by James Becker
The Templars very quickly became established in Jerusalem and started to spread their influence well beyond the confines of the Holy Land. The order soon became, by far, the most powerful of all the medieval religious orders, and was actually far more wealthy than many rulers and even some nations, both because of the estates and other assets donated to it by its members and benefactors, and also from its continent-wide banking activities. Almost all the modern financial instruments with which we are familiar—checks, letters of credit, interest, bank charges, loans, mortgages, bearer bonds, and the like—were invented by the Templars in the medieval period.
The Templars’ headquarters in Paris were established after they loaned a huge sum of money to King Louis VII of France in 1147. Unable to repay the order in cash, the king handed over extensive tracts of land in Paris, mostly in the eastern part of the Marais, where the Templars built one of their largest commanderies, the Paris Temple. Though the buildings are long gone, the names endure in the rue du Temple and the rue Vieille du Temple, and the Temple Metro station. There are other extant references to the order as well, including an autoroute rest area called the Aire du Fond de la Commanderie near Conchil-le-Temple, a large village formerly owned by the Templars in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France.
Philip IV of France, known as Philip the Fair, was essentially bankrupt, financially and morally, as was his country, and when he ordered the arrest of all the members of the order of warrior monks and the confiscation of their assets in 1307, his motive was entirely mercenary: he wanted the Templar treasure, and extirpating the Templar “heresy”—essentially an invented crime against the Church—was the excuse he had decided to use to get it.
Or rather he didn’t, because when his troops entered not only the Paris preceptory but also all the other Templar fortresses in France, there was almost no treasure to be found, and remarkably few members of the order either. Despite the blanket secrecy of Philip’s campaign, news of his intentions had obviously leaked, and the order had made its own plans accordingly.
The Templar fleet, which sailed from Honfleur in late September, probably carried much of the treasure, most likely to Scotland, although Oak Island in Nova Scotia (the “Money Pit” that is discussed in this novel) has been suggested as an alternative destination. The remainder was most likely removed from the various fortresses and secreted elsewhere in France or in neighboring countries like Portugal. To date, not one single coin from the vast hoard is known to have been found anywhere.
The information given in this novel about the village of Temple, the route probably followed by the fleet from Honfleur, and the possibility that the lost treasure of the Templars may be hidden somewhere in the vicinity is entirely accurate, or as accurate as it is possible to be some seven hundred years after the event.
The Templecombe Head, the Mandylion, and the Shroud of Turin
The Templecombe Head is real and is as described in this novel. It was discovered during the Second World War by a woman named Molly Drew, who described the image as a face surrounded by brilliantly painted colors of red, blue, and green—colors that faded away almost to nothing when the local vicar popped the painting into his bath and scrubbed it with scouring powder, an unforgivable act of religious vandalism no matter what his motives. The earliest date for the oak on which the painting was created is 1280 AD, based on radiocarbon dating, and the style of the work is clearly medieval.
A number of theories have been put forward about both the subject and the purpose of the painting. The two leading contenders are Jesus Christ and John the Baptist as the subject, and it does appear likely that the original painting was owned by the Templars, may well have been on display in their local chapel at Templecombe, and may possibly have been an icon or idol that they would have venerated. One of the charges leveled against the Templars by their Dominican inquisitors was that they worshipped idols.
It has also been established that the Templars traded relics during their occupation of parts of the Holy Land, which might suggest that the painting is a copy of the Mandylion, also known as the Image of Edessa, the cloth that is claimed to have been miraculously imprinted with the face of Jesus Christ.
The Mandylion itself has been linked to the Shroud of Turin, the suggestion being that the Mandylion was simply the Shroud folded so as to only display the face of the figure, but this seems unlikely, as stories about the Mandylion were in circulation at least as early as the fifth century AD, and radiocarbon dating has positively confirmed that the Shroud of Turin is far more recent, dating from between 1260 and 1390. Various challenges to this date and to the radiocarbon testing procedures have been made, but none of them stands up to impartial scientific scrutiny. It is now well established that the Shroud is a very clever medieval forgery, though many people still dispute this for reasons of their own.
It’s perhaps also worth mentioning that although the image of the man on the Shroud fits very well with other medieval representations of Jesus Christ, it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the very few near-contemporary descriptions of Him, lending obvious weight to the forgery hypothesis.
Celsus, for example, writing in the second century AD, described Jesus as “ugly and small.” Other near-contemporary sources are in broad agreement, suggesting that He was bald, short, perhaps only three cubits—about four feet six inches—tall, with a long face and a connate eyebrow (a monobrow in modern parlance), and possibly physically deformed, maybe even being a hunchback. It’s been suggested that the taunt “Physician, heal thyself” was used because of some obvious deformity of His body. Tertullian stated that he had an “ignoble appearance” and that physically He was in “abject condition,” while Irenaeus claimed that He was a “weak and inglorious man.”
The Bible itself confirms this. There’s only one reference to Jesus’s physical appearance in the entire text, in Isaiah 53:2. This states that “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.”
