KNIGHTS TEMPLAR

   In the Dark Ages following the collapse of the Roman Empire, one religion gained absolute supremacy in the Western world: Christianity. While ostensibly based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, scholars today can trace Christianity’s evolution back through the ideologies of ancient Greece, Egypt, and Babylon to the much older culture of Sumer.

   The discovery in recent years of lost writings dating from before the time of Jesus has provided much-needed information to fill in the gaps of knowledge about both the man and his times.

   Due to a lack of first-hand accounts of Jesus, acrimonious debates over Christian beliefs and theology continued for centuries from the time the secular power of the Holy Roman Catholic "Universal" church emerged during medieval times.

   Until the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Roman church stood as the ultimate authority in the Western world. Through the lending of both its money and blessings, the Vatican dominated kings and queens and controlled the lives of ordinary citizens through fear of excommunication and its infamous Inquisition.

   Europe’s best and brightest men were exhorted by the clergy to battle for God and country, and Christian Europe launched Crusade after Crusade against the Muslims holding the Holy Land of the Middle East. The power of the church became further centralized and all powerful.

   Some of these men, particularly in southern France with its association to certain legends concerning Mary Magdalene and her descendants, had knowledge of secret traditions which ran counter to the teachings of the church. The Crusades presented a convenient excuse to lake the Holy Land and search for verification of these traditions.

Some researchers even suggest that the Crusades may have been inspired by this search for hidden knowledge.

According to French author Socle,fl’eter the Hermit—generally considered to be instrumental in promoting the First Crusade along with Saint Bernard—was a personal tutor to the Crusade’s leader, Godfrey de Bouillon, a man later associated with the Knights Templar.

   Once in the Holy Land, the Crusaders apparently found some verification of heretical ideas which supported elder traditions, principally those circulating in southern France, and differed from the teachings of the church. It was this conflict that led to the creation of societies which used secrecy as protection from the Roman church, which, in turn, began to guard its established theology with increasingly violent means.

   By many recent accounts, at least one group of Crusaders brought back more than just heretical hearsay—they reportedly returned to Europe with hard evidence of error and duplicity in church dogma. These Crusaders over time became known as heretics and blasphemers and an attempt was made by the church to exterminate them. They were the Knights Templar, whose traditions live on today within Freemasonry.

A religious-military knighthood called the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon was formed in 1118 when nine French Crusaders appeared before King Baldwin of Jerusalem and asked to be allowed to protect pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. They also asked permission to stay in the ruins of Solomon’s Temple.

   Their requests were granted and the order became known as the Knights of the Temple, soon shortened to Knights Templar.

   Scant attention has been paid to the Knights in traditional history books and their role in shaping future events has been mostly relegated to footnotes. It is known that the order flourished, becoming extraordinarily wealthy and powerful, until in the year 1307 they were crushed by an envious French king and a pope fearful of their secrets.

   As with much of history, there was more to this story than has been told to a general audience. With the destruction of the Templars, the church attempted to wipe out all evidence of the order and their secrets, which involved the innermost mysteries of Christianity—issues so volatile that the Templars had to be destroyed by the very church that ordained them.

   Until recently, most of what was known about the origins of the Templars came from the Prankish historian Giillanmc de Tyre, writing more than fifty years after the events. His account is sketchy, incomplete, and perhaps even wrong in some instances. Today, thanks to the effort of a number of scholars, the record is more complete and Templar contributions are being reappraised.

   The Middle East at the time was in turmoil. In 1099 the knights of the First Crusade, under Godfrey de Bouillon, had captured the Holy City of Jerusalem from the Muslims and created a Christian kingdom under that name. But the countryside was far from pacified and the journey from the eastern Mediterranean ports to the Holy City was perilous.

   So nine knights petitioned Jerusalem’s King Baldwin II of Le Bourg to be allowed to form a military order and to be quartered in the east wing of his palace which was adjacent to the recently captured Al-Aqsa Mosque, former site of King Solomon’s Temple. Baldwin agreed and even paid the knights a small stipend. This act was thought by some researchers to indicate that Baldwin may have had ulterior knowledge of their activities.

   These knights were led by Hugh de Payens—a nobleman in the service of his cousin, Hughes, Count of Champagne—and Andre de Montbard, the uncle of Bernard of Clairvaux, later known as the Cistercian Saint Bernard. Montbard also was a vassal of the Count of Champagne. At least two of the original knights, Rosal and Gondemare, were Cistercian monks prior to their departure for Jerusalem. In fact, the entire group was closely related both by family ties and by connections to the Cistercian monks and Flemish royalty.

   "Payens and his nine companions all came from either Champagne or the Languedoc, and included the Count of Provence, and it is quite apparent that they went to the Holy Land with a specific mission in mind," wrote Picknett and Prince.

Provence lies adjacent to the Languedoc and includes Marseilles, where Mary Magdalene reportedly arrived in Europe after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

   A letter to Champagne from the Bishop of Chartres dated 1114 congratulated the count on his intention to join la Milice du Christ (Soldiers of Christ), a prototype for the Knights Templar. Furthermore, author Graham Hancock wrote that he had established that both I’ayens and Champagne had journeyed together to the Holy Land in 1104 and were together back in France in 1113, indicating that plans for such an order had been underway for several years prior to the audience with King Baldwin.

   One irony was that sometime later Champagne himself joined the Templars, in effect becoming a vassal to his own vassal. One explanation for this strange occurrence—and a significant point concerning the order itself—was that their oath of allegiance was to neither king nor to their grand master but to their religious benefactor, Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, who continued to support the group as he rose to prominence. He was canonized in 1174.

   During the first nine years of their existence, this unofficial order recruited no new members, an odd circumstance for a small group claiming to protect Jerusalem’s roadways. Furthermore, the protection of pilgrims had already been undertaken by another order, the Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem known as the Hospitallers.

   The idea that a mere nine knights could effectively patrol the roads leading to Jerusalem is preposterous. It is obvious that the Templars had another reason altogether for journeying to the Holy Land. They made little effort to guard the roads, leaving such protection to the Hospitallers. Instead, the Templars kept close to their quarters and excavated for treasure deep under the ruins of the first permanent Hebrew Temple.

   Solomon’s Temple, first constructed some three thousand years ago, was actually planned by his father, the biblical King David. King Solomon constructed the temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem.

