taken to the West when the fortress fell into Muslim hands.
On Roncelin de Fos, unfortunately, we currently have very little information. Following Anne Marie Bulst-Thiele’s very valuable study of the Templar Grand Masters, we find that Roncelin de Fos had a long career in the Order, which coincides with the period in which Thomas Bérard became Grand Master. In 1252-1255 and 1262-1266, Roncelin held the office of Master of England to which he added, in the periods 1248-1250, 1254-1256, 1260-1278 that of Master of Provence.[68] The man may however have been more important in the Order than even his list of offices would seem to warrant; a document dated 1252 makes him, together with his kinsman Geoffroy de Fos, a member of the private company of Grand Master Thomas Bérard, that is of a narrow roster of dignitaries chosen by the leader as his most trusted collaborators.[69]
The Grand Master’s companions who had to be noble; helped him closely in all most delicate situations, and in important matters such as lending Order funds could not be tackled by the Grand Master without their agreement.[70] In general, the rules describe these persons as being always close to the person of the Grand Master, so close indeed that in some cases it becomes necessary to specify which kinds of honours and privileges were an exclusive prerogative which the Grand Master was not allowed to share with his companions.[71] Belonging to the narrow circle of the Grand Master’s companions, and the full confidence from the latter which this honour implies, surely allowed Roncelin de Fos the opportunity of taking part in the most confidential matters; and it seems that de Fos was the first to take the cult of the Shroud-type Face to the West. As a companion of the Grand Master, he certainly had access to plenty of information unknown to the ordinary brothers. In his dossier of charges, Philip the Fair specified that knowledge of the mysterious “idol” was an elite matter open only to the very highest ranks. If we remove what is there only to support basically groundless charges, we must notice that something of this statement is true.
From the sources, it seems that the cult did not cross the geographical boundaries of Templar Provence, at least in its early times. Outside Provence, we must go as far as 1270 for a sporadic apparition in Paris, and 1271 to see it represented on the seals of German Preceptors; on the other hand, documents show that the area under the command of Roncelin de Fos knew these simulacra early and widely. The three statements that refer directly to de Fos cover a long chronological arch, reaching probably to the end of his life; after him, his successor Pons de Brozet “inherited” the cult and forced its transmission to some brothers, as did the last Templars to hold this post. Concerning the physical presence of the figure, there is no evidence that it was ever kept in a single place: on the contrary, some witnesses said that it was entrusted to certain individuals, rather than being tied to one or more mansions. One of the persons mentioned as having a personal guardianship of the “idol” is none other than the Provencal officer Pons de Brozet.[72]
There is an important clue in the first statement that refers to the central mansion of the Paris Temple.[73] As already mentioned, the sergeant who had been shown the “idol” wondered at the fact that he had never seen it again after his ceremony of admission. Now, considering that he had been admitted a long time before (1270) and that the presence of the “idol” is only proved in Paris for the continuous period from 1298 to 1307, it seems that showings depended not
on the place but on people, that is, those who celebrated the ceremony of admission. It may have been mostly a matter of confidence, of trust in the man’s moral fibre. The brothers were shown the idol at the start of their lives as Templars, the ceremony that made them order members; it is as if there were a purpose to place the new Templar forthwith under the protection of the order’s great patron, who would then perpetuate his protection through the power of the strand consecrated by contact.
Amaury de La Roche
The last person we hear of having a personal connection with the “idol” is a figure of primary importance in the Temple of the mid-twelve hundreds; in some ways, at least on the international stage, he may have had more influence than the Grand Master himself. Amaury de La Roche belonged to a senior family of the French nobility, which had already given the Temple a Preceptor of France in the first half of the 13th century[74]; older by a generation than the Templar dignitaries tried by Philip the Fair, he had reached in 1261 a very prestigious rank among the Templars – Commander of Outremer, that is commander in chief over the whole Eastern sector. It was the third hierarchic rank in the whole order, and entitled him to counter-sign decrees issued by the Grand Master. The following year he still had that rank, but had added another of greater delicacy and importance: just like Roncelin de Fos exactly ten years earlier, in an act of 1262 Amaury de La Roche is mentioned as compaignon of the Master, Thomas Bérard.[75]
In 1264 the Grand Master summoned him back to France, saying in so many words that the situation in Occident called for his presence; the following year, the King of France set out on a kind of diplomatic campaign because he saw Amaury as a valuable man and absolutely did not want to lose the opportunity to have him as an ally. By the Popes’ gift, the Order of the Temple had always been free to select its own leaders by vote and without any kind of outside interference. Templar statutes only allowed one exception, that is, where a Pope, for reasons of higher necessity, were to interfere and make his desires felt. Louis IX made use of this exception, and strongly pressured Pope Urbanus IV to favour Amaury de La Roche’s candidacy as Preceptor of France, a role which would have involved a great deal of cooperation with the Crown in many ways. The Pope had a hard time imposing his interference on the Templar assembly, which did not view this interference from the King of France as fair; on the other hand, the sovereign would not yield, he kept insisting, extolling Amaury as a person and underlining that that man was bound to him by a very old friendship. The Pope did not wish to displease a man of Louis IX’s calibre: a just King, a faithful husband, of exemplary devotion, it certainly was not easy to say no. Besides, considering his wisdom, it was not hard to imagine that the choice of Amaury would have been a very sound step. In the end, Urbanus Urbano IV thought to seek for help from the Patriarch of Jerusalem, a religious and moral authority to whom the Templars were closely bound. Grand Master Thomas may well not have wanted to lose that man because he felt his need in the East; but in practice, the greatest powers in contemporary Christian society had aligned around the request to make Amaury de La Roche Preceptor of France: so he was forced to yield. The situation was to repeat itself later: Pope Urbanus’ successor, Clemens IV, pressured the Grand Master no less than twice to place Amaury at Charles of Anjou’s disposal, by giving him oversight of the Templar houses of the Kingdom of Naples.[76]
