From: leighann@sybase.com (Leigh Ann Hussey)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Templars not Masons <flame risk HIGH>
Date: 4 Sep 92 17:16:16 GMT
Organization: Sybase, Inc.

In article <1992Aug31.163921.19309@lmt.mn.org> ciaran@county.lmt.mn.org (Ciaran Benson) writes:
>
>  When people ask me what my problem is with the Templars, I
>point them to "Alexander Nevosky", a black-and-white subtitled
>Russian movie about an attempted invasion of Rus by the German
>Templars.  The scenes of the Templars descending on the Rus

NOT.  The Teutonic Knights were their own order, not related to the
Knights Templar.

>  Maybe the reason I spit so profusely on the Templars is that
>the only reason the church survived there in the first place 
>was that they burnt to the ground any city, town, or village that
>got in its way, often including its inhabitants.
	....
>I consider them one of the last vestiges of the Inquisition

Dear, gentle Ciaran, have you been following this thread very closely?
Here, breathe deeply (I'm serious, dammit!), calm yourself.  Now, listen
to this:
	THE TEMPLARS WERE THEMSELVES PERSECUTED BY THE CHURCH.

They were a large, savvy business organization.  They had a lot of
money, and more influence than King Louis IV of France thought they ought
have.  They got their money by sharp trading -- well, and by a certain
amount of looting the Saracens, which gave them their initial capital...
Nothing to do with burning Lithuanian villages.  Never got out that way.

The destruction of their order was as carefully planned a campaign
as the suppression of the Gnostics and the take-over of Languedoc (in
the south of France, home of the Trouveres, whose poetry often reflects
a worship of the feminine as divine).  And for the same reasons -- the
stated purpose, to stamp out heresy and dissident doctrine was only a
cover for the King's real purpose: to consolidate money and power (and
in the case of Languedoc, some prime land as well).  Louis had to
exercise a great deal of influence over the Pope at the time (Innocent
the I-don't-remember-which'th) to get the machinery in motion, which in
turn trumped up a bunch of charges against the Templars -- rather in the
same way your-friend-and-mine (NOT) Torquemada did business.

Now, some of the allegations may have been true -- that the Templars had
some, um, *interesting* ways of worship.  Certainly a good deal of
modern Wiccan practise is based on "testimony" from the Inquisition,
and corroborated by continuing folk practise (implying that not all the
accounts were dreamed up by the Inquisitors and merely "confirmed" by
the victims under duress).  If that is true, do the Templars not deserve
the same sympathy we give to all the other victims of the Inquisition?
The fire burned just as hot for Jacques deMolay as it did for the rest of
the Church's victims.  If the history is true, deMolay was a pretty
heavy magician as well: from the stake, he cursed both Louis IV and Pope
Innocent, that they would meet him in hell within a year, and in fact
both died within twelve months of his immolation.

See?  No flames for you.  Only a request that you look a little more
closely at history, and instead of seeing a homogenous host of vicious
warrior Christians, looting and burning like any (you should excuse)
barbarian Pagans, see the separate orders, each with their own
character, their own agendas, their own troubles.  They're a lot like us
in that respect.

B*B
	- Leigh Ann


Leigh Ann Hussey 		leighann@sybase.com
CoG #151E
"Take no scorn to wear the Horn; it was the Crest when you were born!"