   Prior to the temple’s construction in Jerusalem, the Hebrew temple said to house Yahweh since the exodus from Egypt was a simple tent. Traditionally, this portable temple housed the Ark of the Covenant, said to be the means of communication with God. One Hebrew name for their temple was hekal, a Sumerian term meaning "Great House." In fact, some experts have claimed that Solomon’s Temple was "almost a carbon copy of a Sumerian temple erected for the god Ninurta a thousand years earlier."

   Solomon’s Temple was destroyed during the Babylonian conquest about 586 B.C., then rebuilt by King Zerubbabel after the Jews returned from captivity. Much of the new design was based on a vision by the prophet Ezekiel, who in the Old Testament described his experiences with flying devices. In the time of Jesus, Zerubbabel’s temple was greatly reworked to become the temple of Herod the Great. It was destroyed only four years after its completion in A.D. 70 during the Jewish revolt against the Romans. Today, remnants of the Jewish temples are enclosed within the Dome of the Rock mosque, an Islamic holy shrine second only to Mecca and Medina.

   There is no question that Templar excavations were extensive. In 1894 a group of British Royal Engineers led by a Lieutenant Charles Wilson discovered evidence of the Templars while mapping vaults under Mount Moriah. They found vaulted passageways with keystone arches, typical of Templar handiwork. They also found artifacts consisting of a spur, parts of a sword and lance, and a small Templar cross, which are still on display in Scotland.

   It was during their excavations, according to several accounts, that the Templars acquired scrolls of hidden knowledge, again most probably dealing with the life of Jesus and his associations with the Essenes and Gnostics. They also reportedly acquired the legendary Tables of Testimony given to Moses as well as other holy relics—perhaps even the legendary Ark of the Covenant and the Spear of Longinus—which could have been used to validate their claims as an alternative religious authority to the Roman church.

   Such reports were well supported by the discovery of a document etched on copper among the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in 1947. This "Copper Scroll," translated in the mid-1950s at Manchester University, not only mentioned a vast treasure of both gold and literature but actually described their hiding place—the site of the Templar excavations beneath Solomon’s Temple. It apparently was one of several copies, another of which may have come into the hands of the Templars. With its detailed directions to hidden Hebrew valuables, the "Copper Scroll" was literally a treasure map.

   Author Hancock thought the Templars’ search was only partially successful.

"If the Templars had found the Ark, they would certainly have brought it back to Europe in triumph. Since that had not happened it seemed to me quite safe to conclude that they had not found it," he wrote.

Hancock theorized that the Ark had long since been transported to Ethiopia, where it remains hidden.

   According to author Laurence Gardner, in addition to gold, the Templar excavators also recovered "a wealth of ancient manuscript books in Hebrew and Syriac . . . many of these predated the Gospels, providing first-hand accounts that had not been edited by any ecclesiastical authority.

   "It was widely accepted that the Knights possessed an insight which eclipsed orthodox Christianity, an insight that prrmillrd them the certainty that the Church had misinterpreted both the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection."

   Their newfound wealth as well as their possession of lost documents also could explain the rapid acceptance of the Templars by awestruck church leaders. According to Knight and Lomas, "The Templars clearly had possession of the purest ’Christian’ documents possible—far more important than the Synoptic Gospels!" With this knowledge the Templar leaders, either directly or by implication, must have greatly intimidated church officials, leading to great growth and power.

   Having accepted no new members for almost a decade and claiming to be poor even though most of them were members of or connected to royal families—their original seal depicted two knights sharing one horse—the order’s fortunes suddenly soared.

   Their leaders began traveling, recruiting members and gaining acceptance from both the church and European royalty.

   On January 31, 1128, Templar grand master Payens and Montbard traveled to Troyes about seventy-five miles southeast of Paris to plead the case for official recognition by the church before a specially convened council. This Council of Troyes was made up of Catholic archbishops, bishops, and abbots, including Montbard’s nephew, Saint Bernard, by then head of the powerful Cistercian order. With the added endorsement of King Baldwin, the council approved the Templars as an official military and religious order. This resulted in Pope Honorius II approving a "Rule" or constitution for the Knights Templar which sanctioned contributions to the order.

   This Rule was prepared by Saint Bernard and copied the structure of his Cistercian order. To support the religious side of the order, the Rule, among other things, ordered all new Templars to make a vow of chastity and of poverty, which included turning over all their property to the order. On the military side, Templars were forbidden to retreat in combat unless their opponents outnumbered them more than three to one and their commander approved a withdrawal.

   The structure of the order was a forerunner of Freemasonry. Each local branch was called a "Temple" and its ruling commander reported to and pledged obedience to the grand master.

   Within the ranks there were four classifications—knights, sergeants, chaplains, and servants. As in later Freemasonry, there was great emphasis on keeping secrets from both the public and their fellow Templars. Picknett and Prince wrote that with the order’s rigid pyramid command structure,

"It is likely that the majority of the Knights Templar were no more than the simple Christian soldiers they appeared to be, but the inner circle was different."

 

   The power and prestige of the order increased rapidly, and at the zenith of its popularity counted a membership of about twenty thousand knights. The distinctive white surcoat emblazoned with a red cross worn only by the Knights Templar was always seen in the thick of battle. Quickly their reputation rivaled that of modern fighting elites such as the U.S. Marines, Britain’s Special Air Service, or the earlier German Waff en SS."

 

   "They [Payens and Montbard] had gone west with nothing and came back with a Papal Rule, money, precious objects, landed wealth and no less than 300 recruited noblemen to follow Hugh de Payens’ lead as Grand Master of a major order," noted Knight and Lomas.

 

   "Within a year [of the Council of Troyes], they owned lands in France, England, Scotland, Spain and Portugal," reported Baigent and Leigh. "Within a decade, their possessions would extend to Italy, Austria, Germany, Hungary and Constantinople. In 1131 the king of Aragon bequeathed to them a third of his domains. By the mid-twelfth century, the Temple had already begun to establish itself as the single most wealthy and powerful institution in Christendom, with the sole exception of the Papacy."

   Contributions from royalty and the nobles were not just in coin or land. Members received lordships, baronies, landlord status, and castles. Grand Master Payens had many high-level connections. He was married to Catherine de Saint-Clair, daughter of a prominent Scottish family that donated land south of Edinburgh where the first Templar study center or preceptory outside the Holy Land was built.