Although his specific duties were from then on focused on Western territories, Amaury de La Roche seems to have had, thanks to Louis IX’s confidence, a role above his rank. Sources show him taking personal charge of Oriental issues, above all the new crusade that dominated the king’s thoughts: in 1267 the Patriarch of Jerusalem turned to him, rather than to the Grand Master, to lament the persecution of the Palestine Christians at the hands of the Sultan of Egypt, and asked him to intercede with the Pope, King Louis, and Charles of Anjou, to intervene swiftly.[77] Amaury went on the Eighth Crusade with the French King, and took part in the siege of Tunis[78]; it seems likely that the King’s death in 1270 interrupted his rise in the Temple, for according to the last notice that still mentions him as living, a reception he held in Paris in 1287, he was still Master of France.[79]
This man’s life intersects at many points with the story of the Shroud as it has been reconstructed so far. He had the full confidence of Louis IX, who set up a whole policy of searching to take to France the most important relics of Jesus left in Constantinople, and had a container of fantastic value, the sublime jewel that is the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris, built especially for them: the True Cross, the Spear, the Sponge used to give drink to the crucified Jesus, and other priceless objects, were solemnly transported to France in a transit intended to have every chrism of legality, by writing out the appropriate documents.[80] Considering his functions, no doubt Amaury assisted Louis IX at some crucial moments, supervised the examinations to have the certainty that the right relics were being sent, and then organised the security measures during transport.
The sources of the Templar trials, alone, do not allow us to establish this important Templar’s parentage with certainty, and we have to be content with knowing that he was of the house of La Roche, a noble family who had taken part in the Fourth Crusade and established its own fiefdom near Athens. And it was near Athens, according to a document dated 1205 which reached us thanks to a copy made by the Archbishop of Monreale (Sicily), Monsignor Benedetto D’Acquisto, the nobleman Othon de La Roche had decided to keep the most precious object in the booty he had taken from the sack of Constantinople, that is the Shroud of Jesus Christ. The document is a letter written to Pope Innocent III by Theodoros Angelos, a brother of Michael, despot of Epirus and member of the deposed and exiled Byzantine imperial family, demanding from the Pope at least the return of the most sacred objects.[81]
The diplomatic form of the letter certainly seems to be genuine, a Latin translation from a Greek original: the Byzantine imperial chancellery produced their official documents in Greek, but attached to them Latin translations, and probably the unknown scribe only copied out the latter. No expert until now has challenged its authenticity, and it seems to agree in form with other Byzantine documents of the time, at least to judge by such formulas as calling the Roman Pontiff “Pope of Old Rome”, or the heading scheme which specialists call illi-ille.[82] In this context, I would like to mention an interesting fact that might have to do exactly with the presence of the Shroud in the region of Athens. The accurate catalogue of churches in the Empire of Constantinople drawn up by Raymond Janin states that in the neighbourhood of Daphni, on the ancient sacred way that once took pilgrims to the famous temple of Apollo, stood an abbey dedicated to the Mother of God. In a letter of 1209, Pope Innocent III strangely calls this “the church of the Blachernae”, that is the very same name of the famous basilica in Constantinople where the crusader Robert de Clari saw the Shroud exhibited just before the sack. The abbey was settled by Cistercian monks from the French town of Bellevaux, which had ties with the La Roche family; and Janin, who has made a detailed study of the history of very many Byzantine religious foundations, could find no explanation for this novel naming of Blachernae, which had nothing what so ever to do with the history of that monastery and seemed to appear out of nowhere on the morrow after the great sack.[83] It would not be surprising if the church of Daphni had been so renamed just by virtue of the unique object it came to hold, which made it somehow a new basilica of the Blachernae.
The last La Roche duke of Athens, also called Othon, died without heirs on 5 October 1308, and was buried in the monastery of Daphni; in all likelihood, the long since Shroud had left his family’s possession.[84]
In 1261 the Latin Empire of Constantinople ceased to exist, Greek emperors recovered the throne, and the establishment of fiefdoms also had to be reorganised. In those years, and to be precise from 1260 to 1265, Amaury was the commander of the Temple throughout the whole East, and had therefore great military, political and economic powers. The Fourth Lateran Council
had forbidden the trade in relics under pains of excommunication, so the Shroud could never have been sold. After the sack of Constantinople, several precious reliquaries containing tiny fragments of the shroud of Christ had been sold across Europe, and even King Louis IX the Saint had procured one for his treasury at the Sainte-Chapelle; although these were only fragments, these were objects that drew people’s devotion and curiosity mightily. It is easy to imagine what would have happened if the existence of the sheet had been made widely known – one of the most famous and celebrated relics in all Christendom. Excommunication could have been avoided by making it a free-will gift or some kind of disguised purchase, but the conveyance had at any rate to be carried out as discreetly as possible.[85] There would have been nothing strange about it if the Order of the Temple, as greedy of relics for Jesus Christ as anyone, had come forward to make an offer to the troubled La Roche family through one of their own kinsmen, offering to take this object as pawn for a monumental sum of money – a sum the La Roche would never have been able to return.