The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar

by Steven Sora

  The Zeno fleet had been away in the east when the conflict started. Messengers had been sent out from the city, to find the fleet and to tell of the dire threat hanging over Venice, but there was no confirmation the message had even gotten through to Zeno. The city was starving under the Genoese blockade, and the question on everyone’s mind was “Where is Zeno?” A vote was taken, and it was decided that Venice would surrender on New Year’s Day in 1381. Just as it appeared the war was over for Venice, the Zeno fleet appeared. The Genoese fleet was immediately attacked and defeated by “Carlo the Lion,” as he was called. Younger brother Niccolo commanded one of the ships. Although the war continued until the next June, the Genoese were soundly beaten.

  While their financial acumen and military prowess made the Zenos one of the most important families in Venetian history, their critics charge them with one failing so great as to cast doubt on the entire voyage to America: poor spelling. The blame should not lie entirely with the Zenos, since they were forced not only to translate the Norman-English language into their own Italian dialect but also to convey their message through writing. The text and charts of the narrative were in some cases destroyed and often were illegible; then they were resurrected by the Zenos’ sixteenth-century descendant, who translated freely.

  One example of just what distance, time, and language can do to alter a text is the name of the starting point of the journey. The Shet-land Islands had originally received their name from the Norse word for “basalt,” Het-Land.12 Through time the name became Shetland. The younger Niccolo was familiar with neither, and so he substituted “Este-Land,” a name derived from the town of Este near his own home in the northern Italian peninsula. A family of that name had a pedigree as long and as noble as the Zenos’.

  The home of Henry Sinclair, whom Niccolo’s ancestor called “Prince,” was Roslin, a name that has been spelled several different ways; the Scottish “Sinclairs” were originally Norman “St. Clairs,” and spelling in different translations was more an art than a science. This text will refer to the Norman family as “St. Clair” and to the Scottish branch as “Sinclair,” although exceptions do exist. Ros, means “red,” and lin, or more often lynn, means “stream.” Again, young Niccolo may have in-verted “ros” to spell “sor” and come up with “Sorano” as the home of the prince. Another important family of Venice, who shared the leadership of the city with the Zeno family, was that of Soranza. At the time of Niccolo’s writings, Soranza was the doge, the supreme head of Venice. Like Niccolo’s ancestor, Soranza was an admiral of the Venetian fleet and had also been victorious against the Genoese. In Italian, Sorano would mean “of Sor.” If Niccolo translated “Ros” as “Sor,” Sorano would be the natural result. In his work on the Sinclair family Andrew Sinclair stated that Niccolo took this name from Caithness, the lands that the Sinclairs had inherited in the north; translating Caithness into Sorano, however, would be even more difficult.

  Henry Sinclair’s base of operations was often an island named Bressay. The younger Niccolo abbreviated the name of the island as Bres, but for once this was actually more accurate. The “-ay” suffix denotes “island” in the Norse language that was prevalent throughout the north—calling the place the “island of Bressay” would be redundant. An important island situated halfway between the Orkneys and the Shetlands was Fer Island. This island, previously mentioned, was translated on maps by various spellings that included Ferisland and later Frislandia. When the Zeno narrative speaks of Porlanda, an island south of the Hebrides, which is much more populated, it is no stretch to guess that the island of Skye with its large town of Portree is the perfect candidate. Skye was south of the Hebrides, and more populous, and Portree was the largest settlement. Such spelling and translation problems plague modern historians. Pohl says Porlanda was simply Pentland, a large area of Scotland; other writers supply Portland, which is no longer on any map. History records Portland as having had a duke who also wrote of the earls of Roslin. The Zeno narrative speaks of captured fishing boats in “Sanestol,” which could be Stenscholl, also in Skye.