   Saint Bernard—who had supported the Templars so well at Troyes— and his Cistercian order also prospered. According to Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln, the Cistercians were practically insolvent prior to the formation of the Templars, but then showed sudden and rapid growth. "Within the next few years a half dozen abbeys were established," they wrote. "By 1153 there were more than 300, of which Saint Bernard himself personally founded 69. This extraordinary growth directly par-ullcls that of the Order of the Temple."

  In 1139 Pope Innocent II —a protégé of Saint Bernard — proclaimed that the Templars would henceforth answer to no other authority but the papacy. This license to operate outside any local control meant an exemption from taxes, which considerably increased the wealth of the order. The pope also granted the Templars the most unusual right to build their own churches. According to Baigent and Leigh, within Templar enclaves,

"the knights were a law unto themselves. They offered right of sanctuary, like any church. They convened their own courts to try cases of local crime. They ran their own markets and fairs. They were exempt from tolls on roads, bridges and rivers."

   Obviously, whatever the Templars had unearthed beneath Solomon’s Temple brought them power and recognition from church and political leaders alike.

   This power only increased after 1129 when King Baldwin II asked Payens and his Templars to aid in an ill-fated attack on the Muslim city of Damascus. This somewhat hasty and ill-conceived operation may have been instigated by Count Fulk V of Anjou. Fulk had rushed to Jerusalem near the end of the Templar excavations. Pledging allegiance to the fledgling order, Fulk had contributed an annuity to continue their operations. His reward for such generosity may have come in 1128 when French king Louis VI selected Fulk to marry Baldwin’s daughter Melisende. Following Baldwin’s death in the aftermath of the failure to take Damascus, son-in-law Fulk, the Templar, became king of Jerusalem.

   On his return to the Holy Land following a visit in Europe, Payens, along with three hundred knights, shepherded a large throng of pilgrims. The Templars then joined with the Christian forces in the attack on Damascus.

   It was here that the Knights Templar had yet another opportunity to learn Holy Land secrets. During this action the Christians became allied with an Islamic secret society that also claimed to be privy to ancient knowledge: the notorious Assassins.

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The Assassins, a fanatical Islamic sect that developed a dictatorial pyramid command structure copied by all subsequent secret societies, were so infamous that even today their very name is synonymous with terror and sudden death.

   The name reportedly was derived from the cannabis drug hashish, which members smoked in preparation for killing. Sect killers, who were taught that murder was a religious duty, became known as "hashshasin," Arabic for hashish smoker, which over time became simply "assassin." This is the popular origin of the name. However, author Daraul and others have suggested that it may well have stemmed from the Arabic word "Assasseen" denoting "guardians of the secrets."

   Assassin founder, Hasan bin Sabah, was a schoolmate of the Persian poet laureate Omar Khayyam and Nizam ul Mulk, who later became the grand vizier to the Turkish sultan of Persia. He had his own secrets to guard. He had gained esoteric knowledge from the former and royal privileges from the latter. After being caught in a money pilfering scandal, Hasan was forced to flee Persia for Egypt, where he was further indoctrinated in ancient secrets, to include an intimate knowledge of the Hebrew Cabala.

   While in Egypt Hasan may have laid his plans for the formation of his Assassin sect while studying the organization and practices of the Dar ul Hikmat (House of Knowledge) or Grand Lodge of Cairo. This lodge was a repository for ancient knowledge and wisdom brought forward from the days of Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses. According to author Webster, lodge members perfected the techniques used centuries later by Weishaupt to organize the Illuminati. Also stemming from this lodge was the cult of Roshaniya or the Illuminated Ones, which became such a terror to authorities in Afghanistan under the leadership of Bayezid Ansari in the sixteenth century.

   Tracing their ties to the prophet Mohammed, the Assassins were an outgrowth of the Islamic sects of Hakim, Fatima, the Batinis, and Shiahs. It was about A.D. 872 that one Abdullah ibn Maymun created the Batinis sect, which set the tone for the development of the Assassins. A dedicated materialist, Abdullah was schooled in Gnosticism and became determined to abolish all structured religion, including the Ismailis to which he belonged. To achieve this end, Abdullah was forced to pose as a pious member of the Ismailis. The Ismailis believed they were descended from Ishmael, the son of the Hebrew patriarch Abraham and his surrogate wife, Hagar, demonstrating again the intertwined histories of the Israelites and their Mideast neighbors.

Webster quoted an earlier researcher, Rcinhnrt Dozy, who described Abdullah’s program as one dedicated to forming a vast secret society filled with both freethinkers and bigots for the purpose of discrediting and destroying religion. After elaborate initiations, he would "unfold the final mystery, and reveal that Imams [spiritual leaders], religions and morality were nothing but an imposture and an absurdity." He also sought to overthrow the reigning regimes and take power for himself, first by subterfuge and then by force. Exhibiting disdain for the public, he won over the credulous with magic tricks passed off as miracles, the religious leaders by displays of piety, and the mystics by lengthy dissertations on the ancient mysteries. Through such duplicity, "a multitude of men of diverse beliefs were all working together for an object known only to a few of them."

   After years of schisms within the Ismailis, the followers of Abdullah and others joined in "societies of wisdom," which in 1004 became the Grand Lodge of Cairo, where members were turned into fanatics. It was here that the later Druses sect held sway.

   The Druses apparently continued Abdullah’s duplicitous methods as they claimed to be both Muslims and Christians at the same time. They also used recognition signs which can still be found in Grand Orient Freemasonry. As in all secret societies, while most members were simply fervent worshippers, the top leadership had other agendas. It was through the Druse-led Grand Lodge of Cairo that Hasan learned well the techniques he employed within his own society.

   Hasan’s killer cult came into existence about 1094 when he and some Persian allies took the mountain fortress of Alamut on the Caspian Sea in Iran. He created his own Shiah Ismaili sect which came to be known as the Assassins. While proclaiming himself as a great spiritual leader, Hasan forged a personality cult centered on himself backed by lethal violence. According to Webster,

"The final object was domination by a few men consumed with the lust of power under the cloak of religion and piety, and the method by which this was to be established was the wholesale assassination of those who opposed them."

   The higher initiates were taught the Assassin secret doctrines, one of which was that "Nothing is true and all is allowed." Another secret was that,

there is only one God and everything in creation, including humankind, is part of a universal whole, a concept along the lines of Einstein’s unified field theory, which continues to be seriously studied by modern scientists.

Finally, the Assassin dogma that the end justifies the means may well have been a precursor of that same philosophy which passed into "Illuminized" Freemasonry.

