Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Templar Transcript Tour


COMING TO A MASONIC LODGE NEAR YOU!

COPY OF VATICAN’S TEMPLAR TRIAL TRANSCRIPTS ON DISPLAY ACROSS NEW YORK STATE

One of only eight hundred bilingual copies of Processus Contra Templarios to make five stops from Poughkeepsie to Buffalo during week of October 19-25

NEW YORK – In April 2008, the Chancellor Robert R Livingston Masonic Library of Grand Lodge announced the acquisition of Processus Contra Templarios, an unprecedented publication containing a collection of facsimile manuscripts relating to the trials of the Knights Templar. Now, the Library Trustees and staff announce a week-long excursion from October 19-25, during which time the Processus will be displayed and discussed, at six locations across the state: Poughkeepsie; Troy; Cooperstown; Syracuse; Great Valley; and Buffalo. Masonic groups in each location are planning events to coincide with the visit. The trip is planned to conclude on the day of the Grand Master’s Ball in Buffalo, honoring Edward G. Gilbert, Grand Master of Masons in the State of New York.


Each event will include a display of the bound volume containing the transcription of the testimony taken from the captive Knights Templar in the year 1308. The display will include facsimile reproductions of the original documents, which reproduce the handwriting of medieval Inquisitors, along with signs of eight hundred years of age, including artificial tears and mold stains. A half-hour presentation from Thomas M. Savini, Director of the Livingston Masonic Library, and William J. Thomas, Trustee of the Library, will provide an overview of the Knights Templar, describe their place in history, and discuss their interest to scholars of contemporary Freemasonry. The program includes an opportunity for questions and comments from the audience.

“This trip represents an exciting opportunity for the Livingston Library to bring a part of its collection to our patrons,” says Library Director Savini. “Many of our artifacts simply cannot leave the stable environment of our Manhattan site. And while we do lend books by mail to Masons across New York State, most of our books remain in Manhattan as reference copies, to be used at the Library. With this trip, we are bringing an item that has aroused a great deal of curiosity to Masons and others across New York.” Trustee William Thomas adds, "Freemasons really have only one secret - and that pertains to our origins. We don't truly know where we came from. One of the popular theories has us evolving from the Crusader Knights Templar. While there is no such proven link, several Masonic organizations have adopted the theme as part of their traditions. Such traditions are always the subject of lively discussion among our members."

The Holy See shocked the world when it announced that the Vatican Secret Archive would publish exclusive and previously unavailable source material on the hearings against the medieval warrior-monks. The announcement was of special interest to Freemasons and students of Masonic history, as many theorists trace modern Freemasonry’s origins to the military-religious order, and the modern Masonic Templar organization is an important part of the fraternity today. To date, there is no proven historical link between the medieval Knights Templar and modern Freemasonry.

Presented to the world in October 2007, the 700th anniversary of the arrest of the Templars, Processus Contra Templarios is a joint project of the Vatican Secret Archives and Italy’s Scrinium cultural foundation. This unique work is being published in a limited run of 800 copies, under the supervision of Archive officials, and includes faithful replicas of the original parchments closely guarded at the Secret Archive, along with exclusive critical commentary on the minutes of the inquiry.

The publication is highly valued for its documents and critical texts. The most exciting manuscript in the document collection is the “Chinon Parchment,” which contains Pope Clement V’s absolution of the Templars on charges of heresy, which had been the backbone of King Philip of France’s attempts to eliminate them. The pontiff had suspended the Templar Order, without disbanding it, and eventually re-admitted the Templar officials and the entire Order back into the Roman Church community. The pope recognized that they were guilty of many other minor crimes, but not heresy. The parchment, also known as the “Chinon Chart,” was misplaced in the Vatican archives until 2001, when a medieval historian stumbled across it. The parchment was incorrectly catalogued at some point in history and was the key document historians had been looking for.