  While such strained translations do little to enhance Niccolo’s credibility, we should remember other historic translations. London is a name that was translated differently under different masters. It was originally called Lug, for a powerful Celtic god of the same name. When Roman legionnaires reached the town of Lug, they translated it as Luguvalium, “the town of Lug,” or Lugdunum, “the stronghold of Lug.”13 When Vikings left behind their city of Jarvik in Norway, it remained in their hearts. They named a place where they settled in England for their hometown. This new Jarvik was translated by the English language as “York,” and it has remained so.14 English settlers in America, again keeping a fondness for their own city, named their new settlement “New York.” Very few New Yorkers would recognize their city’s name as having descended from a relatively small Norwegian seaport. With London and New York in mind, it is not difficult to see how time, distance, translation, and modernization can alter an original spelling. The added hindrance to continuity in the case of Zeno’s narrative is the fact that the original letters were in a mutilated condition when they were finally compiled.

  If the damage done to place-names were not bad enough, it was the younger Niccolo’s rendering of Henry Sinclair’s name that stirred the greatest debate. Niccolo compounded his ancestors’ mistake in calling Henry a prince by naming him Prince Zichmni. This title defied explanation until Johann Reinhold Forster came along.15 This eighteenth-century writer and historian started with the declaration that while there were no “princes” in the Orkneys, there was an earl—Henry Sinclair. There were no earls in Venice, so Niccolo needed a word that translated into a title that could be understood in the Italian language. Henry’s title was Earl of the Orkneys and Caithness. Forster also pointed out that the title of prince was never followed by a surname but rather by the municipality that the prince called his domain. He believed “Prince of the Orkneys” was what the older Niccolo had attempted to convey to his brother in his letters.

  Translation, however, was a problem. There was no equivalent to an “ey” ending in Italian; an “I” would have to be substituted. And the “D’O” beginning of “D’Orkney” (of Orkney) appearing as a “Z” was simply poor handwriting. While Forster’s work as a historian had merit, this explanation is not easy to accept. A look at the Sinclair history might be helpful. In 1392 King Richard II of England granted safe conduct for Henry Sinclair (then St. Clair) to come into his country. In this letter he described Sinclair as “Comes Orchadie, et Dominus de Roslyne.” He spelled the family name as “Seintcler.” It was not just the unlearned who rendered the written language of the fourteenth century less than simple to understand.

  The Sinclairs themselves seemingly provide further evidence as to just how badly a name can be distorted. In 1658 one of the first direct descendants of the Sinclair family went to America.16 Once in his new home in New Hampshire, he changed the spelling of the name to “Sinkler.” A once proud and respected family name that could be traced back a thousand years to a saint was rendered in terms that might be freely associated with an implement for fishing. In America, other direct descendants did even more damage. New spellings included “Sain Clair,” “Cinclair,” “Sinklee,” “Sinklir,” and “Synkler,” among numerous other versions. It was in The History of the Sinclair Family in Europe and America, published in 1896, that I found facsimiles of signatures that came to confuse the family name further. The signature of the son of the original immigrant, “Sinkler,” appears as “Sink Por.” An eighteenth-century Joseph Sinkler distorted his surname, making the “S” in the first part of the name a “Z” separate from the last letters. It was not until 1800 that most variations started to disappear and the descendants adopted the more correct “Sinclair” or “St. Clair.”

  While a prince in the north of Europe may have been more inclined to use his country or province in his title, a prince in any of the states that make up mode
rn Italy certainly would have used his name. It is likely that Prince Sinclair, as Niccolo might have called his employer, translated to Prince Zichmni, if the “S” became a “Z” and a more common vowel ending was substituted in Italian. The most relevant fact is that there was only one man who ruled the Orkneys at the turn of the fifteenth century and there was only one fleet big enough to fit the description. That ruler and that fleet owner was one person, and no one else fit the bill. The earl of the Orkneys was Henry Sinclair.