   Hasan’s method of recruitment was so extraordinary as to be thought a myth. According to several sources, including the writings of Marco Polo, who passed his way, Hasan found and developed a secret valley that he filled with gracious palaces and landscaped gardens well stocked with exotic animals and beautiful women. Local youths would find themselves befriended by strangers in drinking places. They would awake from a drug-induced stupor to find themselves surrounded by such beauty and luxury that it could only have been the promised paradise. After a few days of living beyond all expectation, the recruits were again drugged and woke up back in their dull reality.

   After a few such experiences, Hasan had no trouble in enlisting their allegiance by promising to return them to "paradise" permanently in exchange for their deadly work. Entranced by the promise of eternal heaven, these brainwashed goatherders proved eager soldiers, even to the point of sacrificing themselves when required.

   Calling himself the Grand Master or Shaikh-al-Jabal, Hasan operated this early-day Murder, Incorporated, from his highland fortress, gaining the title of "Old Man of the Mountain," a name that struck terror in the hearts of his neighbors.

   The power of the Assassins increased until by the mid-twelfth century the cult boasted a string of strongholds stretching throughout Persia and Iraq. Their influence may have even reached to the secret society of Thugs in India, who were known to use recognition signs similar to the Assassins.

   As Grand Master, Hasan created a system of apprentices, fellows of the craft, and masters, which has been compared with the later Masonic degrees. Masonic historian Mackey admitted the Assassins "whose connection with the Templars, as historically proved, may have had some influence over that Order in molding, or at least in suggesting, some of its esoteric dogmas and ceremonies."

   Author Daraul quoted an Orientalist named Syed Ameer Ali as stating,

"From the Ismailis the Crusaders borrowed the conception which led to the formation of all secret societies, religious and secular, of Kuropc.... The Knights Templar especially, with their system of grand masters, grand priors and religions devotees, and their degrees of initiation, hear the strongest analogy to the Eastern Ismailis."

   Several accounts have connected the Templars with the Assassins in joint operations during the Crusades, including the attack on Damascus in 1129 led by King Baldwin of Jerusalem. One eighteenth century author lamented the fact that the Templars would "ally themselves with that horrible and sanguinary prince named the Old Man of the Mountain, Prince of the Assassins."

   "Those who think that the Assassins were fanatical Muslims, and therefore would not form any alliance with those who to them were infidels, should be reminded that to the followers of the Old Man of the Mountain only he was right, and the Saracens who were fighting the Holy War for Allah against the Crusaders were as bad as anyone else who did not accept the Assassin doctrine," commented Daraul.

   Sometime prior to his attack on Damascus, Baldwin had entered into an agreement with the Assassins, who counted many members within the walls of the city. With the aid of this Fifth Column, the city would be taken. The Assassins had been promised the city of Tyre for their assistance. The plot, however, was discovered and all Assassins in Damascus were rounded up and lynched by the inhabitants.

   Buoyed by the return from Europe of Grand Master Payens and his Templars, Baldwin decided to make an outright attack on the city but was repulsed with heavy losses.

   This battle along with other later combined operations could have provided the opportunity for the Templars and Assassins to share esoteric ancient knowledge as well as important military intelligence, since it is recorded that the Assassins had deeply penetrated the Muslim hierarchy.

   "The Templars entered at various times into amicable arrangements and treaty stipulations with the Assassins," confirmed Mackey, "... we may therefore readily believe that at those periods, when war was not raging, there might have been a mutual interchange of courtesies, of visits and of conferences."

   The murderous nature of the Assassins proved their downfall. Hasan, the Old Man of the Mountain, was assassinated by his son, Mohammed, who in turn was poisoned by his son, who had learned of Mohammed’s plan to kill him. By 1250 invading Mongol hordes had captured the last Assassin stronghold, effectively eliminating the order. Although, according to some researchers, pockets of Assassins still exist in the Middle East today.

   It must be noted that there were only slight differences between the average fighting man of both the Templars and the Assassins. Both groups were filled with brutish, ignorant, and bloodthirsty men who merely did what they were told. Only their leaders knew the underlying truths of their order.

   Brutish as the rank-and-file knights may have been, the Templar leadership was brilliant and rapidly built up one of the most powerful non-government organizations ever seen. Payens died in 1136 and was succeeded as Templar grand master by a Lord Robert, son-in-law of the Archbishop of Canterbury, another indication of the aristocratic nature of the Templar hierarchy.

   By the thirteenth century, the Templars owned about nine thousand castles and manors throughout Europe, yet as a religious order paid no taxes. Their investments included basic industries, particularly in the building trades. They owned more than five thousand properties in England and Wales alone. Their empire stretched from Denmark to Palestine.

"If their eventual aim was world hegemony, they could not have organized themselves better, or planned their aristocratic hierarchy more thoroughly," commented Daraul.

   They used the revenue from these holdings to build a huge fleet of ships and underwrite a vast banking system. The concept of using money to produce more money was coming into focus.

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Although conventional history traces the development of modern banking to early Jewish and Italian lending institutions, it was the Knights Templar who predated the Rothschilds and the Medicis.

   "They pioneered the concept of credit facilities, as well as the allocation of credit for commercial development and expansion. They performed, in fact, virtually all the functions of a 20th century merchant bank," wrote Baigent and Leigh, noting, "At the peak of their power, the Templars handled much, if not most, of the available capital in Western Europe."

   Christians were prohibited from the practice of usury, which then meant charging any interest on loans, but the Templars managed to iivoiil this restriction, probably by emphasizing the military rather than I he religions aspects of their order. In one case, old docnmejits revealed that the Templars charged as much as 60 percent interest per year, a much higher rate than the moneylenders of the time.

   In a practice which continues today in Swiss banks, the Templars held long-term private trust funds, accessible only by the originators of the account.

   It can also be argued that the Templars first introduced the credit card and packaged tours as they developed fund transfers by note, a Muslim technique most probably obtained from the Assassins and other contacts in the Middle East.

   Pilgrims, merchants, officials, and the clergy faced many hazards and obstacles traveling in Europe and the Holy Land. They were prey for ferrymen, toll collectors, innkeepers, and even church authorities demanding alms, not to mention highway robbers and thieves.

   To protect against such misfortunes, the Templars developed a system whereby the traveler could deposit funds to cover travel expenses with the commander of the local Temple and receive a specially coded receipt. This receipt or chit was issued in the form of a letter of credit, redeemable from any Temple. At the end of his journey, the traveler would receive either a cash refund of his account balance or a bill to cover any overdraft. It was a system which closely resembled both a bank check and the modern credit card.