The Vatican expected most copies of the work to be purchased by specialized libraries at top universities and by leading medieval scholars. The Livingston Masonic Library may be the only Masonic-affiliated research facility to purchase a copy, and one of only a handful of copies in the entire United States. “We are aware that this purchase will raise some eyebrows, both within and outside the Masonic fraternity,” noted Livingston Masonic Library Director Savini. “But the acquisition of this work coincides with our mission to collect, study and preserve the Masonic heritage. The Masonic heritage includes investigation into Freemasonry’s historical roots, but also the study of its inspirational roots, which include Rosicrucianism; the study of philosophy from the European Enlightenment; and study of the Knights Templar. This collection of documents is important not only to students of Freemasonry, but to medieval and religious scholars and historians as well. It is important that someone in the U.S. make this available, and the Library’s Board of Directors unanimously agreed that it should be us.”

President of the Library’s Board of Directors, Barry Mallah, explained the reasoning behind the purchase. “With such an important announcement rippling through the Masonic world, we felt the Livingston Masonic Library should continue its ground-breaking traditions of presenting important works to the research community. We were the first Masonic research library to provide online access to our museum collections and book catalogue, and obtaining the Processus is a continuation of our commitment to research.”

Original documents of the trials of the Templars have never before been offered to scholars. The epic work of Scrinium is presented in a soft leather case that contains a large-format book with scholarly commentary in Italian and English, reproductions of original parchments in Latin, and replicas of the wax seals used by 14th-century inquisitors. One parchment measuring about a foot and a half wide by more than six feet long is so detailed that it includes reproductions of stains and imperfections seen on the originals. The precise reproduction of the parchments will allow scholars to study them, touch them, and admire them as if they were dealing with the real thing. It also means the originals will not deteriorate as fast as they would if they were constantly being handled and viewed.

The Knights Templar have been a subject of both scholarly research and popular fiction for centuries, but never as popular as in recent decades. Legends of their hidden treasures, secret rituals and political power have figured over the years in medieval romances, Victorian novels, modern bestsellers such as The Da Vinci Code, and action films like National Treasure. The Knights have also been portrayed as guardians of the legendary Holy Grail. One theory says that Templars who went underground to escape the persecutions of the inquisitors in the early 14th century evolved as an organization and emerged in Scotland almost two centuries later as early modern Freemasonry.

Library Director Savini said the Livingston Library makes no claim that Freemasonry is descended from the Templars. “Our Library has a duty to provide our patrons with resources that fulfill their interests and research needs, and that expand the general public’s understanding of all areas relating to Freemasonry, including the numerous theories and legends relating to its origins. The Processus is an important work that helps us to serve our patrons.”

The Processus Contra Templarios was acquired through the Edward J. Scheider Book Fund.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT

THOMAS M. SAVINI, DIRECTOR OF THE LIBRARY

212-337-6619 / tmsavini@nymasoniclibrary.org


Sunday, October 19th
2:00 PM
Dutchess District
Wappingers Lodge No. 671
150 Myers Corners Road, Wappingers Falls, NY 12590

Monday, October 20th
2:00 PM
Troy/Capital Region
Mt. Zion Lodge No. 311
39 Brunswick Road, Troy, NY 12180

Tuesday, October 21st
7:00 PM
Otsego-Schoharie Region
Otsego Lodge No. 138
77 Main Street, Cooperstown, NY 13326

Wednesday, October 22nd
7:00 PM
Syracuse / Onondaga & Oswego Districts
Memorial Lodge No. 648
648 Centerville Place, North Syracuse, NY 13212

Thursday, October 23rd
7:00 PM
Cattaraugus / Chautauqua / Allegany Region
Great Valley Lodge No. 1178
4585 Route 219, Great Valley, NY 14741

Friday, October 24th
11:00 AM (Tentative)
Buffalo / Erie District
Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society
22 Nottingham Terrace, Buffalo, NY 14

2 comments:

King of Inishshark said...

It was billed as the Vatican’s effort to “come clean” and reveal secret documents about the mysterious Knights Templar, the medieval crusading order that has inspired ancient legends and modern novels.

But after seeing exaggerated press reports for two weeks, Bishop Sergio Pagano apparently had had enough.