  Another translation of the Zeno narratives was put together by Richard Henry Major. His version, published in 1873, also said that Zichmni and Sinclair were the same person, and at that point the discussion and debate were considered resolved. The staid Dictionary of National Biography agreed that it was Henry Sinclair who led the Zeno expedition. Soon after the Major’s publication, a new critic, Fred Lucas, came along to confuse the matter once again. Declaring that Zichmni was actually a Baltic pirate instead of the earl of the Orkneys, he threw the Zeno narratives into doubt once more. The Baltic pirate was actually named “Wichmann,” but fifteenth-century spelling being what it was, that did not resolve the dispute.17 The main flaw in Lucas’s theory is that he failed to explain why two rich shipowners from an incredibly wealthy and powerful family would ever enlist in a pirate fleet in the Baltic Sea or why they would be proud to report to their brother Carlo, a war hero, that they had allowed a pirate to “knight” them.

  Before the 1960 discovery of L’Anse aux Meadows and Norse settlers in Canada, any tale of an expedition, planned or otherwise, to the New World was fair game to criticism. Once the discovery became public knowledge, the old school’s position began to lose ground. Much damage, however, had already been done to discredit the Zeno narratives and charts. And it would not be until later years that historians and cartographers would again validate both the story and the maps of the Zenos. The Sinclairs themselves were of no help in the recognition of Zeno’s charts, considering that they may have wished their new lands to remain secret. By the time the younger Zeno brought his compilation of maps and letters to the attention of the world in 1558, the Sinclairs had already made at least one more trip, and most likely several, to their new lands.

  The Clan Sinclair

  In the sixteenth century the Sinclair family became embroiled in a life-and-death struggle for their own lands and the lands of the countrymen to whom they were allied. The nation of Scotland was only a concept, and most of the greatest families had loyalty to their own. A united England as aggressor, however, began to unite the Scots in retaliation to their overlords. The Sinclairs soon found themselves the targets of the English, and they needed a refuge to fall back to if they were overwhelmed. They had allied themselves by their actions to Scottish history’s strongest leader and the family that would lead the revolution in Scotland. They had also allied themselves to another, stronger secret society outlawed in Europe, but called upon by Scotland to join the fight against the English. Thanks to Sinclair protection, this secret society has survived to modern times.

  To understand how this secret alliance came to be, and just how the Sinclairs became both the protectors of the society and guardian to a treasure so important that it needed to be hidden from England, it is necessary to trace the Sinclair history even further back in time. The man who sailed to America before the Cabots and Cartiers of later years came from a family at least as ancient and important as that of the Zenos. Henry Sinclair and the Sinclair family are prominent indeed in the history of Scotland, but they trace their origin back to much earlier days—to a Norse migration to France and then north to the British Isles.18

  In the ninth and tenth centuries, the Scandinavian Norse grew restless. From Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, the Vikings raided, colonized, and settled wherever they could. In the north of France, one of the earliest of the clan was Rollo, who led Norse invaders on a quest for new lands. His son Rognwald met the French king Charles, whom history calls Charles the Simple. He demanded land from Charles as well as Charles’s daughter in marriage. At the place of the meeting, the Norsemen built a castle. These Norse who settled in France became the Normans.

  The St. Clairs (the French version of their name) were the single most important Norman family. This family owned the castle that was built at the treaty site in A.D. 912. They, in fact, had taken their name from that of a saintly martyr who lived as a hermit near what was considered a holy well near the River Epte, north of Paris.19 The holy man was murdered by the order of a “cruel woman” whom he had rebuked. Today his statue depicts him holding his severed head in his outstretched hands. The “severed head” came to be another significant symbol among those privy to an “underground stream” of sacred knowledge.

  After the murder of this holy man, the area surrounding the well became known as St. Clair, and the people who resided in the castle took the name as their own surname. The family that had descended from a Norse invader, Rollo, became the St. Clairs. It was the Normans who, for purposes of taxation and administration, introduced surnames into Europe by such censuslike recordings as the Domesday Survey.20 Europe had had no use for surnames since the days of Roman supremacy. The St. Clairs were related through marriage to William the Conqueror and were present in numbers at the Battle of Hastings, where William’s Norsemen took over England. William, too, had descended from a Norse family that had settled in France.