   "In England, the Templars also acted as tax collectors," Baigent and Leigh noted. "Not only did they collect papal taxes, tithes and donations, they collected taxes and revenues for the crown as well—and seemed to have been even more fearsome in that capacity than [Britain’s] Inland Revenue [or the U.S. Internal Revenue Service]. In 1294, they organized the conversion of old to new money. They frequently acted as trustees of funds or property placed in their custody, as brokers and as debt collectors. They mediated in disputes involving ransom payments, dowries, pensions and a multitude of other transactions."

   Along with banking practices, the Templars brought to Europe their acquired knowledge of architecture, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and medical techniques. In less than one hundred years after formation of the order, the Knights Templar had evolved into the medieval equivalent of today’s multinational corporation.

   The Templars were not content to simply acquire existing castles and other structures. They were avid builders, constructing iinuu’iisc fortified estates, particularly in southern France and the Holy Land. Many were built on peninsulas or mountaintops, making them practically impregnable. Granted the privilege to build their own churches, the Templars became the prime movers behind the construction of the great medieval cathedrals of Europe.

   One of the best-known Templar works is the famous Chartres Cathedral located southwest of Paris on the Eure River. Chartres was built on the site of an ancient Druid center and, in fact, is named after one of the Celtic tribes, the Carnutes. "It was a pagan site," wrote author Laurence Gardner, "dedicated to the traditional Mother Goddess—a site to which pilgrims traveled long before the time of Jesus."

   Completed in 1134, a remarkably short thirty years after it was begun, the cathedral at Chartres is said to be the first of the Gothic style of architecture. Many believe such innovation was brought from the Middle East to Europe by the Templars, especially since Chartres was greatly inspired by the Templar-connected Saint Bernard, who held almost daily conferences with the builders. Considering the history of the Templars, author Hancock said he was "satisfied that they could indeed have unearthed on the Temple Mount some repository of ancient knowledge concerning the science of building and that they could have passed on what they had learned to Saint Bernard in return for his support."

   The name Gothic is believed to have been derived from the Germanic tribes of Goths that overran the Roman Empire. However, Gardner and others argue that, at least when pertaining to architecture, the name may have come from the Greek goetik, meaning something magical. And the Goths certainly had nothing to do with the magical architecture of an amazing number of cathedrals constructed during the twelfth century— just after the Templars brought their secrets back to Europe.

   Prior to this time European buildings had been squat, thick block structures built for expediency and defense. Suddenly, people were astounded by the impossibly high vaulted ceilings and flying buttresses of the new cathedrals. Pointed arches and vaulting coupled with magnificent stained glass windows reflected new techniques inspired by Templar knowledge of sacred geometry and metallurgy techniques.

   It was the "Templars who instigated the first stonemason guilds." According to Picknetl and Prince, the Templars "were behind the formation of builders’ guilds, including that of the stonemasons—who became lay members of the Templar Order and who had all their advantages, such as exemption from paying tax."

   The stained glass in Chartres has evoked much comment.

"Nothing like it had ever been seen before, and nothing like it has been seen since," commented Gardner. "Even in twilight, this glass retains its brilliance way beyond that of any other. Gothic stained glass also has the unique power to transform harmful ultra-violet rays into beneficial light, but the secret of its manufacture was never revealed... No modern scientific process or chemical analysis has yet managed to penetrate its mystery."

Gardner also noted that among those perfecting this Gothic stained glass was Omar Khayyam, which again tied the Templar builders to the Eastern knowledge of the Assassins.

   Author Hancock noted that the power and grandeur of Egypt’s Kar-nak Temple, the Zoser "step" pyramid and the Great Pyramid were unmatched until the time of the Templar cathedrals. He added that he became even more convinced of some connection between the Ancient Mysteries and the cathedrals when he recalled that Saint Bernard once defined God as "length, width, height and depth," a clear evocation of the knowledge of Pythagoras, Plato, and the ancient Egyptians.

   There is also physical evidence within Chartres Cathedral that lends strong support to the idea that the Templars had acquired hidden knowledge regarding the story of Jesus. At the north door of Chartres above a small column is a carving of the Ark of the Covenant being carried in a wheeled wagon. Since the Ark had been missing since the destruction of the Jewish temple in A.D. 70 and since prior to that time all accounts depicted the Ark being carried by hand, many researchers believe this engraving offers proof that the Templars found the ark and transported it to Europe. This carving is tied conclusively to the Ark as a Latin inscription just below it reads, "In this place, the Ark is loved and obeyed," although it also could mean "In this place, the Ark is hidden." In another part of Chartres Cathedral is a stone carving believed to represent the Virgin Mary connected to an inscription reading arcis foederis, or Ark of the Covenant.

   While it is true that various Christian traditions depicted the Virgin Mary as a "living" Ark of the Covenant for bearing Jesus, the carving of the Ark on a wheeled wagon clearly indicates that this carving may well refer to the tangible Old Testament Ark.

   All this concern with a Mary and the Ark greatly supports the idea that many learned men in the Middle Ages knew of a tradition which claimed that both at one time may have resided in Europe.

   The true fate of the legendary Ark remains a great mystery. Some researchers believe it was destroyed, while others believe it still exists in some secret society hiding place or perhaps stored away in the catacombs beneath the Vatican for safekeeping. Author Graham Hancock, former East Africa correspondent for The Economist, made an in-depth study of the Ark and concluded that it was secreted away to Ethiopia where it remains today. At least one modern researcher believes this sacred object may still be hidden beneath Mount Moriah in Jerusalem.

   Another clear connection between the Templars and their work within Solomon’s Temple can be found in Rosslyn Chapel, a miniature cathedral in the small Scottish town of Roslin south of Edinburgh. William Sinclair, a descendant of the prominent Saint-Clair family connected by marriage to Grand Master Payens, founded the chapel in 1446, but it was finished in 1486 by his son, Oliver. It was intended to be the first part of a larger church which was never completed.

   Ostensibly a Christian place of worship, questions have arisen regarding Rosslyn.

"It is actually a strange combination of Nordic, Celtic and Gothic styles," noted Gardner.