“I’ve read in the papers that this is about discoveries. In no way can one talk about discoveries — every one of these texts was already known,” he said Oct. 25.

You could almost feel the air going out of the balloon in the packed Vatican conference room, where journalists had assembled for the unveiling of a collector’s edition of Vatican Secret Archives documents on the Templar order.

Since early October, international media had pumped the story, saying parchment records uncovered in the archives would exonerate and rehabilitate the Templars, erasing the charges of heresy that led to the order’s dissolution in 1312.

The idea was that the Vatican was finally divulging information it had long hidden — a notion that tied in vaguely with Dan Brown’s novel, “The Da Vinci Code,” which gave the Templars a role in an ongoing church conspiracy.

But Bishop Pagano, prefect of the Vatican archives, was having none of this.

The new Vatican book is “not a scoop, not something extraordinary, does not reveal or remove penalties that were in fact never imposed, or bring to light hidden things,” he said.

The Vatican wasn’t doing this to celebrate or rehabilitate the Knights Templar, he said. The intent was simply to make scholarly material available in a format of high artistic quality, he said.

Many media reported that the elaborate collector’s edition, titled “Processus Contra Templarios” (”The Trial Against the Templars”), would include a previously secret document called the Chinon parchment, supposedly discovered in 2001 after being misplaced in a Vatican archives drawer.

The Chinon parchment details a 1308 investigation of the Knights Templar ordered by Pope Clement V. It is noteworthy because it shows that Pope Clement absolved the Knights of heresy and wanted at that point to reform the order rather than suppress it.

Bishop Pagano, however, said the Chinon document was not a recent discovery. It was “described perfectly” in a 1912 Vatican archives catalogue and was available to researchers — but researchers didn’t notice until 2001, he said.

What seemed to bother Bishop Pagano most was the hype over a scholarly volume.

“All this noise is not our style,” he said.

“We are still proudly convinced — and perhaps we are in a minority on this — that books should be published, read and studied, not ‘presented.’ Today, books are presented and not even read afterward,” he said.

Bishop Pagano’s blunt words suggested a divergence between scholarship and marketing at the Vatican, an impression that was reinforced when the bishop stood up and left halfway through the press conference.

Scrinium, the company that is publishing the new volume as part of a series of facsimile documents from the Vatican archives, sang a somewhat different tune.

“The whole world is talking” about the new work, it crowed in a statement.

The reason people are attracted to these publications, it said, is that there is huge interest in “the legends, myths and pages of history” that are documented in the Vatican’s files. The Vatican Secret Archives holds too much to classify systematically, and this surfeit of texts and artifacts may yield “new treasures” in the future, it said.

Presumably, Scrinium will be there to market them.

Ferdinando Santoro, president of Scrinium, told Catholic News Service that some media had indeed overly hyped the Templars volume. He acknowledged, however, that the publicity had helped sales of the book.

Although the book’s price tag is 5,900 euros (about $8,400), orders have already been taken for most of the 799 copies printed, he said.

The edition was designed with scholars and libraries in mind, but Santoro said the publicity has generated requests from a much wider audience, including collectors, sheiks, international fashion designers and others wealthy enough to treat themselves to a volume that is hand-sewn, bound in goatskin parchment and embellished with gold decorations.

In this case, the reproduction may be better than the original documents. By using an ultraviolet Wood’s light, experts were able to recover nearly invisible margin notes, some believed written in the hand of Pope Clement as he reviewed the reports of the interrogation of the knights.

Based on the evidence assembled, Vatican scholars say Pope Clement’s suppression of the Knights Templar was dictated by a combination of political events and ecclesial pressures.

Beginning in 1307, King Philip IV of France arrested and tortured many knights, extracting false confessions of heresy and ordering assets seized.

Pope Clement wanted to end abuses in the order and reorganize it, but eventually he bowed to the king’s pressure and formally dissolved the Knights Templar, because he feared a schism of the church in France.

in Catholic News Service

King of Inishshark said...

It was billed as the Vatican’s effort to “come clean” and reveal secret documents about the mysterious Knights Templar, the medieval crusading order that has inspired ancient legends and modern novels.