  The nine Sinclairs, as they spelled the family name once they were established in England, were rewarded for their valor at Hastings with grants of land. One of the Sinclairs, Walderne, married well. His wife was Margaret, daughter of Richard, duke of Normandy. Walderne was given the title earl of Sinclair, and his son William founded what became the Roslin branch of the family, to which “Prince” Henry would later be born. Another Sinclair, Agnes, married the head of the Bruce clan, who would come to challenge England. The Bruce clan had changed their name from the French “De Brus” upon reaching England.21

  For unknown reasons, the Bruce clan and the William Sinclair family had a falling out with their king and headed north to Scotland, where they allied themselves with Malcolm III. At the time, “kingship” had a different meaning than it does today. Scotland and England were made up of several important and powerful families who ruled alongside the king. Often these clans held more power and wealth than the king. Malcolm’s first wife was the widow of a Norse ruler in northern Scotland, and the marriage had been mostly a political alliance that Malcolm used to consolidate his own strength. The Normans were regarded as conquering imperialists around the world but never as a nation. After Malcolm’s death, his sons, Alexander and David, ruled by the power of their widespread loyalties in the north. They turned away from the Celtic ways to become feudal lords in the Norman style. This meant a new social structure, much more complex than that of the Celtic peoples. The social structure included taxation, which meant that the more lands the king could lay claim to through his lords, the more taxes he brought in to his own kingdom. Imported Normans were just what the king needed to keep this process growing. The distinction between Norman and Scot became blurred after two centuries.

  In March of 1286 Alexander III, the reigning king of Scotland, attended a wild drinking bout with his knights.22 Although they pleaded with him to stay and sleep off the effects of too much drink, he rode home in the dark and, in his intoxicated state, soon became lost. Somewhere along his ride, he fell from his horse and died of a broken neck, leaving no heir. For Scotland it was a fateful night, bringing about problems that would take centuries to heal.

  The immediate result was a complicated battle for succession. The king of England was as eager as anyone to impose his will on the north. Norman families found themselves on different sides of the battlefield as a result of the alliances that normally kept the country together. Bishop Wishart of Glasgow and Bishop Fraser of Saint Andrews summoned a council of bishops, abbots, earls, and barons, and from this group a regency of six “guardians” was appointed, of which one would
be picked as king. This did not stop friction between the guardian families, and in the process churches, schools, nunneries, and entire villages were burned. Military excursions from England led to a rise in nationalistic feeling for the first time among the amalgamation of peoples that were the Scots. With the French and the pope backing John Balliol, the Scots found their own interests were taking a backseat to foreign interests. Robert the Bruce of Carrick soon emerged as a symbol of the will of this newly inspired nationalism.

  Robert the Bruce was of the French De Brus family, of Norman extraction. He opposed the choice of Balliol and in turn made enemies of many of the other Norman families, including that of John of the Red Comyn. Because Scotland was not a nation, some families allied themselves with either England or France. Most, though, were loyal only to their own families. Another very fateful night in Scotland’s early history resulted from a plan to get Robert the Bruce and John Red Comyn together to settle their differences. It was in February of 1306 that the two met at the church of the Minorite friars in Dumfries.23 This church was chosen because both sides felt that violence could be avoided in such surroundings. The Grey Friars church, however, would have no such calming effect on either opponent.

  Only Bruce and Comyn entered the church; their men were instructed to wait outside. Robert the Bruce was the younger man, and early in his life Comyn had roughed him up in front of other Scottish leaders, an insult not forgotten. History does not record just what went on in the darkened church, but soon Bruce rushed out saying that he had stabbed Comyn with his dirk, a short Scottish dagger, and thought he was dead. Roger de Kirkpatrick, a trusted friend of Bruce’s replied, “You think? Then I’ll make sure.” He rushed into the church to see the friars dragging the body closer to the altar. Other Bruce loyalists chased the holy men away while Kirkpatrick finished the job with his own dagger. The body was dripping blood on the altar of the church. Comyn’s uncle rushed into the fray only to be killed by Christopher Seton, a Bruce supporter.