 

"Upon checking with the official history we found that Rosslyn had to be reconsecrated in 1862," wrote authors Knight and Lomas. "Prior to that date there is uncertainty about its consecrated status... [Rosslyn’s] symbolism is Egyptian, Celtic, Jewish, Templar and Masonic in profusion; a star-studded ceiling, vegetative growths coming from the mouths of the Celtic Green Men, entangled pyramids, images of Moses, towers of the Heavenly Jerusalem, engrailed crosses as well as squares and compasses. The only certain Christian imagery was in later Victorian alterations..."

   Knight and Lomas discovered that the floor plan of the Rosslyn Chapel was an exact match for that of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, even including two important columns at the entrance. These columns are called Jachin and Boaz, names tied to the Ancient Mysteries, and which still carry mythical and mystical significance for both Jews and Freemasons.

   "Rosslyn was not a simple chapel," Knight and Lomas concluded, "it was a post -Templar shrine built to house the scrolls found by Hugh de Paytns MI. I his KM in under the Holy of Holies of the last temple at Jerusalem! . . . Rosslyn Chapel was a deliberate replication of the burial place of the secret scrolls!" These authors wrote that the scrolls hidden beneath the Jerusalem temple were the most highly prized writings of the Jews, particularly of the more devout sects, and represented the "most priceless treasure in Christendom" perhaps to include the long lost "Q" document said to be the basis for the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. "More mundane material, such as the Community Rule, was deposited around Judea in places as humble as the caves at Qumran," they added.

   It should also be noted that at the time the Templars built their Gothic cathedrals, not one carried a depiction of the Crucifixion, a most strange anomaly for a Christian order but strong evidence that the Templars indeed denied the orthodox view of this event.

   Yet another factor connecting the Templars to heresies of the day was the romanticized writings of Wolfram von Eschenbach, whose hero Parsival became the Parsifal of Wagner’s famous opera. Parsifal, said to be one of Wagner’s most visionary and esoteric works, connects Wagner’s outlook to Templar traditions. A poor Bavarian knight, Wolfram was believed by many to have been a Templar himself, as he certainly demonstrated a very personal knowledge of the Templars as well as their equipment and fighting techniques. He described a brotherhood of knights dressed in white mantles decorated with red crosses guarding some great sacred secret and even called them Templets, which could be translated as Templars.

   It was Wolfram who was among the first to popularize the legend of the Holy Grail, that elusive goal of many medieval quests. Grail mythology—King Arthur, Merlin, the Round Table—actually began with a poem by Chretien de Troyes written in the late twelfth century. It was Chretien who first named Arthur’s residence as Camelot. Since Chretien lived in Troyes, site of the official sanctioning of the order, and was employed by the Count of Champagne, Templar grand master Payens’s liege lord, he may have had access to the Templar knowledge brought from the Holy Land which he incorporated into his writing.

   In Wolfram’s Parsival, the Grail is a magical stone which bestows youth on those who possess it. This stone was guarded by Knights of the Temple at a great temple on Munsalvaesche, or Mountain of Salvation, believed to be connected to the mountain fortress of Montsegur in southern France, the last bastion of the Cathars.

   Wolfram tied himself even closer to the Templars when he related that his source for Parsival came from an old Arabic manuscript which had been kept by the House of Anjou. Recall that it was Count Fulk of Anjou, later king of Jerusalem, who had worked closely with and funded the original Knights Templar. Interestingly enough, Wolfram began writing Parsival about the time work on the Chartres Cathedral was completed.

   Beginning with the Templars, then working its way through the Cistercians of Saint Bernard on into the symbolic architecture of the Gothic cathedrals, the seeds of their heresy spread far and wide.

   The Templars thrived, thanks to the technologies and philosophies discovered in Jerusalem, while the church became more and more antagonistic, gradually realizing the threat posed by their knowledge. The Templars, in their turn, grew antagonistic toward the church. Researcher and author David Hatcher Childress observed,

"To the Templars, the true church, one that taught mysticism, reincarnation and good works, was being suppressed by a dark power that called itself the one true faith."

   Through the centuries of its power, the church—then an irresistible attraction to corrupt officials, scalawags, and conmen as well as the pious—often instigated bloody massacres against its enemies, which eventually came to mean anyone who failed to acquiesce to its authority. For example, between the years 1208 and 1244 tens of thousands of people were killed by a papal army sent by the Vatican to the province of Langue-doc in southwestern France, the long-standing home of the Knights Templar—as well as home to some very unorthodox ideas.

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The object of this papal attack was a people known as the Cathars, forefathers of the Italian and Scottish Carbonari, who so influenced the Illuminati. They were followers of the earlier Gnostics, who were more committed to matters of the spirit than material wealth.

   The Cathars, whose name meant Pure Ones as they believed their religious views were more "pure" than those of the Catholic church, were ideally situated for acquiring unorthodox beliefs. The Languedoc, formerly known as Occitania, encompassed the Mediterranean coast west of Marseilles, the Black and Corbieres Mountains and the Pyrenees, which separated the area from Spain. An independent state, the region was more closely tied to the Spanish frontier and the vestiges of the old Septimanian kingdom than to the newly forming French nation. Languedoc was a crossroads where travelers passed to and from the Middle East via Muslim Iberia and the sea.

   With the breakup of the Carolingian empire created by Charlemagne following his hard-won conquest of the area in A.D. 801, this corner of the old Roman Empire fell under the control of various kings of the Franda or Franks, the name of which soon would be applied to the entire nation—France.

   Languedoc was home to a number of ancient towns, many of which traced their origin to the Greeks and early Romans. It had its own traditions, culture, and its own language. The language of Occitania or Langue d’Oc gave the area both its identification and its name.

   Perhaps due to this convergence of ideas and traditions, the Languedoc was more cultured and prosperous than its neighbors. "Prejudice against Jews was common, but. . . persecution was not," noted Michael Costen, Senior Lecturer in Adult Education at the University of Bristol and author.

"Organized and official persecution of the Jews became a normal feature of life in the south only after the Crusade because it was only then that the Church became powerful enough to insist on ... discrimination."

The Cathars also got along reasonably well with the Cistercian monks, the predominant church representatives in the region.

   After a visit to Rennes-le-Chateau in the Languedoc, authors Picknett and Prince said they "found evidence for a complex series of connections that led back to a Gnostic tradition in the area, a place that has been notorious for its ’heretics,’ be they Cathars, Templars or so-called ’witches.’"