A kind of backlash against these descriptions began in the early Middle Ages when a variety of documents of either unknown or at least questionable origin began circulating. These described Jesus in the way that He is generally depicted today, as a tall, handsome, and almost-angelic figure, presumably driven by the argument that the alleged son of God had to appear almost godlike Himself. By the nineteenth century, Christ had acquired an almost Aryan appearance in the eyes of many Europeans, no doubt influenced by prevailing anti-Semitic attitudes, despite the obvious fact that, whatever He actually looked like, Jesus was definitely a Jew.
Why the Templecombe Head disappeared from the pages of history only to reappear in the middle of the twentieth century is unknown. It’s been suggested that when the Templar order was suppressed at the start of the fourteenth century, the Head was hidden away for safekeeping in a secular rather than in a religious building for fear that it would be confiscated as a result of the trials of the English Templars. It’s also possible that the Head disappeared a couple of hundred years later, in the middle of the sixteenth century, when the order of the Hospitallers, the successors to the Templars, was dissolved on the orders of King Henry VIII, the relic possibly again being hidden to avoid confiscation.
But the short answer is that nobody actually knows, and the origins of the Templecombe Head are as mysterious today as they were when it surfaced in the 1940s. The Head is usually on display in the church at Templecombe, but it does occasionally go traveling to be featured in exhibitions around Britain.
The Anglican Church of Saint Mary at Templecombe dates from the twelfth century and is a Grade II listed building. The appearance of the tower is exactly as described in this novel, and it does look much more like a part of a fortification than of a religious building.
Friday the Thirteenth
It’s a myth that Friday the thirteenth is considered unlucky because that was the day—Friday, 13 October 1307—when the mass arres
ts of the Knights Templar Order took place. In fact, the thirteenth day of the month was already thought of as being somewhat unlucky well before the medieval period because it was the number after twelve.
Numerology has always been quite important in history, and twelve was thought to represent completeness: things like the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve apostles, the twelve months of the year, and so on. But the number thirteen was both irregular and a prime number, and there was an old superstition that if there were thirteen guests at the table for a meal, one of them would die soon afterward. That might have had its origins in the last supper—Jesus plus the twelve disciples—but nobody’s very sure.
Friday by itself has also been thought of as an unlucky day of the week. Christ was supposed to have been crucified on a Friday, and since at least the fourteenth century, it’s been thought of as a bad day to begin a journey or start a new business venture or other project.
But although the thirteenth was thought to be unlucky for a couple of millennia, it was only in the very early part of the twentieth century that Friday was added to the date, and that quite possibly derived from a novel, of all things. In 1907, a book called Friday the Thirteenth was published. It was written by a man named Thomas Lawson, and the plot involved a crooked stockbroker who engineered a panic on Wall Street on Friday the thirteenth. Certainly, after 1907, there were plenty of references to that day and date as being unlucky, and almost none before that year.
Gilmerton Cove and Rosslyn Chapel
Gilmerton Cove is also real, and what is known of its history is precisely as described in this novel. There is indeed a doorway in the cave system—a doorway that clearly leads under a nearby road and from which the rubble cannot be moved for reasons of safety. It is also true that the space beyond that doorway appears to point almost directly to Rosslyn Chapel. Whether or not there actually is a tunnel that extends all the way between the two structures is unknown.
Rosslyn Chapel is also as described and does contain a number of anomalies, including carvings that look remarkably like corncobs, which were unknown in Europe until after the discovery of North America in the years following the voyages of Columbus, well after the chapel had been built. Columbus sailed on his first voyage in 1492 but never got near enough to North America to detect the continental landmass on that or any of his subsequent voyages. In fact, it was Giovanni Caboto—his Anglicized name being John Cabot—who first landed on the coast of North America in 1497, though the Vikings had certainly been there about half a millennium earlier. They had tried to settle on the continent but had been driven away because of violent clashes with the indigenous population, who of course greatly outnumbered them.
Various sources state that building Rosslyn Chapel began in 1446, but this is inaccurate. In 1446, permission was granted by Rome to construct the chapel, the Vatican having had a long reach in those days, but the actual construction only began in September 1456.
The story about the Apprentice Pillar is also accurate, at least in terms of the legend, which does appear to be based upon a real event—the killing of an apprentice mason by his master—though there is no suggestion that there is any kind of hidden cavity or chamber lying below the base of the pillar. However, fairly recent surveys, including the use of ground-penetrating radar, have demonstrated that there are underground cavities, presumably crypts or some other kind of chamber, lying below and around the chapel itself. To date, none of these has been excavated or explored.
The Crusades
The words “crusade” and “crusader” are derived from oaths sworn by fighting men. When the armies arrived in the Holy Land to combat the infidels, they were each given a cross to sew onto their clothing when they finally arrived in Jerusalem to mark the oath that they had taken. This was known as the “taking of the Cross,” and the symbol itself as the croix or crux. The name “crusader” evolved from that and the entire operation then became known as a “crusade.”
About the Author
James Becker spent more than twenty years in the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm. Throughout his career he was involved in covert operations in many of the world’s hot spots, including Yemen, Russia, and Northern Ireland. He is the author of The Templar Archive and The Lost Treasure of the Templars, as well as the Chris Bronson novels, including The Lost Testament and Echo of the Reich. He has also written action-adventure novels under the name James Barrington, military novels as Max Adams, and novels exploring conspiracy theories as Jack Steel in the UK.
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