Word: templar
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...reality of the saga of the Knights Templar is almost as amazing as the myths that embellish it. On Thursday the Vatican plans to add another colorful chapter when it publishes a long-misplaced, 699-year-old papal report on the medieval holy warriors. Vatican publisher Scrinium will offer 799 copies (the 800th will go to the Pope), at $8,375 apiece, of a 1308 parchment titled Processus Contra Templarios (Trial Against the Templars), which chronicles the order's sordid endgame: the accusations of heresy, the Templars' defense, and Pope Clement V's absolution of the order, before...
...Templars were a creature of the Crusades, when various Christian forces sailed from Europe to fight the resident Muslims for control of the biblical Holy Land. After the first Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1096, European pilgrims began streaming into the city, and 23 years later, two veterans of the Crusade founded an order of monastic knights to protect the travelers. They were allotted a headquarters in Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, viewed by Jews and many Christians as the site of the Temple of Solomon - hence the new group's name. Initially modest (its coat of arms was two knights...
...Their non-military exploits were more ambitious still. For the convenience of the monied pilgrims they chaperoned through hostile turf, the Templars developed a system whereby they left their wealth and lands at the disposal of a Templar institution at home, in exchange for a coded invoice that was then redeemed at the group's headquarters in Jerusalem. Researchers believe the Templars kept any revenues generated by the estates, effectively accruing interest - a practice otherwise forbidden as usury by the Church at the time. The journal American Banker wrote in 1990 that "a good case can be made for crediting...
...knew what wonders they might have unearthed digging beneath the Mosque to the alleged Temple of Solomon, not far from where Christ was crucified? They claimed to own a piece of the True Cross; they may very well have possessed the Shroud of Turin, since it was a Templar descendant's family that first made it public; and unsubstantiated rumor has put them in possession of both the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail. The latter claim provided an inexhaustible source of inspiration for fabulists from medieval romance peddlers to Dan Brown...
Number of years ago the Templar, formed during the Crusades, were officially disavowed by the Vatican, though Pope Clement V acquitted them of heresy...