   According to Costen, Catharism was "the most serious and widespread of all the heretical movements which challenged the Catholic Church in the 12^th century." Until very recently, little was known of the Cathars other than that they were considered heretics. This was because the only available information on them came from their implacable enemy, the Roman church, which saw that any material supporting the Cathars was destroyed.

   The Cathars were known widely as bons hommes or good men who led simple, religion-centered lives. They preferred to meet in nature rather than in elaborate churches. Cathar priests, known as perfecti or the perfect ones, dressed in long dark robes and were very ascetic, having pledged to forgo worldly possessions.

"There is a very considerable similarity between Catharism and Buddhism," wrote Dr. Arthur Guirdham, a psychiatrist who made a close study of that group. "Both believe in reincarnation, in abstention from flesh foods—though fish was allowed in Catharism—in non-resistance, that it was sinful to take the life of any living creature, even an animal."

 

   "Their way of life was an attempt to obey the teachings of Jesus," explained Picknett and Prince. "All baptized members were spiritually equal and regarded as priests. Perhaps more surprising for those days was their emphasis on equality of the sexes... They were also itinerant preachers, traveling in pairs, living in the utmost poverty and simplicity, stopping to help and to heal wherever they could. In many ways the Good Men would have appeared to pose no threat to anyone—except the Church."

   Costen said it would be wrong to simply accept the official view that the Cathars were dangerous heretics.

"Rather it should be seen as a positive choice made by people who were given a very unusual opportunity to hear a new theology [the accounts of Jesus and Mary Magdalene circulating in southern France at the time] and to choose for themselves as a result of the uncoupling of the powers of Church and secular authority," said Costen, adding, "It was impossible for the Medieval church ... to ignore the challenge presented to it within its own territories."

   Dr. Guirdham explained that Catharism was a form of dualism, a belief which "has existed from time immemorial" and connected to the ancient sects of Mithras and the Manichaeans. The Cathars also viewed Jesus as the spiritual Son of God.

"To them Christ did not exist in a human but in a spirit body. The Inquisition wrongly translated this as meaning that to the Cathars, Christ was a kind of phantom. The Cathar view was in accordance with that expressed by modern spiritualists and by the adherents of [Rudolf] Steiner [who was to influence the Nazi cult]," said Dr. Guirdham.

   In their dualist theology, the Cathars believed that good and evil are opposites of the same cosmic energy force and that a good god created and rules the heavens while an evil god created man and the material world.

" Because of this belief, it was obvious that the God of the Old Testament was Satan," stated Costen, who said the Cathars thought that when people died, ". . . they could either leave for their true home [in Heaven] or stay where they were... where they would have to suffer... seven reincarnations... other writers quoted nine. Thereafter the soul was irretrievably lost."

 

   "I saw how there had been a thread throughout all time," commented Dr. Guirdham, "the Manicheans, the cult of Mithras, the [Cathars], all completely massacred, very, very completely, and among other things because of this reincarnation business."

   Other researchers thought the Cathars’ only problem was a lack of proper obedience to the church. Picknett and Prince wrote, "The overriding reason why the Cathars fell afoul of the Church was that they refused to acknowledge the Pope’s authority."

   Author Gardner agreed, writing,

"The Cathars were not heretics; they were simply non-conformists, preaching without license, and having no requirement for appointed priests, nor the richly adorned churches of their Catholic neighbors."

However, Gardner also saw a connection between the Cathars and the Knights Templar potentially dangerous to the church.

"The Cathars were known also to be adepts of the occult symbolism of the Cabala, an expertise that would have been of significant use to the Knights Templar who were thought to have transported the Ark and their Jerusalem hoard to the region."

   Something about the peaceful, if unorthodox, Cathars was certainly upsetting to the Vatican. Interestingly enough, in 1145, Pope Eugenius III sent none other than that Templar patron Saint Bernard to preach against Catharism in Languedoc. According to Gardner, Bernard instead reported, "No sermons are more Christian than theirs, and their morals are pure." Did this mean Saint Bernard was oblivious to their theology? Or did his defensive words add substance to the allegation that he and the Templars secretly held Cathar beliefs?

   The answer is immaterial since, justified or not, the Vatican began laying plans to eradicate the Cathars. And it is quite clear that some of the Cathar beliefs were directly opposite those of the church.

   The beginning of the Cathar heresy is hard to pin down. Some of the Languedoc clergy traced their predecessors back to the earliest days of Christianity, which may have resulted in their belief of a more pure interpretation of church origins. Others believed the Knights Templar had passed along knowledge they gained while excavating in Jerusalem. Then there is the fact that even today in that area of France one may still find traces of a remarkable belief—that Mary Magdalene, viewed as either the wife or consort of Jesus, migrated to the area following the crucifixion. It was said that the Cathars had knowledge of a tradition that spoke of Jesus as both a husband and father.

   The concept of Mary Magdalene and Jesus as a couple is one supported by the Gnostic writings discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945. In the Gospel of Philip, named for the apostle Philip and believed written in the second half of the third century, it is written,

"And the companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. But Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, ’Why do you love her more than all of us?’"

Jesus answered them with a lengthy discourse on how "Great is the mystery of marriage!" and how it was "a great power" necessary to the existence of the world.

   There is an important connection between the gospels only discovered in 1945 and a tract published in the 1330s reportedly by the German mystic Meister Eckehart under the name Schivester Katrei or Sister Catherine. According to authors Picknett and Prince,

"This unusual and outspoken tract. . . contains ideas regarding Mary Magdalene that are only otherwise found in the Nag Hammadi Gospels... She is portrayed as being superior to Peter because of her greater understanding of Jesus, and there is the same tension between Mary and Peter [found in the Nag Hammadi Gospels]. Moreover, actual incidents that are described in the Nag Hammadi texts are mentioned in Sister Catherine’s tract." (emphasis in the original)

   Picknett and Prince see this tract as evidence that documents identical to the recently discovered texts were known to the Cathars, most probably through the discoveries of the Knights Templar.

   Another real possibility is that the Cathars already had an oral tradition of an intimate relationship between Jesus and Mary but lacked any substantiation of their theology until the Templars returned to Languedoc from Jerusalem with their newly found scrolls. The Templar discoveries may have only reinforced and intensified an existing belief.

   Another factor may be a connection made by authors Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln in Holy Blood, Holy Grail, between the Jesus bloodline and the Merovingian kings of southern France.

