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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-252124,00.html

March 30, 2002

Vatican file shows pope pardoned massacred KnightsFrom Richard Owen in Rome

VATICAN documents have come to light showing that the wholesale massacre of the Knights Templar in the Middle Ages for alleged heresy, idolatry and sexual perversion an episode still shrouded in mystery took place even though the Pope had exonerated them in a secret trial.

The revelation will put pressure on the present Pope, who has asked the Muslim world for forgiveness for the Crusades, to apologise for the persecution of one of the main Crusading orders as well. The Templars, whose legendary power and wealth still exert a fascination, were disbanded by Pope Clement V at the Council of Vienne in France in 1312.

LAvvenire, the Catholic daily, said that the record of the Popes investigation was thought to have been lost when Napoleon looted the Vatican during his invasion of Italy in the 18th century, and that its rediscovery was an exceptional event.

The Templar Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was burnt at the stake on the orders of Philip IV of France (known as Philip the Fair), who coveted the Templar orders land and treasure and began a campaign of dawn arrests and torture in 1307. At least 2,000 Knights were killed in an attempt to obliterate the order altogether. It was revived in the 18th century as part of the masonic movement, which is said to have inherited some of the Templars secret rituals.

Barbara Frale, a researcher at the Vatican School of Paleontology, said that the consensus among historians was that Clement V, who was himself French and a former Archbishop of Bordeaux, had been pliant and weak, and had colluded in Philip the Fairs scheme to wipe out the Templars and seize their fortune. But documents found in the Vatican archives, including a long-lost parchment, proved that the Pope had in fact manoeuvred with skill and determination to ensure that his own emissaries questioned de Molay and other leading Templars in the dungeons of Chinon castle in the Loire in 1308, in what amounted to a papal trial.

Signora Frale, who is writing a book based on the Chinon parchment, told the Italian monthly Hera, a journal of historical mysteries, that the result was the complete exoneration of the Knights.

The Pope had accepted the Knights explanation that the charges against them of sodomy and blasphemy were due to a misunderstanding of arcane rituals behind closed doors which had their origins in the Crusaders bitter struggle against the Muslims, or Saracens. These included denying Christ and spitting on the Cross three times, as well as kissing other mens behinds. Adriano Forgione, editor of Hera, said that these were intended to simulate the kind of humiliation and torture that a Crusader might be subjected to by the Saracens if captured. They were taught how to abuse their own religion with the mind only and not with the heart.

The Knights Templar properly called The Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon were founded during the early Crusades in the 12th century, when they protected pilgrims to the Holy Land, together with the Hospitallers (or Knights of St John). The Templars were so called because they were given part of the former Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem as their headquarters.

Noting that de Molay and the Knights had asked his pardon, the Pope wrote: We hereby decree that they are absolved by the church and may again receive Christian sacraments. Signor Forgione said that the Pope had failed to make this absolution public because the scandal of the Templars had aroused extreme passions and he feared a church schism. Philip IV had de Molay and other Templar leaders put to death before the Popes verdict could be published, and it was subsequently lost.

In his first address as Pope, Benedict said he was "willing to do everything in my power to promote the fundamental cause of ecumenism ... and am fully determined to accept every initiative that seems opportune to promote contact and understandingspecific Templar-inspired themes. Some symbols are seen as the 'diagnostic signs of Templarism' and include: Carvings of a five-pointed star A dove in flight, carrying an olive branch in its beak .Pope Benedict offers olive branch to critics By Jonathan Petre and Bruce Johnston in Rome