But after seeing exaggerated press reports for two weeks, Bishop Sergio Pagano apparently had had enough.

“I’ve read in the papers that this is about discoveries. In no way can one talk about discoveries — every one of these texts was already known,” he said Oct. 25.

You could almost feel the air going out of the balloon in the packed Vatican conference room, where journalists had assembled for the unveiling of a collector’s edition of Vatican Secret Archives documents on the Templar order.

Since early October, international media had pumped the story, saying parchment records uncovered in the archives would exonerate and rehabilitate the Templars, erasing the charges of heresy that led to the order’s dissolution in 1312.

The idea was that the Vatican was finally divulging information it had long hidden — a notion that tied in vaguely with Dan Brown’s novel, “The Da Vinci Code,” which gave the Templars a role in an ongoing church conspiracy.

But Bishop Pagano, prefect of the Vatican archives, was having none of this.

The new Vatican book is “not a scoop, not something extraordinary, does not reveal or remove penalties that were in fact never imposed, or bring to light hidden things,” he said.

The Vatican wasn’t doing this to celebrate or rehabilitate the Knights Templar, he said. The intent was simply to make scholarly material available in a format of high artistic quality, he said.

Many media reported that the elaborate collector’s edition, titled “Processus Contra Templarios” (”The Trial Against the Templars”), would include a previously secret document called the Chinon parchment, supposedly discovered in 2001 after being misplaced in a Vatican archives drawer.

The Chinon parchment details a 1308 investigation of the Knights Templar ordered by Pope Clement V. It is noteworthy because it shows that Pope Clement absolved the Knights of heresy and wanted at that point to reform the order rather than suppress it.

Bishop Pagano, however, said the Chinon document was not a recent discovery. It was “described perfectly” in a 1912 Vatican archives catalogue and was available to researchers — but researchers didn’t notice until 2001, he said.

What seemed to bother Bishop Pagano most was the hype over a scholarly volume.

“All this noise is not our style,” he said.

“We are still proudly convinced — and perhaps we are in a minority on this — that books should be published, read and studied, not ‘presented.’ Today, books are presented and not even read afterward,” he said.

Bishop Pagano’s blunt words suggested a divergence between scholarship and marketing at the Vatican, an impression that was reinforced when the bishop stood up and left halfway through the press conference.

Scrinium, the company that is publishing the new volume as part of a series of facsimile documents from the Vatican archives, sang a somewhat different tune.

“The whole world is talking” about the new work, it crowed in a statement.

The reason people are attracted to these publications, it said, is that there is huge interest in “the legends, myths and pages of history” that are documented in the Vatican’s files. The Vatican Secret Archives holds too much to classify systematically, and this surfeit of texts and artifacts may yield “new treasures” in the future, it said.

Presumably, Scrinium will be there to market them.

Ferdinando Santoro, president of Scrinium, told Catholic News Service that some media had indeed overly hyped the Templars volume. He acknowledged, however, that the publicity had helped sales of the book.

Although the book’s price tag is 5,900 euros (about $8,400), orders have already been taken for most of the 799 copies printed, he said.

The edition was designed with scholars and libraries in mind, but Santoro said the publicity has generated requests from a much wider audience, including collectors, sheiks, international fashion designers and others wealthy enough to treat themselves to a volume that is hand-sewn, bound in goatskin parchment and embellished with gold decorations.

In this case, the reproduction may be better than the original documents. By using an ultraviolet Wood’s light, experts were able to recover nearly invisible margin notes, some believed written in the hand of Pope Clement as he reviewed the reports of the interrogation of the knights.

Based on the evidence assembled, Vatican scholars say Pope Clement’s suppression of the Knights Templar was dictated by a combination of political events and ecclesial pressures.

Beginning in 1307, King Philip IV of France arrested and tortured many knights, extracting false confessions of heresy and ordering assets seized.

Pope Clement wanted to end abuses in the order and reorganize it, but eventually he bowed to the king’s pressure and formally dissolved the Knights Templar, because he feared a schism of the church in France.

in Catholic News Service