   "If our hypothesis is correct," they wrote, "Jesus’ wife and offspring—and he could have fathered ÿ number of children between the ages of 16 or 17 and his supposed death—after fleeing the Holy Land, found refuge in the south of France, and in a Jewish-community there preserved their lineage. During the 5th century this lineage appears to have intermarried with the royal line of the Franks, thus engendering the Merovingian dynasty. In 496 A.D. the church made a pact with this dynasty, pledging itself in perpetuity of the Merovingian bloodline— presumably in the full knowledge of that bloodline’s true identity... When the Church colluded in ... the subsequent betrayal of the Merovingian bloodline, it rendered itself guilty of a crime that could neither be rationalized nor expunged, it could only be suppressed..."

   Author Laurence Gardner, as an internationally recognized expert on sovereign and chivalric genealogy, was permitted to study the private records of thirty-three European royal families. He confirmed that the Merovingians were related to Jesus, but through his brother James, who Gardner claimed was the same person as Joseph of Arimathea.

   Gardner also made a persuasive argument for Mary Magdalene as the spouse of Jesus in his 1996 book Bloodline of the Holy Grail.

   "It was never any secret... for the majority of these people [European royalty], that Jesus was married and that Jesus had heirs, because it is written as such in very many family archives.... The published papers of Mary, Queen of Scots talk about it at length. The papers of James II of England, who wasn’t deposed until 1688, talk of it at length... I was actually in a position where I was presented with . . . some very, very old documentation, not only last opened in seventeen-whatever, but actually documented and written down hundreds of years before that," he explained, adding, "I also had access to Templar documents, to the very documents that the Knights Templar brought out in Europe in 1128 and confronted the Church establishment with, and frightened the life out of them with, because these were documents that talked about bloodline and genealogy.... The early Christian Church leaders adopted scriptures and teachings that would obscure the truth about the royal bloodline of Jesus."

   The early church was fearful not only of Jesus’ descendants but of women in general. Women were prohibited from teaching or becoming priests—a prohibition only now being relaxed. Clergymen were required to be celibate and never marry, despite the clear admonition by Paul in I Timothy 3:2 that a bishop or church leader should have a wife.

   According to Gardner and other recent authors, women were denigrated by the early church in order to preserve the power and authority of its insider "old boy" network of cardinals and bishops. Today many diverse Bible scholars are taking a second look at the role of women as defined by the early church. "Most Christian movements we know to have been characterized by the prominence of women were ultimately judged heretical," observed University of Pennsylvania scholar Ross S. Kraemer.

   To discourage any attention toward Mary Magdalene, Gardner said church fathers made much of New Testament scriptures which described Mary as a "sinner," the original word being a mistranslation of the word almah, actually meaning a virgin undergoing a ritual prior to marriage. "The duplicitous bishops decided, however, that a sinful woman must be a whore," commented Gardner, "and Mary was thereafter branded as a harlot!" Other scholars, such as Jane Schaberg of the University of Detroit-Mercy, concluded that the persona of Mary Magdalene may even be a composite of other biblical women and that such conflation was deliberate.

   According to the traditions of southern France as well as William Cax-ton’s 1483 work Legenda Aurea or Golden Legend, one of the first publications of England’s Westminster, Mary Magdalene, her brother Lazarus and sister Martha, with her maid Marcella and the children of Jesus, journeyed by ship to Marseilles, France, after the crucifixion. The party then moved farther westward where "they converted the inhabitants to the faith."

   Gardner wrote that Mary was "nine years younger than Jesus.... Mary was aged 30 at her [symbolic] Second Marriage, during which year—33 A.D.—she bore her daughter Tamar. Four years later she gave birth to Jesus the younger, and in 44 A.D., when she was 41 years old, her second son, Joseph, was born. By that time Mary was in Marseilles— Massilia—where the official language was Greek until the 5^th century." By these same reports, Mary died at what is now Saint Baume in southern France in A.D. 63 at age sixty.

   Returning from the Seventh Crusade with King Louis IX, one Jean de Joinville in 1254 wrote they "came to the city of Aix in Provence to honor the Blessed Magdalene. . . . We went to the place called Baume, on a very steep and craggy rock, in which it was said that the Holy Magdalene long resided at ë hermitage."

   "For centuries after her death, Mary’s legacy remained the greatest of all ilm-iits ID a fcMrn.il church that hail bypassed Messianic descent in favor of Apostolic succession," wrote Gardner, noting, "The most active Magdalene cult was eventually based at Rennes le Chateau in the Langue-doc region."

   There is a tantalizing hint that perhaps in that same region was evidence more tangible than stories about the Magdalene. According to Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln, the very same Joinville wrote that his friend Louis IX once told him of a time when Cathar leaders had approached the commander of the papal army and cryptically asked if he would "come and look at the body of Our Lord, which had become flesh and blood in the hands of their priests."

   In addition to the traditions regarding Mary and reincarnation, the Cathars also were greatly persuaded by the beliefs of an itinerant preacher named Peter Valdes of Lyon. His followers, or Waldensians as they were known, read from scriptures translated into their own vernacular Occitan and believed that a personal calling to preach was more important than church training. They also disdained bloodshed, even that instigated by the church or state. When the Waldensians refused to stop preaching openly, they were excommunicated and expelled from Lyon by local church officials.

   Many people believed the Cathars originated with a Bulgarian priest named Bogomil, whose Bogomilism sect was widely spread through the Byzantine Empire. Bogomils rejected many aspects of the orthodox church, such as mass, the Eucharist, Old Testament miracles and prophesy, baptism, marriage, and the priesthood.

"They believed that the physical world was the work of the Devil and intrinsically evil," wrote Costen. "They developed for themselves a rich mythology of the Creation and Fall which acted as a substitute for much of the Bible which they rejected. These dualists accepted that matter was the creation of the Good God, but believed that Satan had fashioned the world and the material bodies of men from it, either trapping the spirit of an angel within the material body to form Adam or having the clay animated by the Good God."

   However, authors Picknett and Prince argued that all of the Cathar beliefs could not have come from the Bogomils. They quoted the research of Yuri Stoyanov, who wrote,

"The teaching of Mary Magdalene as the ’wife’ or ’concubine’ of Christ appears, moreover, an original Cathar tradition which does not have any counterpart in the Bogomil doctrines."

Whatever the truth of their origins, these Cathar beliefs had evolved over a long period of time, as did the decision to move against them. Despite whatever agreements might have been made, papal authorities must have finally decided that something had to be done about whatever relics, treasure, or writings might be concealed in the Languedoc.

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